Black History Knowledge — October 22

What happened on this day. These are the October 22 moments in Black history worth knowing, remembering, and passing on.

1945 — Black tobacco workers launched a major Charleston strike

On October 22, 1945, unionized workers at the American Tobacco Company’s Cigar Factory in Charleston walked off their jobs, beginning a strike that lasted about five months. Most of the strikers were African American women. The strike connected civil rights with wages, union power, and women’s leadership. Its picket-line song tradition contributed to the later freedom anthem ‘We Shall Overcome.’

1946 — Five white men were freed in the killing of Leon McAtee in Mississippi

On October 22, 1946, five white men charged in the July 1946 beating death of Leon McAtee, a Black tenant farmer, were freed in Holmes County, Mississippi, even though one of them had confessed and implicated the others. The judge acquitted two defendants before the case ended, and an all-white jury deliberated about ten minutes before acquitting the other three. The case shows how Southern courts failed to hold white defendants accountable for violence against Black people in the years after World War II.

1953 — Clarence Sumner Greene became the first board-certified Black neurosurgeon

On October 22, 1953, Clarence Sumner Greene Sr. became the first African American certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery after training at Howard University and the Montreal Neurological Institute. Greene’s certification broke a specialty barrier in medicine. As Howard’s chief of neurosurgery, he expanded advanced neurological care and training at an institution central to Black medical education.

1963 — More than 200,000 students boycotted Chicago public schools on Freedom Day

On October 22, 1963, organizers of the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations led a citywide boycott of Chicago public schools to protest segregation and overcrowding in schools serving Black students. About 225,000 students stayed out of school, and about 10,000 people marched to the school system’s downtown headquarters. Many younger children attended Freedom Schools that day. Freedom Day was one of the largest civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s and brought the fight against school segregation to a Northern city.