Black History Knowledge — October 10

What happened on this day. These are the October 10 moments in Black history worth knowing, remembering, and passing on.

1935 — Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway

Porgy and Bess opened at the Alvin Theatre on October 10, 1935, after its Boston tryout. The opera featured an all-Black cast and drew heavily on Black musical traditions, while also generating long-running debates over representation and stereotyping. The work became one of the most influential and contested stage portrayals of Black life in American cultural history.

1955 — The Supreme Court ordered the University of Alabama not to bar Autherine Lucy by race

On October 10, 1955, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Lucy v. Adams, reinstating an injunction that barred University of Alabama dean of admissions William F. Adams from denying Autherine Lucy and Polly Anne Myers the right to enroll solely because of their race and color. The two women had been seeking admission since September 1952. Lucy enrolled on February 1, 1956, and on February 6 she passed through a hostile crowd of about 300 white protesters on the way to class. The ruling applied federal equal-protection law to Alabama higher education and opened the way for Lucy’s historic, and violently resisted, enrollment.

1980 — Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site was established

Federal legislation signed on October 10, 1980, created the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, protecting major places associated with King’s birth, ministry, and the civil-rights movement. The designation placed Black freedom history within the National Park System and preserved a living neighborhood central to King’s formation.

1980 — Boston African American National Historic Site was authorized

A separate act signed the same day as the King legislation, Public Law 96-430, authorized the Secretary of the Interior to establish the Boston African American National Historic Site, including the African Meeting House, to preserve structures ‘associated with the creation and development of a free African American community within Beacon Hill prior to the Civil War.’ The site protects an unusually dense landscape of free Black institution-building, antislavery organizing, education, and Underground Railroad activity.

2015 — Thousands rallied on the National Mall for the Million Man March’s 20th anniversary

On October 10, 2015, thousands of Black men, women and children gathered on the National Mall for the ‘Justice or Else’ rally, marking the 20th anniversary of the 1995 Million Man March. The Nation of Islam sponsored the rally, and its leader, Louis Farrakhan, was among the speakers. The crowd gathered amid growing anger in Black communities over police killings of young Black men. The rally tied the 1995 march’s call for Black unity to the police-reform demands of the Black Lives Matter era.

Wear the history: Martin Luther King Jr. — from the Black Knowledge Wear collection.