This Week In Black History

Jet, Dec 20, 1999

December 15, 1883

Dr. William A. Hinton, scientist, lecturer, author and the first Black on the Harvard Medical School faculty, was born on this day in Chicago, IL. Dr. Hinton graduated from Harvard College in 1905 and from Harvard Medical School in 1912. He served as a voluntary assistant in the Pathological Laboratory of the Massachusetts General Hospital from 1912 to 1915. He joined the staff of the Harvard Medical School as an assistant in preventive medicine and hygiene. During the summer of 1949, he became the first Black to hold a professorship in Harvard University. An authority on the detection and treatment of venereal disease, Dr. Hinton's name became known among the medical community for the Hinton test he devised for detecting syphilis. He died August 8, 1959, at the age of 75 at his home in Canton, MA.

December 16, 1976

Andrew Young was nominated by President Jimmy Carter to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations on this day. Young, who was serving his third term in Congress from Georgia, resigned his seat to take the post, becoming the first Black appointee in the Carter Administration and first Black to fill the U.N. post for the U.S. He served in the post from 1977 to 1979. In addition to serving in Congress, Young fought for civil rights with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as executive vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and was mayor of Atlanta. The New Orleans native graduated from Howard University and the Hartford Theological Seminary. He most recently was named president of the National Council of Churches. He chronicles his life in An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America.