January 1935

Howard Law School dean Charles Hamilton Houston became the NAACP's first full-time paid special counsel, implementing a long-term legal strategy to dismantle segregation by attacking unequal facilities in graduate education. Houston trained Thurgood Marshall and laid the intellectual groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education.

Du Bois's monumental historical study demolished the dominant 'Dunning School' narrative that portrayed Reconstruction as a failure caused by Black incompetence, demonstrating instead the substantive achievements of Black political leadership and the deliberate destruction of Reconstruction by white supremacy. It transformed the historiography of the period.

Howard University Law School dean Charles Hamilton Houston became special counsel to the NAACP in 1935 and developed the legal strategy of using the courts to dismantle segregation by forcing states to actually equalize facilities — the approach that culminated in Brown v. Board. Called 'the man who killed Jim Crow,' Houston trained Thurgood Marshall and a generation of civil rights lawyers.

Hurston's first folklore collection presented Black Southern folk tales, songs, and hoodoo practices gathered through fieldwork with unprecedented insider perspective and literary craft. It was the first major collection of African American folklore by a Black writer and remains a foundational text in folklore studies.

As vice dean of Howard Law School and later chief counsel of the NAACP, Charles Hamilton Houston developed the constitutional strategy that would ultimately dismantle segregation, training a generation of civil rights lawyers — including Thurgood Marshall — whom he called "social engineers." His systematic attack on unequal education laid the direct legal groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education.

Bethune was appointed director of the Division of Negro Affairs in the National Youth Administration, making her the highest-ranking Black official in any US administration to that point. She organized FDR's unofficial 'Black Cabinet' of African American federal advisors who pushed New Deal agencies to serve Black Americans.

The New Deal's Federal Theatre Project established dedicated Black units in sixteen cities, employing hundreds of Black actors, directors, and playwrights including Orson Welles's all-Black Macbeth in Harlem. The units were among the most vital institutional supports for Black theater in American history.

The NAACP mounted its most sustained legislative campaign for the Costigan-Wagner federal anti-lynching bill following a wave of mob murders including the lynching of Claude Neal in Florida. Though the bill was filibustered in the Senate, the campaign built national awareness and put lynching before an international audience.

Italy's invasion of Ethiopia — the last independent African nation — sparked mass protest across Black America. Rallies, fundraising, and volunteer recruitment drives reflected a deep identification with Ethiopian sovereignty and produced some of the most intense Pan-African political organizing of the interwar period.

William "Count" Basie assembled his big band in Kansas City, drawing on the city's rich blues and jazz tradition to forge a stripped-down, swinging style centered on riffing brass and a powerful rhythm section. The orchestra became one of the defining ensembles of the Swing Era and launched the careers of numerous jazz greats.

After her Apollo Amateur Night win, seventeen-year-old Ella Fitzgerald became the featured vocalist for drummer-bandleader Chick Webb's orchestra at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom, launching one of jazz's greatest careers. Their residency defined the Savoy's golden era.

Holiday began her prolific series of small-group recordings for Brunswick and Vocalion with Teddy Wilson and rotating jazz all-stars, producing dozens of sides that displayed her unique rhythmic phrasing and emotional expressiveness. These sessions are among the greatest recordings in jazz history.

Basie's Kansas City orchestra developed a looser, bluesier approach to swing based on riff patterns and open improvisation that stood in deliberate contrast to the arranged complexity of New York swing. John Hammond discovered the band on a car radio and brought them to national attention.

The New Deal's Works Progress Administration Federal Arts Project, partly through advocacy by the Harlem Artists Guild, employed Black artists including Charles Alston, Jacob Lawrence, Charles White, Vertis Hayes, and Selma Burke — enabling a generation to develop professionally during the Depression.

Chemist Percy Julian successfully synthesized physostigmine, a drug used to treat glaucoma, settling a long scientific controversy and establishing his international reputation. Working against relentless racial discrimination — he was barred from multiple academic positions — Julian became one of the most prolific industrial chemists in American history.

Samuel B. Fuller started the Fuller Products Company with $25 in 1935, building it into a cosmetics and consumer goods empire with over 5,000 salespeople by the 1950s. He became one of the wealthiest Black Americans of the mid-20th century and mentored a generation of Black entrepreneurs including John H. Johnson.

AKA's Mississippi Health Project sent mobile health clinics into the Mississippi Delta each summer from 1935 to 1942, providing medical care to thousands of impoverished Black sharecroppers with no other access to healthcare. It was among the largest Black-organized rural health initiatives of the era.

The NAACP organized a landmark exhibition at the Arthur U. Newton Gallery in New York featuring paintings, drawings, and sculpture about lynching by artists including George Bellows and Reginald Marsh alongside Black artists, using fine art as anti-lynching advocacy and drawing national press coverage.

Pianist Teddy Wilson joined Benny Goodman's trio for recordings and public performances, making them one of the first integrated ensembles to appear publicly on mainstream American stages. The performances challenged Jim Crow conventions in the entertainment industry.

Augusta Savage, Charles Alston, and other Harlem artists founded the Harlem Artists Guild to advocate for Black artists' inclusion in New Deal arts programs and to build collective professional infrastructure. The Guild secured major WPA Federal Arts Project contracts for Black artists.

Cullen published The Medea and Some Poems, his acclaimed translation-adaptation of Euripides, which critics praised as one of the finest modern English versions of the play. The volume also contained some of Cullen's strongest later poetry and demonstrated his classical erudition.

Newark Eagles first baseman George 'Mule' Suttles was renowned as the most prodigious power hitter in the Negro Leagues, with reported single-season home run totals that would dwarf major league records. His performance in the 1935 East-West All-Star Game — a walk-off home run — became one of the most celebrated moments in Negro Leagues history.