African-American History Month.

Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American U.S. Supreme Court justice, was born July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from Lincoln University in 1930 and thought about applying to law school in his hometown at the University of Maryland, but instead applied at Howard University because of the University of Maryland’s segregation policy at the time.

Marshall received his law degree from Howard in 1933 and began a law practice in Baltimore. The following year, he began working with the Baltimore NAACP. His most famous case as a lawyer was Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka, Kan. This case declared that “separate but equal” public education was unconstitutional.

On June 13, 1967, President Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court. Marshall retired on June 28, 1991. He died of heart failure on January 24, 1993, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

For more information on Thurgood Marshall, try these sites:

http://www.thurgoodmarshall.com
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/jb/modern/marshall_1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurgood_Marshall

Dr. Charles Richard Drew
Dr. Charles Richard Drew was the first person to develop the blood bank. Drew was born June 3, 1904, in Washington D.C. He attended Amherst College, and after graduation became a biology and chemistry instructor at Morgan State University. Drew later studied medicine at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. It was there that he first saw a life saved with a blood transfusion.

Drew became a pioneer in the field of blood plasma preservation and storage. In 1940 he supervised the "Blood for Britain" campaign for the Blood Transfusion Betterment Association of New York, which aided thousands of civilians who were wounded in Britain during the German bombing raids.

Drew first used his idea of a blood bank while working for the American Red Cross on the battlefields during World War II. Because of the blood bank, thousands of Allied servicemen lives were saved.

For more information on Dr. Charles Richard Drew, try these sites:

http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/drew.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/redgold/innovators/bio_drew.html
http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/drew_c.htm

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm
Shrily Anita St. Hill Chisholm was the first African-American woman to serve in Congress. She was born November 30, 1924, to Barbadian parents, and spent much of her childhood living in Barbados. At the age of 10, she began attending public school in Brooklyn, New York. At the request of her parents, Chisholm stayed at home and attended Brooklyn College after high school.

After graduating cum laude in 1946, Chisholm worked as a nursery school teacher and a director of schools for early childhood development. During her teaching career, politics continued to play an important role in her life. Then, in 1964, Chisholm decided to run for the New York State Assembly and won the election.

She ran for the U.S. Congress in 1968 and won. Chisholm made a serious bid for the presidency of the United States in 1972, becoming the first African-American woman to do so. She lost the Democratic party nomination and remained in Congress until 1982.

After leaving Congress, Chisholm served as Purington Professor at Mount Holyoke College and as a visiting scholar at Spelman College until finally retiring in 1987.

For more information on Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm, try these sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Chisholm
http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=C000371
http://afgen.com/chisholm.html

And, for more information about other African-Americans who have influenced the country, check out these sites:

http://www.kidsdomain.com/kids/links/Black_History.html
http://teacher.scholastic.com/lessonrepro/reproducibles/instructor/crossword/0101/
http://www.npl.org/Pages/KidsPlace/Sites/afr.html