History: Marian Anderson became 1st black singer at Met

January 1, 1863: President Abraham Lincoln issued an executive order known as the Emancipation Proclamation that all those enslaved in the states that seceded from the Union are “henceforth shall be free.” The proclamation left slavery untouched in the border states and in Confederate areas under Northern control. Freedom hinged on a Union victory, and African Americans became soldiers in the war as well.

January 2, 1965: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee with the help of Martin Luther King Jr. announced the beginning of a new campaign to help register African-American voters in Selma, Alabama. Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark did his best to stop that. Over the next two months, more than 2,000 people were arrested for attempting to register or encouraging others to vote. The 2014 movie, “Selma,” captured that struggle.

Related: Civil rights veterans highlight role of Rust College during movement

January 3, 1624: William Tucker was baptized on this day. He was the first recorded birth of a baby of African descent in Jamestown, Virginia. His parents, Anthony and Isabella, had arrived five years earlier. Some historians put the first birth of an African baby on U.S. soil years earlier in St. Augustine, Florida, where the Spanish brought enslaved Africans.

January 3, 1933: Dr. Aaron Shirley was born in Gluckstadt, Mississippi. After completing medical school in Tennessee, he returned to Mississippi. He joined the civil rights movement, and his family’s home was bombed in Vicksburg. In 1965, he began his pediatric residency at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. He was the first African-American resident there and the first African-American pediatrician in the state. His pioneering approach to helping the poor with their medical needs (turning a dilapidated mall into a medical mall, establishing community health advocates to check on patients at home). In 1993, he won the MacArthur “genius” grant for his innovative approach before dying in 2014.

January 3, 1966: Samuel Leamon Younge Jr., a student civil rights activist, was fatally shot in back of the head in Tuskegee, Alabama, after he tried to use a “whites-only” bathroom. A U.S. Navy veteran, Young served on an aircraft carrier involved in blockading Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. After a medical discharge in 1964, he attended the Tuskegee Institute and became involved in the civil rights movement. As a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he helped register black voters in Alabama and Mississippi and became involved in protests, one of which prompted him to spend months in jail. During a voter registration campaign in Tuskegee, he tried to use a “whites-only” bathroom at a gas station. An attendant named Marvin Segrest killed Younge. A grand jury indicted Segrest, but an all-white jury acquitted him. Younge is one of 40 martyrs listed on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.

January 4, 1884: Harry “Bucky” Lew was born in Dracut, Massachusetts. In 1902, he became the first recorded African American to sign a contract in professional basketball. After injuries to teammates, the manager decided to play four on five, rather than letting Lew play. “The fans got real mad,” Lew recalled, “and they almost started a riot, screaming to let me play. That did it.”

January 4, 1923: Hundreds of white men began burning Rosewood, Florida. Within three days, the entire African-American town had been burned to the ground. By the time the violence ended, six African Americans and two whites had died, according to the official count. Michael D’Orso’s book, “Like Judgment Day,” tells the story of what happened, including the Florida Legislature voting in 1994 to compensate victims and their families. Three years later, Hollywood released a movie on the event, “Rosewood.”

January 5, 1804: Two years after outlawing slavery, Ohio became the first Northern state to pass “Black Codes,” or legislation curbing the rights of African Americans. The act required African Americans migrating to Ohio to prove they were free and fined employers who dared to hire those that weren’t free. Measures followed that barred black residents from serving on juries and testifying against white defendants. Others, including Indiana, Illinois and the Michigan Territory, followed with their own Black Codes.

January 6, 1874: Congressman Robert Brown Elliott of South Carolina delivered one of the most eloquent speeches of the times in defense of Charles Sumner’s civil rights bill. Elliott’s hour-long speech began: “I regret, sir, the dark hue of my skin may lend color to the imputation that I am controlled by motives personal to myself in advocacy of this great measure of national justice. Sir, the motive that impels me is restricted to no such narrow boundary, but is as broad as your Constitution. I advocate it, sir, because it is right.” A major Reconstruction politician, Elliott was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives at the age of 38 and was among the first African-Americans in the U.S. government.

January 6, 1961: A federal judge ordered the University of Georgia to admit Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter. Five days later, the university suspended them after a riot on campus by white students. Two days later, a court order reinstated them. Two years later, Holmes became the first African-American student admitted to the Emory University School of Medicine, later serving as an associate dean as Emory and as medical director of the Grady Memorial Hospital. Hunter served a distinguished career in journalism, winning two Emmys and a Peabody for her work with The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

January 7, 1891: Noted author of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston was born in Alabama, whose father later became mayor of Eatonville, Florida — one of the few incorporated all-black towns in the U.S. She wrote four novels and dozens of short stories and essays. She is best known for her 1937 novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” now regarded as a seminal work in both African-American literature and female literature. That same year, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct research on those who lived in Jamaica and Haiti.

January 7, 1955: Marian Anderson became the first African American to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. The event came 16 years after the Daughters of the American Revolution turned her away from a 1939 performance in Constitution Hall. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who had resigned as a result, invited Anderson to sing in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday. In a nationwide radio broadcast, millions heard her sing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” DAR reversed its position and invited her to perform many more times.