January 1979

Butler's time-travel novel, in which a modern Black woman is repeatedly pulled back to antebellum Maryland, became the first serious work of science fiction to center on American slavery and is now one of the most taught novels in American high schools and colleges. It launched a genre — neo-slave narrative science fiction — and cemented Butler as the mother of Afrofuturism.

Chic releases Good Times, whose bass line becomes one of the most sampled in music history and directly inspired the bass line in the Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight, bridging funk and hip-hop.

Arrington was reelected multiple times throughout the 1980s and 1990s, serving until 1999 — making him one of the longest-serving Black mayors of a major Southern city.