This week in Black history

Jet, April 7, 2008

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

March 31, 1988--

Toni Morrison, editor, novelist, professor, became the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for excellence in American literature for her novel Beloved on this day. Morrison is also the first Black American ever to win and the second American woman honored as a Nobel Prize winner for literature. Born Chloe Wolford in Lorain, OH, she spent her childhood in the Midwest and read tirelessly. In 1996 Morrison was named the Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Morrison earned her bachelor's degree from Howard University and her master's from Cornell University. Morrison began to write while she worked as a book editor in New York. Her works include The Bluest Eye (1970), Song of Solomon (1977), Jazz (1992), Paradise (1997) and Love (2003).

April 4, 1968--

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., clergyman, civil rights leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner, was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN, on this day. The 39-year-old civil rights leader was in Memphis planning to lead a march in support of striking sanitation workers. A day before his death, King gave the historic and rousing "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech at Mason Temple. King was buried in Atlanta on April 9, 1968. Nearly 100,000 mourners followed behind his coffin as it was carried through the streets to Morehouse College, King's alma mater. King is entombed in the Freedom Hall Complex of the Martin Luther King Jr. Historic Site in Atlanta. The area of King's assassination, the Lorraine Motel, is now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]