BHBIOS

							                 Ida Wells-Barnett
                            (1862-1911)
• “I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a
  dog or a rat in a trap.” Ida Wells-Barnett fought all her life against
  racial injustice, but she is today honored most for her relentless and
  literally death-defying campaign against racial lynching. Wells-Barnett
  was an early predecessor of Rosa Parks in her refusal, in May 1884, to
  give up a train seat in the white section. Removed by force, she sued
  and won in the circuit court, but the Tennessee Supreme Court later
  reversed the decision. The disheartening incident galvanized her desire
  to fight for racial equality, using the weapon she wielded best - the
  pen. Wells-Barnett became a full time journalist in 1891, and for many
  years she defied mob violence and terror to train a relentless and harse
  light on the national disgrace of lynching, even taking her campaign
  abroad.
            DR. VIVIEN THOMAS
             Pioneer Heart Surgery
•   Thomas was a key player in pioneering
    the anastomosis of the subclavian artery
    to the pulmonary artery. The surgical
    work he performed with Alfred Blalock
    paved the way for the successful
    outcome of the Blalock-Taussig shunt.

•   A young African-American came to
    work for Blalock in his laboratory at
    that point Blalock's increasing
    obligations were cutting into the time
    he could spend in the laboratory, a more
    fortunate choice could not have been
    made. Vivien Thomas learned to
    perform the surgical operations and
    chemical determinations needed for
    their experiments, to calculate the
    results, and to keep precise records; he
    remained an invaluable associate
    throughout Blalock's career.
         Martin R. Delaney
     African American Scientist
• Martin R. Delaney was born 1812. He published his own
  newspaper, „The Mystery‟ in 1843. Helped Frederick
  Douglas publish „The North Star‟ from 1847 to 1849.
  Published a book „The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and
  Destiny of the Colored People of the United States,
  Politically Considered in 1852. Led the first and only
  exploratory party of American-born Negroes to Africa in
  1859. Published a book “The Principles of Ethnology: The
  Origins of Race and Color” in 1879. Com-missioned a Major
  in the U.S. Colored Troops. Customs inspector and a trial
  judge in Charleston, South Carolina.
       Jonathan Jasper Wright
             African American Jurist
• Born in Pensylvania, Jonathan Wright studied law in a private
  law office and in 1866 became the first Negro to be admitted to
  the state bar. In 1865 the American Missionary Society sent him
  to South Carolina to help organize schools for freedmen. From
  1866 to 1868 he was employed by the Freedmen's Bureau as a
  legal advisor. Wright resigned his post with the Bureau to
  participate in politics and was a member of the constitutional
  convention of 1868 and later elected state senator from Baufort.
  From 1870 to 1879 he was Associate Justice of the State
  Supreme Court of South Carolina. No other Negro rose to such
  a high judicial post during the entire Reconstruction Era, and
  few spoke out as eloquently against the institution of slavery.
            Inman E. Page
      African American Educator
• Inman E. Page was born in 1853 in Warrenton, Ohio. He received
  his A.B. (1877) and M.A. (1880) from Brown University and an
  honorary Dr. of Laws degrees from Wilberforce and Howard
  Universities. In 1877 he began teaching and, from 1880 to 1898,
  was president of Lincoln University in Missouri. After his next
  appointment as president of the Colored Agricultural and Normal
  University (1898-1915) he headed Western Baptist College and
  Roger Williams University (1916-1921). He served as principal of
  Douglass High School and supervising principal of the city's Negro
  elementary schools from 1921 to 1935 - an inspiration to countless
  young men and women as well as a dynamic leader whose
  institutions flourished under him.
       Ms. W. E. Matthews
    African American Journalist
• This journalist and author was born in Fort Valley,
  Georgia, in 1861. The cruelty of the times drove her
  mother to New York where she brought and educated
  her legally freed family. Mrs. Matthews wrote for
  periodicals, white and Negro: The New York Times,
  Herald, Mail, Express, National Leader, Detroit
  Plaindealer and many Afro-American weeklies. She
  was a member of the Woman's National Press
  Association, and her later writings included several
  textbooks and school literature.
         Leonard A. Grimes
      Christian African American
• Born in Leesburg, VIrginia, Nov. 9, 1815, Leonard Andrew Grimes
  grew up hating slavery and its cruelties. Although he was born free
  and so light he often passed for white, he served a prison term in
  Richmond for aiding escaping slves. In 1843 the Twelth Street
  Baptist Church in Boston was formed and Grimes was ordained
  pastor, a position he held until his death. He also served as
  president of the American Baptist Missionary Convention and the
  Colsolidated Baptist Convention. Hundreds of escaping slaves
  passed through his hands enroute to Canada, and he raised monies
  to buy the freedom of many who were caught. During the Civil
  War he aided the enlistment of colored soldiers and was offered the
  chaplaincy of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment.
    Madam Elizabeth Keckley
    African American Businessperson
• Madam Keckley was known as a "White House
  modiste and author." As a slave, born in 1840, she
  learned the art of dressmaking so well that she became
  the modiste to Mrs. Mary Lincoln. An intelligent and
  creative person, she authored a book published in
  1868 titled Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave
  and Four Year in the White House. Her knowledge
  led, after the war, to her being appointed director of
  Domestic Art at Wilberforce University in the
  combined Normal and Industrial Department.
           Robert Russa Moton
     African American Businessperson
• A native of Amelia County, Virginia, and a graduate of
  Hampton, Robert Moton succeeded Booker T. Washington as
  president of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Through Moton's
  efforts a five million dollar increase in endowment was achieved
  for Hampton and Tuskegee in 1925. A speaker throughout the
  South on race relations and White House representative under
  Wilson, Moton fought white townspeople for control of
  Veterans Hospital at Tuskegee. As a result, the hospital ws
  finally staffed completely by Negro doctors, nurses, and
  workers. The author of an autobiography, Finding a Way Out
  (1920), and What the Negro Thinks (1920), Moton received
  many honorary degrees, as well as the Harmon Award (1930)
  and the Spingarn Medal (1932).
            John Mitchell, Jr.
     African American Businessperson
• Born July 11, 1863, in Henrice County, John Mitchell
  attended Richmond Normal High School and received gold
  medals for map drawing and oratory. In 1883 and 1884 he
  was the richmond correspondent of the New York Freeman
  and in December 1884 became editor of the Richmond
  Planet. His bold and fearless personal investigations and
  writings on lynchings and murders occurring in the south
  earned Mitchell the reputation of a daring and vigorous
  editor. Without fear or seeming concern for his own
  welfare he south the truth about "Southern justice: and
  wrote about it in direct and vitriolic language.
                    Isaac Myers
     African American Businessperson
• Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Isaac Myers worked as an
  apprentice caulker, and learned the trade so well he ws made
  supervisor in one of the largest shipyards in Baltimore. To
  counteract a movement to remove blacks from the ship building
  industry, Myers raised ten thousand dollars and set up a black-
  owned and controlled shipyard, employing three hundred
  Negroes. When the National Labor Union attempted to divide
  the colored vote in the South, Myers called for a national labor
  convention of all Negro workers and urged the formation of
  local unions. The black National Labor Union, formed in 1869,
  failed after three years, but Myers continued to be active in
  unionism and Republican politics until his death in 1891.
           Andrew F. Brimmer
     African American Businessperson
• Recipient of the "Government Man of the Year" award (1963),
  Andrew Brimmer was born the son of a sharecropper in
  Newwllton, Lousiana, on September 13, 1926. He secured his B.A.
  and M.A. degrees from the University of Washington, and Ph.D.
  from Harvard (1967). An economist from the Federal Reserve
  Bank of New York (1955-1958), a teacher at Harvard City College
  of New York, the University of California, and Michigan State
  University, Brimmer was appointed to the Department of
  Commerce (1963-1966), and became the first Negro member of the
  Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (1966). He also
  helped develop the Anti-Poverty Program, the 1964 Civil Rights
  Act, and still found time to author numerous articles and books.
            T. Thomas Fortune
     African American Businessperson
• T. Thomas Furtune, born October 6, 1856, in Florida of slave
  parents, worked in alocal newspaper office, served as special
  inspector of customs attended Howard University and taught
  school before he began publication of a newspaper, The New
  York Globe, in 1882. One week after it folded in 1884 he
  opened The New York Freeman (later remaned The New
  York Age), a militant newspaper. Author of three books,
  Black and White, The Negro in Politics, and Dream of Life,
  Fortune believed that the racial situation was a cancer upon
  the body of AMerican society and that a bond of union
  between whites and blacks of the South was essential.
         Miss Mary Mahoney
    African American Businessperson
• Although the exact date of birth of Miss Mahoney
  is unknown, her significant achievement is dated
  during the Reconstruction Era. During this period
  when racial bars were at their highest and
  educational opportunities for Negroes were at their
  lowest, Miss Mahoney entered the medical school
  of the New England Hospital for Wonen and
  Children, and graduated in 1879 to become the
  first professional colored nurse.
              Hobart Taylor, Jr.
      African American Businessperson
• Banker and lawyer, Hobart Taylor, Jr. was born in Texarkana, Texas
  on December 17, 1920, received his A.B. from Prairie View State
  College (1939), A.M. from Howard University (1941), LL.B. from the
  University of Michigan (1943). Admitted to the Michigan bar in 1944,
  he was a research assistant for the Michigan Supreme Court (1944-
  1945), partner in the firm Bledsoe and Taylor (1945-1948), assistant
  prosecuting attorney in Wayne County, Michigan (1949-1950), served
  as special counsel to the Committee on Equal Employment
  Opportunity (1961-1962), and executive vice chairman of CEEP from
  1962 to 1965. He resigned this position to become director of the
  Export-Import Bank of Washington, continuing to serve as special
  consultant to Plans for Progress, an association which he previously
  directed.
              Mary E. Pleasant
     African American Businessperson
• For a period "Mammy Pleasant" led an eventful life in San
  Francisco, acting as financial advisor to distinguished white
  gentlemen, and securing a Negro monopoly on domestic jobs
  in the state. Reported to have given John Brown thirty
  thousand dollars to finance the raid on Harpers Ferry,
  mysterious Mary Ellen Pleasant began life as a slave in
  Georgia, but in 1849 settled in San Francisco, California. In
  1864 she brought suit against a street car company for rude
  treatment and won a favorable judgement. She aided in the
  rescue of slaves who were being held illegally and in 1863
  won for Negroes the Right of Testimony.
              John H. Johnson
     African American Businessperson
• John H. Johnson, born on Jan 19, 1918 in Arkansas City,
  Arkansas, in 1937 moved to Chicago. He started thr Negro
  Digest (later called Black World) in 1942 with a $500
  loan; published the first issue of Ebony in 1945; published
  two pocket-sized magazines, Jet and Hue, followed by Tan
  (later changed to Black Stars), a "true confession" type of
  magazine; entered the field of hard-covered books in 1963
  with volumes by Lerone Bennett and other writers. The
  Johnson Publishing Company grossed over $23 million in
  1972, even before it purchased radion station WGRT in
  1973, the first station in Chicago to be owned by blacks.
           A. Phillip Randolph
     African American Businessperson
• Asa Phillip Randolph was born April 15, 1889 in Cresent
  City, Florida; wrote for Opportunity magazine and co-edited
  The Messenger (1917); organized the Brotherhood of
  Sleeping Car Porters, AFL, in 1925; organized and directed
  the 1941 March on Washington which led President
  Roosevelt to start the FEPC; helped mount the pressure
  which led to desegregation of the Armed Forces in 1946;
  helped plan the first Freedom Rides in 1946; became the first
  Negro vice-president of the AFL-CIO in 1957; helped
  organize and lead the 1963 March on Washington; advocated
  the $185 billion Freedom Budget in 1966.
      Malcolm Malik El-Shabazz
       African American Businessperson
•   One of the most compelling human rights activists of modern America,
    Malcolm X was an ideological heir to Marcus Garvey and others who regarded
    black self-hatred as the most insidious product of racial oppression - and the
    most fundamental obstable to black self-realization. In the now-classic
    Autobiography of Malcolm X (with Alex Haley, 1964) he recounted his own
    journey from troubled you to exponent of black power as an adherent of the
    Nation of Islam. Born Malcolm Little, he replaced his surname with the
    designation “X” (for the unknown African tribe of his origin) in the early
    1950s and articulated a political vision more concerned with challenging white
    domination than racial segregation per se, using rhetoric that was distinctly
    harsher and more separatist thean that of the mainstream civil rights
    movement. With an ever-searching intellect, Malcolm X also had the courage
    to revise his ideas as his thought evolved, holding up his transformations as
    useful examples for others. Though assassinated in 1965, Malcolm X remains
    a powerful symbol of unbowed black dignity and possibility.
                 Richard Wright
                   (1908-1960)
• Born on a Mississippi plantation, Richard Wright was the son of a
  farmworker, and his early life was marked by poverty, hunder, and
  racial prejudice, experiences that formed the core of his later work.
  “Negroes are my people,” he said in acceting the Spingarn Medal in
  1941, “ and my writing-which is my life and which carrier my
  convictions - attempts to mirror their struggles for freedom during
  these troubled days.” From his forst stories, collected in Uncle Tom‟s
  Children, to the celebrated novel Native Son and the autobiographical
  Black Boy, Wright created provocative works of lasting influence. He
  broke ground for other African Amrican writers - Ralph Ellison and
  James Baldwin among them - and was, in the words of biographer
  Robert Felgar, “perhaps the very first writer to give the white
  community explanations and themes that ut through its predjudices and
  forced it to look at the reality of black life in America.
           Booker T. Washington
               (1859-1915)
•   Born in Franklin County, Virginia, just before the U.S. Civil War of a
    mulatto mother and a white father, Booker T. Washington grew up and
    tenaciously pursued an education in the turbulent Reconstruction era. He
    worked in salt furnaces and coal mines to get the means to travel to the
    Hampton Institute, where he worked as a janitor for his room and board.
    Further education and growing experience as a teacher led to his
    appointment in 1881, as organizer and principal of Tuskegee Institute.
    Author of a number of books, including the admirable autobiography Up
    from Slavery, Washington was also one of the most able public speakers
    of his time. It was a speech he ave in 1895 on the place of the Negro in
    American life that opened an oftern strident debate among African
    American leaders on whether slow development through vocational
    training, as advocated by Washington, was the correct course or whether
    immediate equality and full citizenship should be demanded.
                   Sojourner Truth
                     (1797-1883)
•   Sojourner Truth was, and in some ways still seems, ahead of her time - as
    a feminist in an abolitionist movement in which “slave” typically meant
    “man” and as an activist for African American rights in a suffregist
    movement in which “woman” typically meant “white middle-class
    woman.” If there was ever a person fit to take on the problem of black
    female invisibility, however, it was the electrifying Truth. Like Harriat
    tubman, Truth was born into slavery (with the given name Isabella) and
    had no formal education. She fled the last of a series of masters in 1827,
    and several years later, in response to what she described as a command
    from God, became an itinerant preacher and took the name Sojourner
    Truth. One of her most memorable appearances was at an 1851 women‟s
    rights conference in Akron, Ohio, where she forcefully attacked the the
    hypocrisies of organized religion, white privilege, and everything in
    between in her famous “Ain‟t I a woman?” speech.
                Harriet Tubman
                  (1820-1913)
• Harriet Tubman was the best-known “conductor” on the
  Underground Railroad, a network of abolitionists who spirited
  blacks to freedom. A fugitive slave herself, Tubman made some
  nineteen return trips to rescue as many as three hundred slaves
  from bondage. Her courage and shrewdness were widely known
  and all the more remarkable given the blackouts she suffered
  throughout her life as a result of being struck on the head with a
  two-pound weight by an overseer. During the Civil War she
  served as a nurse, spy, and scout for groups of raiders
  penetrating Confederate lines. In her later years Tubman worked
  for black education and social betterment, women sufferage, and
  other causes.
      Malcolm Malik El-Shabazz
                           a.k.a. Malcolm X
                              (1925-1965)
•   One of the most compelling human rights activists of modern America,
    Malcolm X was an ideological heir to Marcus Garvey and others who regarded
    black self-hatred as the most insidious product of racial oppression - and the
    most fundamental obstable to black self-realization. In the now-classic
    Autobiography of Malcolm X (with Alex Haley, 1964) he recounted his own
    journey from troubled you to exponent of black power as an adherent of the
    Nation of Islam. Born Malcolm Little, he replaced his surname with the
    designation “X” (for the unknown African tribe of his origin) in the early
    1950s and articulated a political vision more concerned with challenging white
    domination than racial segregation per se, using rhetoric that was distinctly
    harsher and more separatist thean that of the mainstream civil rights
    movement. With an ever-searching intellect, Malcolm X also had the courage
    to revise his ideas as his thought evolved, holding up his transformations as
    useful examples for others. Though assassinated in 1965, Malcolm X remains
    a powerful symbol of unbowed black dignity and possibility.
                     Claude McCay
                      (1889-1948)
•   One of the most prominent voices of the Harlem Renaissance, poet and
    novelist Claude McKay wrote of the sweet experience of his early years in
    Jamaica, of life in Harlem, of his travels in Europe and the Soviet Union.
    But the core of his work was his rage at the injustice of racial prejudice.
    The white man is a tiger at my throat/Drinking my blood as my life ebbs
    away/ And muttering that his terrible striped coat/ Is Freedom‟s and
    portends the Light of Dy (“Tiger”). A gentle man of acute intellect,
    McKay held many jobs throughout his peripatetic life to support the
    literary work that was his true vocation. His dedication gained him respect
    and readers, both white and black. It also brought him honors. In 1912, he
    became the first black islander to receive the medal of the Jamaican
    Institute of Arts and Sciences. Sixteen years later, his Home to Harlem
    became the first novel by a black writer to reach the commercial best-seller
    lists, It was reprinted five time in two months.
                        Paul Robeson
                         (1898-1976)
•   In his stormy life, Paul Robeson was many things: star athlete, scholar, singer,
    and actor; law school graduate, social activist; and author. Valedictorian of his
    class at Rutgers University as well as an All-American in football (and
    letterman in three other varsity sports), Roberson was prophesied by his class
    to become “the leader of the colored race in America.” He did rise to be
    among the most prominent and respected African American men of the 1930s
    and 1940s, primarily through his achievements and imposing presence on the
    stage as an actor and singer. Gradually devoting himself entirely to singing,
    Roberson became an international star, and his desire to break down barriers of
    ignorance, he learned to speak more than twenty languages. Always outspoken
    on racism, Roberson also came to embrace a political worldview increasingly
    at odds with that of mainstream America, particularly in his support of Soviet
    Russia, whose egalitarian ideals he admired. Blacklisted and denounced,
    Roberson and his career declined. Today he is remembered as a figure of
    prodigious achievement and conviction who fully embodied the complexities
    of his time.
                Frederick Douglass
                   (1817-1895)
•   “For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but
    thunder….The feeling of the nation must be roused.” Born into slavery,
    abolitionist, autor, orator, and editor Frederick Douglass dopted his last
    name from literature (the hero of Scott‟s Lady of the Lake) and used the
    power of words thereafter to prod his country toward racial equality. He
    spoke eloquently before audiences in America and abroad, edited an
    antislavery journal from 1847 to 1860, helped organize two regiments of
    Massachusetts Negroes during the Civil War, saw two of his sons serve in
    the Union Army during the war, and kept pushing for true civil rights
    when the war was over. Canny in his judgments, practical in his
    persistence, Douglass remained an influential and respected spokesman for
    his cause throughout his life. “Power,” he said, “concedes nothing without
    a demand. It never did and it never will.”
     William Edward Burghardt
              DuBois
                              (1868-1963)
•   “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always
    looking at one‟s self through the eyes of others….One feels his twoness -
    an American, a Negro; two sould, two thoughts, two unreconciled
    strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength
    alsone keeps it from being torn asunder.” W.E.B. Du Bois was an
    impassioned scholar, an intellectual warrior on behalf of true citizenship
    for African Americans. Educated at Fisk and Harvard Universities, Du
    Bois wrote histories, sociological studies, informed sketches of Negro life,
    and an autobiography. Editor, teacher, and organizer as well s write, Du
    Bois organized the First International Congress of Colored People and was
    a founder of the NAACP. He was often at the center of controversy and,
    toward the end of his life, grew discouraged with his struggles in the
    United States. In 1961 he moved to Ghana, becoming a citizen there the
    year of his death.
                     Marcus Garvey
                      (1887-1940)
•   Marcus Garvey articulated a powerful vision of self-determination for peoples
    of African descent that, though ahead of its time, has inspired and informed
    movements for black economic and political power up to the present day. A
    native of Jamica trained as a printer, Garvey had his first taste of political
    activism as a union organizer. Travels he made starting in 1910 furthered his
    interest in black history and black nationalist thought - and in actualizing the
    ideals they contained. In 1914 Garvey founded the Universal Negro
    Improvement Association, which at its peak I the mid-1920s had some 8
    million followers, making it the largest international movement of African
    peoples in history. Though his efforts to launch a modern back-to-Africa
    movement - based on the view that blacks would never truly prosper in
    societies where they were in a minority - did not ultimately succeed, Garvey‟s
    legacy of black pride and independence was profound and lasting. And the red,
    black, and green flag of African liberation that he made famous remains a
    beacon of black power and pan-African unity.
                    Josephine Baker
                      (1906-1975)
•   From the time she was a little girl, Josephine Baker was drawn to the glamour
    of the theater. Despite living in the slums of St. Louis and being pulled out of
    school before she turned ten, she found the courage - and had enough talent -
    to follow her dreams. Baker danced in vaudeville houses and joined a traveling
    dance troupe when shw was sixteen. In 1923, she landed a chorus line spot in
    the Broadway show Shuffle Along. But it was in Paris two years later that she
    stepped fully into the spotlight, in LaRevue Negre. Baker fell in love with
    Paris, and the city responded in kind. She was irreverent and exotic, known for
    her magnetic stage presence, lush body, deep red lipstick, and outrageous
    promotonal antics, including her famous walk with a leopard down the
    Champs Elysees. A politically courageous woman, Baker spoke and acted
    against racism throughout her life and was a member of the French Resistance
    in World War II, for which she earned both the Medal of the Resistance and
    later, the Legion of Honor.
     George Washington Carver
            (1864-1943)
•   A world-renowned agricultural chemist whose advice was sought by scientists
    around the world, George Washington Carver was also, in the words of Nobel
    laureate ralph Bunch, “the least imposing celebrity the world has ever known.”
    Born amidst the bloody struggle over slavery in Missouri - and orphaned by it
    - Carver grew up in various parts of the Midwest, working at odd jobs as he
    gained a high school and college education. Though gifted in both music and
    art (one of his paintings was exhitibed at the 1893 World‟s Columbian
    Exposition), Carver ultimately chose to pursue his lifelong fascination with
    plants, earning a master‟s degree in science at the Iowa State College of
    Agriculture. Subsequently he was invited by Booker T. Washington to join the
    faculty of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. There for many years he
    conducted the research that would make him almost as well known as his
    friend Luther Burbank - extracting from soil and crops such as the peanut and
    sweet potato an unprecedented array of dyes, foods, and other useful products.
           Joseph Cinque
     African Activist in America
• Born in Africa, Prince Joseph Cinque was kidnapped and
  sold into slavery in Havana, Cuba, in 1839. He and thirty-
  eight other captives were put aboard the schooner Armistad.
  Cinque led a revolt of the slaves, killing all but the owners
  who were directed to steer the ship for Africa. By trickery,
  the ship landed in New York and all were taken prisoner. The
  U.S. Justice Department fought the freeing of the slaves, all
  the way to the U.S. Supreme Court level. However, John
  Quincy Adams defended the Armistad Revolution and the
  U.S. Supremem court ruled in favor of Cinque and the other
  Africans, declaring them free to return to Africa.
          Harriet Tubman
      African American Activist
• Harriet Tubman was born in slavery in Bucktown,
  Maryland in 1820, escaped from bondage in 1849; spent
  the years between 1850 and 1857 guiding more than 300
  slaves to freedom in the North and in Canada; served the
  Union Army as a nurse and spy in 1862-1863, led 300
  soldiers in a raid up the Combahee River in South
  Carolina to rescue 800 slaves in June of 1863;
  established the Harriet Tubman Home at Auburn, New
  York after the Civil War; received a medal from Queen
  Victoria.
 Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
   African American Activist
• Frances Elen Watkins Harper, a writer of verse, was born free in
  Baltimore, Maryland, in 1825. Her first volume of poetry was
  published in 1845 and she later wrote the novel "lola Leroy, or
  the Shadows Uplifted." Later, in Philadelphia, scenes of slaves
  escaping, being caught and returned to slavery led her into the
  anto slavery conflict. In 1854 she became an antoslavery
  lecturer and toured the North and Canada for six years. Miss
  Watkins married Fenton Harper of Cincinnati and as a teacher,
  lecturer and writer, became one of the most popular women of
  her time. She is remembered for the following poems: "Eliza
  Harris," "The Slave Moter," "Bible," "Defense of Slavery," "The
  Freedom Bell" and "Bury Me in a Free Land."
            Anthony Burns
       African American Activist
• Typical of the 75,000 slaves who sought their freedom in the
  decade before the Civil War, Anthony Burns bacame one of the
  most renown when his capture and return to slavery caused the
  Boston Slave Riot in 1854. As a trusted slave in Virginia, Burns
  had learned to read and write and his freedom of movement
  enabled him to escape by boat. On May 24, 1854, he was
  arrested and held in chains at the Boston courthouse, guarded by
  a posse of known thugs. When aroused citizens attempted to
  free him by force, one man was killed before military
  reinforcements arrived. Ordered to be returned, Burns was
  escorted to the ship by the police and twenty-two military units,
  including one cannon.
          Crispus Attucks
      African American Activist
• Crispus Attucks was born in slavery about 1723, 1750
  escaped from bondage; became a seaman and earned his
  living on the ships and docks around Boston,
  Massachusetts; he opposed the taxation and oppression of
  the British; on March 5, 1770 he ws one of the band of
  colonists in rebellion against the "Redcoats" in the Boston
  Massacre, and was the first of five men to be shot down by
  the British soldiers; his name leads the list on the
  monument erected in Boston Commons commemorating
  this event; his bravery inspired 5,000 Negroes to fight with
  the colonists in the American Revolution.
            Ida B. Wells
      African American Activist
• Miss Wells was born in Holly Springs, Arkansas, in 1869.
  She taught in the schools of Arkansas and for six years in
  Memphis, Tennessee. In 1889 she was secretary to the
  National Afro-American Press Convention. In 1892, her
  paper, The Memphis Free Speech, exposed people in a
  lynching and was destroyed. She compiled the first
  statistical pamphlet on lynching, A Red Record, in 1895.
  Miss Wells married Ferdinand Barnett, a militant race
  leader, in Chicago. She became chairman of the ANti-
  Lynching Bureau of the National Afro-American Council,
  and a famous speaker at home and abroad on Negro rights.
          Henry H. Garnet
      African American Activist
• Born in Delaware on December 23, 1815, Henry Highland
  Garnet attended the African Free School in New York, the
  New Canaan, Connecticut, school for Negro youth, and
  Oneida Institute. In 1842 he was licensed as a Presbyterian
  minister and began work at Troy Liberty Street, Presbyterian
  Church. He was one of the most influential Negroes of his era
  until he advocated a slave strike and revolt at the Buffalo
  Convention of Colored Citizens in 1843. Though his public
  influence lessened because of his radical views, he remained
  active in the Underground Railroad. After the Civil War he
  returned to public life, serving as Recorder of Deeds and in
  1881 as Minister to Liberia.
          Harriet Tubman
      African American Activist
• Harriet Tubman was born in slavery in Bucktown,
  Maryland in 1820, escaped from bondage in 1849; spent
  the years between 1850 and 1857 guiding more than 300
  slaves to freedom in the North and in Canada; served the
  Union Army as a nurse and spy in 1862-1863, led 300
  soldiers in a raid up the Combahee River in South
  Carolina to rescue 800 slaves in June of 1863;
  established the Harriet Tubman Home at Auburn, New
  York after the Civil War; received a medal from Queen
  Victoria.
             Nat Turner
      African American Activist
• Leader of a major slave revolt, Nat Turner was born a slae in
  Virginia on October 2, 1800. In May of 1828 Turner
  interpreted visions he experienced to mean that he was to
  lead a black army of liberation against slavery. On August
  21, 1831, Turner started the revolt with a half-dozen men; the
  number soon grew to sixty, and the group moved from one
  house of whites in Southampton County to another, killing
  everyone in sight. In 48 hours 55 persons were dead. Further
  efforts met with white posse action and the group fled. All
  slaves became suspect; hundreds were shot down and
  seventeen of he captured insurrectionists, including Turner,
  were hanged on Nov. 11, 1831.
    Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin
     African American Activist
• Mrs. Ruffin was a pioneer organizer of women. Born
  before the Civil War, in 1843, she made the ost of
  opportunities which post-war freedom gave. In 1880 she
  organized one of the first Negro women's clubs, the
  Women's Era Club, in Boston, and issued the first
  conference of Negro women to meet in Boston in 1895 for
  national organization. She was the first Negro delegate
  from the (white) Massachusetts Federation of Women's
  Clubs, and pioneered in the organization of the National
  Association of Colored Women.
           Mary E. Pleasant
       African American Activist
• Reported to have given John Brown thirty thousand dollars to
  finance the raid on Harpers Ferry, mysterious Mary Ellen
  Pleasant began life as a slave in Georgia, but in 1849 settled in
  San Francisco, California. In 1864 she brought suit against a
  street car company for rude treatment and won a favorable
  judgement. She aided in the rescue of slaves who were being
  held illegally and in 1863 won for Negroes the Right of
  Testimony. For a period "Mammy Pleasant" led an eventful life
  in San Francisco, acting as financial advisor to distinguished
  white gentlemen, and securing a Negro monopoly on domestic
  jobs in the state.
       Martin Luther King, Jr.
       African American Activist
• Born in Atlanta on Jan. 18, 1929, Martin Luther King earned
  degrees from Morehouse College, Cozier Theological Seminary
  in Chester, Pa. and Boston University. At 26 he became the
  leader of the revolution against social injustice with the
  successful boycott against Montgomery's segregated buses. In
  spite of being arrested 14 times, stabbed, stoned and having his
  home bombed three times he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964
  for consistently asserting the principle of nonviolence. In the
  cities of the North and South he preached and marched for open
  housinh and jobs for the poor. He words deeply touched
  America's conscience with his famous "I have a dream" speech
  delivered during the 1969 March on Washington.
        Rev. Henry McNeal
     Christian African American
• Rev. McNeal was born February 1, 1833. Appointed
  U.S. chaplain by President Lincoln in 1863; re-
  commissioned in the regular army and detailed to work
  in the Freedman's Bureau in 1865; elected member of
  the Georgia Legislature in 1868; re-elected to Georgia
  Legislature in 1870, expelled from the Legislature
  because of color; appointed Postmaster of Macon,
  Georgia in 1869; Chancellor of Morris Brown
  University in Atlanta, Georgia; appointed Coast
  Inspector of customs and U.S. government detective.
            Father Divine
     Christian African American
• Revered as God by many of his followers, Father Divine
  emerged from relative obscurity when he established his Peace
  Mission Movement in Sayville, Long Island in the early 1920s.
  Records indicate that he was born George Baker about 1874 in
  Georgia and practiced in the South and in Harlem before his
  multi-million dollar, biracial cult became famous for its
  preechments of brotherhood and peace. During the Depression
  his hundreds of "peace missions" offered meals, lodging and
  services, including job placement, to the needy at no cost.
  Although he died virtually penniless, his "kingdom" controlled
  properties woth $30,000,000 and he was mourned by an
  estimated twenty million members of missions all over the
  world.
        Francis K. Grimke’
     Christian African American
• Born on November 4, 1850, in Charleston, South Carolina,
  Francis James Grimke' graduated from Lincoln University in
  Pennsylvania in 1870 and Princeton Theological Seminary in
  1878. A student of law, a scholarly minister, and an otspoken
  defender of the rights of Negroes, Grimke' preached sermons
  denouncing segregation in CHristian churches. Through
  pamphlets which he printed and distributed to both white and
  black clergymen, he urged support of a true Christian ethic.
  When Hampton and Tuskegee Institute committed
  themselves exclusively to "special training" for the Negro,
  Grimke' lessened his support of these institutions.
      James Augustine Healey
     Christian African American
• The first Catholic Bishop of African descent in the U.S.,
  James A, Healy was born in Macon, Georgia, but educated at
  the Franklin Park Quaker School in Burlington, New York,
  and Holy Cross College, Worchester, Massachusetts. He also
  studied abroad. For 25 years, Bishop Healy presided over the
  diocese of Main and New Hampshire. In recognition of his
  work he was made Assistant to the Papal Throne. He also
  served as assistant to Bishop Fitzpatrick of Boston and was
  pastor of St. James Church in Boston. Under Bishop Healy,
  68 mission stations, 18 parochial schools and 50 church
  buildings were erected and Catholics of Massachusetts, Main
  and New Hampshire came to revere him.
        Elijah Muhammed
    African American Clergyman
• Leader of the Black Muslims founded in 1930, Elijah Muhammad
  "prophet and messenger of a black Allah," was born Elijah Poole
  on Oct. 10, 1897 in Sanderville, Georgia, and began his career as a
  disciple of an "Arab Savior" named D.W. Fard. His movement,
  which may number of 100,000 is dedicated to freedom, justice,
  equality of opportunity, and the establishment of a separate
  territory to be subsidized by "former slave masters," until blacks
  can produce and supply their own needs. The Muslims publish a
  weekly newspaper "Muhammad Speaks", and in 1969 invested
  $6,000,000 in their own businesses in Chicago, Cleveland, and
  other cities, while operating 47 schools across the country,
  including the 37-year old University of Islam in Washington.
          Charlotte Forten
      Christian African American
• Sensitive member of a distinguished family, Charlotte Forten of
  Massachusetts enlisted in the anti-slavery fight as a volunteer
  teacher with the Freedmen's Aid Society. Earlier she served as a
  correspondent for the National ANti-Slavery Standard and wrote
  for the Atlantic Monthly. Her witty and penetrating comments
  were often extracted to appear in other publications. An
  accomplished poet, she wrote of interracial conflict out of a
  deepened resentment against the prejudice of the white world. In
  Washington, D.C., where she settled, Charlotte Forten was a
  force in supplying high culture, ideals, and intellectual power to
  the advancement of Negroes and their survival against
  prejudice.
           Richard Allen
     Christian African American
• Richard Allen, born February 14, 1760, in Philadelphia, Pa., was
  a slave during the Revolutionary War who managed to purchase
  his freedom at the age of 23. On April 12, 1787, he and several
  other Negroes formed the Free African Society, a group
  dedicated to the improvement of social and economic conditions
  of free Negroes. That same year, Allen founded the African
  Methodist Episcopal Church, the result of a rebellion against the
  restriction of segregation in Philadelphia's leading Methodist
  church. In 1816, Allen was instrumental in organizing into one
  group sixteen independent Negro Methodist congregations from
  different states. He was elected first bishop of this new
  denomination, a church which has endured to this day.
     Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.
     Christian African American
• One of sixteen children, born May 5, 1865, in a one-room log
  cabin in Virginia, Adam Powell, Sr. built the Abyssinian Baptist
  Church of New York City to a position of significant power and
  size. Entering Virginia Union College in 1888, he worked his
  way through that institution as a janitor and waiter, continuing
  his studies at Yale University School of Divinity, Powell
  became pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Curch of New York in
  1908, a time when its membership numbered 1600 and the
  church owed $146,354. In the twenty-nine years of Powell's
  leadersip the church was moved to a $350,000 structure,
  acquired assets of $400,000, a membership of 14,000 and served
  as the seat of power for a U.S. Congressman.
            Thomas Paul
     Christian African American
• Ordained a minister in 1806, Thomas Paul organized a
  congregation of free Negroes in Boston, Masssachusetts.
  Word was spread of is ability and by 1808 he was so famous
  white churches in New Yrok were inviting him to speak. Paul
  persuaded whites and Negroes alike that separate Negro
  congregations could be organized and the Abyssinian Baptist
  Church of New York city was formed under his leadership.
  Brilliant and vigorous, Paul spent six months in Haiti
  teaching and preaching to the Haitians but because he could
  not speak French he ws not as successful as he had been in
  the United States. He returned to AMerican and continued his
  work.
          Augustus Tulton
     Christian African American
• Born on April 1, 1854, in Ralls County, Missouri, Augustus
  Tolton entered the College of Propaganda at Rome in 1880 and
  was ordained in 1886. He became the first American Negro ever
  to be ordained for he priesthood. Within the year, Rev. Tolton
  was made pastor of St. Joseph's Catholic Church for Negroes in
  Quincy, Illinois. When St. Monica's Church for Negro Catholics
  was established in Chicago in 1890, Father Tolton served as
  pastor, remaining there until his death. A lifetime of service to
  others won him the honor of offering Easter Sunday Holy Mass
  on the High Altar at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, an offering
  which only the Pope himself usualy makes.
   Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
    Christian African American
• Born in Atlanta on Jan. 18, 1929, Martin Luther King earned
  degrees from Morehouse College, Cozier Theological Seminary
  in Chester, Pa. and Boston University. At 26 he became the
  leader of the revolution against social injustice with the
  successful boycott against Montgomery's segregated buses. In
  spite of being arrested 14 times, stabbed, stoned and having his
  home bombed three times he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964
  for consistently asserting the principle of nonviolence. In the
  cities of the North and South he preached and marched for open
  housinh and jobs for the poor. He words deeply touched
  America's conscience with his famous "I have a dream" speech
  delivered during the 1969 March on Washington.
          John H. Johnson
     African American Publisher
• John H. Johnson, born on Jan 19, 1918 in Arkansas City,
  Arkansas, in 1937 oved to Chicago where he studied at
  Northwestern and the University of Chicago. He started
  Negro Digest (later called Black World) in 1942 with a $500
  loan; published the first issue of Ebony in 1945; published
  two pocket-sized magazines, Jet and Hue, followed by Tan
  (later changed to Black Stars), a "true confession" type of
  magazine; entered the field of hard-covered books in 1963
  with volumes by Lerone Bennett and other writers. The
  Johnson Publishing Company grossed over $23 million in
  1972, even before it purchased radion station WGRT in 1973,
  the first station in Chicago to be owned by blacks.
         Robert S. Abbot
    African American Publisher
• Robert Sengstake Abbott was born on St. Simon
  Island, off the Georgia coast in 1870; attended
  Hampton Institute in Virginia; moved to Chicago in
  1899; published first issue of the Chicago Defender on
  May 5, 1905; guided the Chicago Defender to a
  circulation of over 250,000 copies by 1929; wrote
  strong editorials attacking injustice and encouraging
  Southern Negroes to seek better lives away from the
  Deep South; made the Chicago Defender an articulate
  voice of Chicago's black metropolis.
             Otis Boykin
      African American Scientist
• Otis Boykin, born in Dallas, Texas, on Aug. 29, 1920,
  attended Fisk University and Illinois Institute of Technology
  (1946-47), but was discovered in 1941 by Dr. H. F. Fruth
  while woring as a parcel post clerk. Boykin is credited with
  devising the control unit used in artifical heart stimulators;
  inventing a tiny electrical devices used in all guided missiles
  and I.B.M. computers, plus 26 other electronic devices, and
  an air filter. Thirty-seven resulting products are now being
  manufactured in Paris and distributed throughout Western
  Europe. Since 1964 Boykin has been a private research
  consultant for several American companies and three firms in
  Paris.
           John L. Jasper
     Christian African American
• Born July 4, 1812, in the state of Virginia, John Jasper was
  the last of 24 children. As a Baptist minister, a liberal-minded
  believer in the Bible, he preached for over sixty years to
  white and Negro congregations in Virginia, Washington,
  Maryland and New Jersy. In London, Paris and Berlin,
  scholars took note of his views and sayings. His most famous
  sermon was "The Sun Do MOve." He argued that the earth is
  the center of the solar system although Galileo had proved
  this view false. Few could outdo Jasper in using the Bible to
  "prove" this view and his spell-binding oratory and original
  views entranced the throngs who flocked to hear him.
         Maggie L. Walker
      Notable African American
• Maggie L. Walker was born in Richmond, Virginia in
  1867; taught school briefly; became secretary of the
  Independent Order of St. Luke, a Virginia-based
  benevolent society, in 1889, and increased the Order's
  membership from 3,408 to 100,000; organized the St. Luke
  Penny Savings Bank - Later known as the St. Luke Bank
  and Trust Company - in 1902; founded a children's thrift
  club of 15,000 members; established a newspaper, the St.
  Luke Herald; served as Virginia state president of the
  National Association of Colored Women; a civic and
  community leader until her death in 1934.
       Mary McLeod Bethune
         African American
• Mary McLeod Bethune as born n Maysville, South
  Carolina in 1875. Educated at Scotta Seminary and Moody
  Bible Institute in Chicago. Founded Bethune-Cookman
  College at Daytona Beach, Florida in 1904 with five
  pupils. Founded the National Council of Negro omen; was
  Florida State Director of the American Red Cross. Director
  of the Negro Affairs Division of the National Youth
  Administration. Consultant to the founding conference of
  the United Nations, the recipient of many awards,
  including the NAACP's Spingarn Award and the Medal of
  Merit from the Republic of Haiti.
          Benjamin Quarles
      African American Educator
• A leading scholar of American Negro history, Benjamin Quarles
  was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and received his doctorate in
  1940. He served as professor of history and dean of instruction at
  Dillard University and as professor at Morgan State College in
  Maryland. His most outstanding work is considered to be 'Lincoln
  and the Negro' (1962) but Quarles has also authored 'Frederick
  Douglass' (1948). 'The Negro in the Civil War' (1953), and 'The
  Negro in the American Revolution' (1961), important books that
  detail Negro contributions. He is a participant in the Association
  for the Study of Negro Life and History, an associate editor of the
  Journal of Negro History, contributing editor to Phylon, and was at
  one time president of Associated Publishers.
      Booker T. Washington
     African American Educator
• Booker T. Washington was born in slavery at Hale's Ford,
  Virginia in 1856; entered Hampton Institute in Virginia in
  1872; appointed principal of Tuskegee Institute (then
  composed of two small frame buildings and thirty
  students) in 1881; made famous Atlanta Exposition Speech
  in 1895; organized the National Negro Business League in
  Boston, Massachusetts in 1900; took part in the
  organization of the General Education Board in 1910 and
  the Phelps Stokes Fund in 1911; advisor to Presidents
  Theodore Roosevelt and Howard A. Taft from 1901 to
  1912.
       George W. Williams
     African American Educator
• George Williams was born October 16, 1849. Became first
  Negro to graduate from Newton Theological Seminary in
  1874. Appointed to the Post Office Department, Washington,
  D.C. in 1875; nominated to the Ohio Legislature in 1877,
  appointed internal revenue storekeeper, Cincinnati, Ohio in
  1878; authored "History of the Negro Race in AMerican from
  1619-1880" and "History of Negro Troops in the War of
  Rebellion;" Chairman of the Ohio Legislature special
  committee on railroad terminal facilities, second ember of the
  committee on universities and colleges, appointed Minister to
  Haiti in 1885, but President Cleveland did not confirm the
  appointment.
            Alain L. Locke
      African American Educator
• Born in Philadelphia on September 13, 1886, Alain Locke
  attendede Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (1907-1919), the
  University of Berlin (191001911), and Harvard, where he
  secured his Ph.D. in 1918. He was the first Negro to be elected
  president of the National Council of Adult Education; an
  exchange professor to Haiti in 1943; a visiting professor at Fisk
  and the University of Wisconsin; and professor of Philosophy at
  Howard University from 1912 until his retirement in 1953. As
  an editor and author of many books and articles, he became the
  chief intellectual interpretor, critic and historian of the Negro's
  contribution to American culture. His masterwork, The Negro in
  AMerican Culture, was completed after his death.
          Benjamin E. Mays
      African American Educator
• President of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, for twenty-
  seven years (1940-1967), Benjamin Mays improved that institution
  by expanding the school's physical plant, bringing in abundant
  scientific equipment for students, and collecting a scholarly,
  distinguished faculty. Mays, born August 1, 1895, in Epworth,
  South Carolina, has served as a practicing minister, a professor of
  higher mathematics and English, an Urban League official, vice
  president of the Federal Council of Churches, and as a member of
  numberous national boards and panels. A columnist for the
  Pittsburg Courier for years, his views reflected race pride,
  opposition to racial injustice, and faith in AMerica. He has received
  twenty-three honorary degrees in recognition of his achievements.
             William H. Hastie
              African American Jurist
• William Hastie, born November 17, 1904, was appointed U.
  S. District Judge for the Virgin Islands in 1931, becoming the
  first Negro ever appointed to the Federal Bench. A student of
  Amherst and Harvard Colleges, Hastie became Dean of the
  Howard Law School in 1939. Taking a leave of absence, a
  year later he served as civilian aide to the Secretary of War,
  making a great effort to step up integration in the armed
  forces. Continued segregation policies triggered his
  resignation in 194. In 1946 Hastie was appointed governor of
  the Virgin Islands, the first Negro to hold that position. He
  has been on the appellate bench of the U.S. Circuit Court of
  Appeals, Third Circuit, since 1940.
       Mary Ann Shadd Cary
           African American Jurist
• Mrs. Cary, who was born in 1823, is credited with
  being te first woman editor in the United States -
  editor of The Provincial Freeman in 1850. She
  was also a teacher, a graduate of the Harvard
  University Law School, a practicing lawyer, and a
  pioneer in the Negro migration into Canada. In
  1862 she had the unique onor of being appointed a
  Recruiting Army Officer by Governor Levi P.
  Morton of Indiana.
            Thurgood Marshall
              African American Jurist
• Thurgood Marshall, "Mr. Civil Rights," was born in Baltimore,
  Maryland, July 2, 1908; graduated from Lincoln University;
  earned a law degree with honors from Howard University Law
  School; practiced law in Baltimore, Maryland; held position as
  Chief Legal Council for the NAACP for twenty-four years; won
  thirty-two of thirty-five cases before the United States Supreme
  Court, as lawyer for the NNACP; appointed Federal Judge, Fifth
  Circuit Court, New York; served with Second Circuit Court of
  Appeals after being nominated by President Kennedy; in 1965
  appointed 33rd U.S. Solicitor General, third ranking office of
  the Department of Justice; became first Negro justice of the
  Supreme Court in 1967.
         James Benton Parsons
              African American Jurist
• James Benton Parsons was born in Kansas City, Missouri
  August 13, 1911; graduated from Millikin University, Decatur,
  Illinois in 1934; taught at Lincoln University, Missouri for six
  years; taught in the City Schools of greensboro, North Carolina
  until 1942; received his master's degree in political science
  (1946) and degree of Doctor of Laws (1949) from University of
  Chicago (1949-1951); appointed assistant corporation counsel
  of Chicago in 1949, and in 1951 appointed to the U.S. attorney's
  office; elected jusge of the superior court to Cook County,
  1960; Appointed in 1961, by President Kennedy, to judge of the
  U.S. District Court, North District of Illinois.
         Mifflin Wister Gibbs
           African American Jurist
• Mifflin Gibbs was born April, 1828. Elected to the
  Common Council in Victoria, Vancouver Island in
  1866 and 1807; appointed County Attorney of
  Pulaski County, Arkansas in 1871; elected to the
  office of city judge in 1873; appointed retrister of
  the U. S. Land Office at Little Rock, Arkansas in
  1876 and 1881; delegate to the Republican
  National Convention in 1876 and 1880.
        Patricia Roberts Harris
               African American Jurist
• The first American black wooman named an ambassador, Patricia
  Roberts Harris was born May 31, 1924, in Mattoon, Illinois,
  received her B.A. from Howard University (1945), J.D. from
  George Washington University (1960) did postgraduate work at the
  University of Georgia (1945-194) and at the American University
  (1949-1950) and obtained an LL.D. from Lindenwood College.
  From 1950 to 1961 she was an attorney in the Department of
  Justice, becoming associate dean of students and lecturer in law at
  Howard university in 1962, and co-chairman of the National
  Women's Committee for Civil Rights in 1963. Before long being
  appointed Ambassador to Luxembourg in 1965, she held important
  positions in the Washington, D.C. chapters of the NAACP, the
  Urban League and the Civil Liberties Union.
       Constance Baker Motley
              African American Jurist
• Born in September 1, 1921, in New Haven, Connecticut,
  Constance Baker Motley received a B.A. degree from New
  York University, and a law degree from Columbia University
  School of Law in 1946. She was legal assistant for the NAACP
  in 1946 and associate counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense
  Fund from 1948 to 1965. In the latter capacity, Mrs. Motley
  handles the famous James Meredith against the University of
  Mississippi case, winning for Meredith the desired admission to
  the university. In 1964 she ran successfully for a seat in the New
  York senate, was elected president of the Borough of Manhattan
  in 1965, and was appointed a federal circuit judge in 1965.
        Matthew A. Henson
     African American Scientist
• Matthew A. Henson was born in Charles County, Maryland
  in 1867. He became a seaman and voyaged to Japan, the
  Phillippines, France, Spain, West Africa and Russia.
  Commenced a series of expeditions with Robert E. Perry to
  the far North beginning in 1892 and ending in 1909, when he
  planted the American Flag at the North Pole; was appointed
  to a position in the New York Customs House in 1913 by
  Executive Order of President Howard A. Taft. Received
  many honors, including the Gold Medal of the Geographic
  Society and the Cngressional Medal of Honor (Civil
  Division).
      William Augustus Hinton
      African American Scientist
• Born Dec. 15, 1883, in Chicago, Illinois, William Hinton won
  international recognition for his development of the Hinton Test
  for syphilis an his textbook on that disease. Receiving his M.D.
  degree from Harvard in 1912, he served as laboratory
  department director of the Boston Dispensary in 1915, was
  appointed chief of the Wasserman Laboratory, and became an
  instructor at Harvrd, where from 1921-1946 he taught
  bacteriology and immunology. He also served as special
  consultant to the United States Public Health Service, consultant
  for the Massassachusetts School for Crippled Children and
  lecturer at Simmons College in Boston, while continuing his
  work on the use of serums in fighting diseases of the blood.
            Charles Drew
      African American Scientist
• Star athlete, scholar, scientist and surgeon, Charles Drew was
  born at Washington, D.C. June 3, 1904. As a student at the
  McGill University in Canada (1933) he won first prize in
  psysiological anatomy, later researching the properties of blood
  plasma at Columbia University (1940). Drew discovered ways
  of preserving blood plasma at blood banks and in 1940 was
  requested by the British to setup a plasma program for them. He
  did the same thing for the United States in1942, his work on
  plasma research saved hundreds of thousands of lives during
  World War II. At the time of his death, Dr. Drew was chief
  surgeon and chief of staff at Freedman‟s Hospital and had
  written fourteen learned books and articles.
           Percy Julian
     African American Scientist
• Dr. Percy Julian was born April 11, 1899, graduated from
  DePauw University in 1920; taught at Fisk University,
  Howard University, and West Virginia State College;
  attended Harvrd; took his doctorate at the University of
  Vienna; taught at DePauw University; headed the soybean
  research department of the Glidden Co., formed his own
  company, Julian Laboratories; merged his company with
  the Smith, Kline and French Pharmaceutical Co. in 1961;
  was responsible for making cortisone available at a
  reasonable cost; became president of two companies and a
  millionaire.
           Earnest E. Just
      African American Scientist
• A native of South Carolina, Ernest E. Just graduated from
  Dartmouth College magna cum laude. While professor in the
  biological sciences at Howard University, he received many
  awards and grants for research. Scientists from all over
  America and Europe studied his work and sought him out.
  Author of two major books and over sixty scientific papers,
  Just was awarded the Spingarn Medal in 1914 in recognition
  of his work as a scientist making pioneer investigations into
  the mysteries of egg fertilization and the study of the cell. He
  was seen as creator of “new concepts of cell life and
  metabolism which will make for him a place for all time.”
               Phyllis Wheatley
                        (c.1753-1784)
• After being kidnapped from West Africa as a child and taken to Boston
  on a slave ship, Phyllis Wheatley landed in relatively fortunate
  circumstances - servitude in a Boston family that treated her well and
  encouraged her education - in which she was able to cultivate her
  natural gifts for verse and language. By the time she published her first
  poems in 1767, Wheatley had also mastered Greek and Latin (to the
  amazement of local scholars, many of whom had genuinely believed
  such feats to be beyond the capacity of Africans). Many of Wheatley‟s
  subsequent poetic works, written in the English neoclassical style, wee
  published in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral in 1773.
  Wheatley‟s literary reputation and personal magnetism gained her
  admiration boh in the United States and England, and after her death
  she became a potent symbol of black intellectual accomplishment in
  the ideological battle against slavery.
            Gwendolyn Brooks
                    (1917-Present)
• Born in the American midwest, Gwendolyn Brooks found
  poetry there, beginning to put rhymes together when she was
  only seven years old and publishing her first poem,
  “Eventide,” in the magazine American Childhood at thirteen.
  “Poetry is life distilled,” she has said, and true to that
  philosophy, she draws poems out of her own personal, social,
  and racial experiences, making them not merely personal but
  universal in their implications. As Library of Congress
  consultant in petry she held readings at community centers,
  prisons, universities, and schools, bringing the message that
  poetry, written or read, can enrich, deepen, and strengthen
  individual lives - a matter of no small importance.
                         Alex Haley
                            (1921-1992)
•   Like Cyrano de Bergerac, Alex Haley penned love letters on behalf of
    friends, De Bergerac wrote his within the pages of a drama; Haley
    authored dis during off-duty hours as a messboy in the U.S. Coast Guard,
    beginning to hone the skills that would result, some twenty years later, in
    his becoming a fiercely independent professional writer in the civilian
    world. Growing up in Tennessee, Haley had listened to stories about his
    ancestors that, embellished by intensive research and creative imagination,
    served as the foundation for Roots: The Sage of an American Family. The
    story of West African Kunta Kinte and his American descendants
    eventually was translated into twenty-six languages and reaped 271
    awards, including a Pulitzer Prize. It was published eleven years after the
    appearance of Haley‟s first book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, a
    riveting description of a dramatic life that was also a best seller - though
    its popularity did not reach the phenomenal level attained by Roots.
           Dr. Martin L. King, Jr.
                            (1929-1968)
•   Born in Atlanta into a family of Baptist ministers, Martin Luther King Jr.
    came to lead and symbolize some of the most important civil rights
    campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s. Articulating the movement for African
    American civil rights as an essential fulfillment of the spirit and ideals of
    American democracy, and using Gandhian tactics of nonviolent resistance
    to minimize bloodshed, King was instrumental in breaking the back of
    institutionalized racial segregation during those decades and in bringing
    unprecedented visibility and support to the cause of racial equality. In
    1964 King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest person ever
    to gain the honor, in his acceptance speech he described his work as a
    “creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice.” Since his
    assassination in 1968, and with the designation of his birthday as a
    national holiday, King has assumed a place as one of the most important
    American leaders of the latter half of the twentieth century.
               Mary Lou Williams
                             (1910-1981)
•   Pianist, composer, arranger, and educator Mary Lou Williams grew up in a
    home where her prodigious natural gifts were recognized and nurtured, and the
    rich musical landscape beyond - dotted with figures like Ma Rainey and James
    P. Johnson - provided constant inspiration. Seeing pianist-arranger Lovie
    Austin perform had a particular impact; Williams later recalled Austin
    “playing with her left hand, writing music for the next act with the other…and
    conducting the band with her head. Although I was just a little baby, I said to
    myself, „I‟m going to do that one day>„“ Williams did that and much more,
    from her earliest professional performances at age twelve through her seminal
    contributions to the bluesy, driving “Kansas City Swing” style of big-band, as
    a champion of bebop and its early innovators, and as composer whose works
    encompassed almost every style of twentieth-century ppular, jazz, and
    “serious” music. Long known as “the First Lady of Jazz” Williams in her later
    years taught on the faculties of Duke University and the University of
    Massachusetts.
           Lucy Craft-Laney
       African American Educator
•   One of the state‟s most famous personalities. Lucy Laney was the founder of
    the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute. Born April 13, 1855, in Macon,
    Georgia, Miss Laney was the daughter of a slave. At a very early age, Lucy
    Craft Laney attracted attention by exhibiting extraordinary literary talent. She
    astounded those around her by being able to correctly translate difficult Latin
    passages at the age of 12. When she was 14, she attended one of the first
    classes at Atlanta University. From there, she devoted herself to teaching in
    the public schools of Macon, Milledgeville, Savannah and Augusta.
•          Miss Laney established the first kindergarten and first nursing school for
    the city of Augusta. Her home at 1116 Phillips Street has been restored by the
    Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and is now the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of
    Black History and meeting place. Lucy C. Laney Comprehensive High School,
    located on the Haines Institute site , is named in her honor.
           S. Johnson
    African American Pysician
• Scipio S. Johnson was a physician and
  president of the Board of Trustees of
  Haines Institute. He was a practicing
  physician in Augusta in the first half of
  the century and owner of a drug store.
                    Carter G. Woodson
                    The Millenium Man
•   American historian, born in Buckingham County, Virginia. Entered high school at
    the age of 20. Taught elementary school for two years after his graduation. Woodson later studied at Berea
    College, the University of Chicago, and Harvard University, receiving a Ph.D. degree from Harvard in 1912.
    He was dean of the School of Liberal Arts at Howard University from 1919 to 1920 and of West Virginia
    Institute (now West Virginia State College) from 1920 to 1922.devoted his life to making "the world see the
    Negro as a participant rather than as a lay figure in history." To this end he established (1915) the
    Association for the Study of Negro Life and History; founded (1916) and edited (1916-50) the Journal of
    Negro History, a quarterly; organized (1926) the first annual Negro History Week; and founded (1937) the
    Negro History Bulletin, a monthly. Among his many books are Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 (1915),
    History of the Negro Church (1921), and The Rural Negro (1930).
•   Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915 and the following year
    began publishing the Journal of Negro History. Through the Journal Woodson challenged the racist bias of
    mainstream studies of slavery, Reconstruction, and African history. The association functioned
•   as a clearinghouse and information bureau, providing research assistance in black history to scholars and the
    public. The annual celebration of Negro History Week, begun in 1926, was among Woodson‟s most
    important achievements. During his lifetime the idea, which attracted whites as well as blacks, spread to
    South America, the West Indies, Africa, the Philippines, and the Virgin Islands. In 1937 Woodson also began
    publishing the Negro History Bulletin, which was directed at black schoolchildren.
               Channing H. Tobias
•   Presidential advisor who was born in Augusta in 1882, Channing Tobias was a
    steadfast fighter for civil rights through the use of the federal courts. A 1902
    graduate of Paine College, Tobias went on to Drew University and received a
    degree in theology. He returned to Paine and taught there until 1911. In that
    year, he went to work on the national level of the YMCA and helped get
    money for the YMCA on Ninth Street (now Dyess Park Community Center).
    Tobias worked on President Harry Truman‟s Committee on Civil Rights and in
    1948, based on the committee‟s report, Truman called for laws to eliminate
    wide-spread civil-rights violations.A winner of the NAACP‟s Spingarn
    Medical, Tobias also lobbied for the integration of the armed forces. Later, he
    was appointed alternate delegate to the United Nations. Tobias criticized
    Augusta‟s white leaders for failure to establish a public Black high school.
    Ware High School which had been the only Black public high school in
    Richmond County, was closed in 1897. It was nearly 40 years before a public
    high school opened in Augusta.
                    T. W. Josey
• Thomas Walter Josey, M.D., was born in Augusta to former
  slaves and worked his way through Haines Institute, Atlanta
  University and Howard Medical School. Dr. Josey was vice
  president and medical director of Pilgrim Health and Life
  Insurance Co.; President of the Stoney Medical Association
  of Physicians and Pharmacists; regional vice president of the
  National Medical Association; past basileus and charter
  member of the Psi Omega Chapter of Omega Psi Phi
  Fraternity; and recipient of the Silver Beaver for
  Distinguished Service to Boyhood, from the Boy Scouts of
  America. He died in 1956.
                          Charles T. Walker
•   One of he historical Augusta‟s greatest personalities, the Rev. Charles T. Walker founded Tabernacle Baptist Church in 1885 in a
    building on Ellis Street in downtown Augusta. It was while he was pastor of Tabernacle, in the early 1900s, that President
    William Howard Taft and millionaire John D. Rockefeller, as well as other prominent individuals, came to hear him preach.
    Walker was born a slave in Hephzibah, Georgia, in 1858. In 1874, he moved to Augusta to study at the Augusta Institute at
    Springfield Baptist Church (which later became Morehouse College). While a pastor in LaGrange, Georgia, Walker studied law
    for nearly two years under a judge. He also established a school that was later named LaGrange Academy. Before his reign at
    Tabernacle, Walker was pastor of Central Baptist Church in Augusta, then Beulah Baptist Church, which later became
    tabernacle. In 1884, along with Prof. R. R. Wright, the Rev. Walker organized The Augusta Sentinel, a weekly newspaper. In
    1891, he traveled to Europe and the Holy Land. While in Europe he came face to face with - and was honored by - the great
    evangelist Charles Spurgeon. Rev. Walker was such a spell-binding orator that he earned the nickname “Black Spurgeon,” after
    the powerful English minister who preached to packed houses in the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. In 1897, Walker served
    as a chaplain in the Spanish-American War and traveled to Saint Luis, Cuba, in that capacity. He left tabernacle in 1899 to pastor
    Mount Olivet Baptist Church in New York City. Before he left Augusta, however, the Rev. Walker, was largely responsible for
    getting the Walker Baptist Institute to move to Augusta from Waynesboro. While in New York City, he began the first successful
    organization of the Harlem Branch of the YMCA. As chairman of the Walker Baptist Association, Dr. Walker was instrumental
    in establishing the Walker Baptist Institute in Waynesboro, Georgia, in 1888. In 1891, a school opened in Augusta at the corner
    of Mill Street and Anderson Avenue. Today, that school, C. T. Walker Traditional Magnet School, is named in his honor. Prof.
    Silas S. Floyd, author of the definitive biography of C. T. Walker has been able to capture the essence of that great man with the
    following passage from his book:
•              “But alone for his public spirit is he known, honored and loved by the people of Augusta, as is no other man who has
    labored here, but also for the rendering of many private acts of sympathy and help and encouragement, which the world does not
    know about, and which the world cannot know about.”
John Mercer Langston
     1829-1897
            The first African
            American to win a
            United States Public
            Office. In 1855 he won
            an el;ection to become
            clerk of Brownhelm
            Township in Ohio. He
            was elected to
            Congress from Virginia
            in 1888.
Joseph Hayne Rainey
     1832-1887
          In 1870 he was the first
             African American to
             be elected to
             Congress. He was
             from South Carolina.
Ralph Bunch
 1904-1971
      • He helped bring peace
        between foreign
        countries in 1950. He
        won the world‟s
        greatest award, The
        Nobel Peace Prize.
Robert Clifton Weaver
     1907-1997
           • In the 1960s President
             Lyndon Johnson called
             upon Robert C. Weaver to
             be one of the top advisors.
             He became the first
             African American to be a
             member of a President‟s
             cabinet. He worked to
             make American cities
             better places to live for
             African Americans.
Shirley Chisolm
     1924-
        • The first African
          American woman to
          be elected to the U. S.
          House of
          Representatives. She
          ran for President of the
          United Sates in 1972.
Andrew Young
    1932-
      • Mr. Young has occupied
        important jobs with the U.S.
        Government and has been a
        fighter for civil rights
        alongside Dr. Martin L.
        King, Jr. From 1977 to 1979
        he was the U. S. Ambassador
        to the United Nations. The
        United Nations works for
        world peace. Young was
        Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia
        from 1982-1989.
M. Jocelyn Elders
     1933-
         • The Surgeon General
           of the United States,
           the top health official
           in the United States
           Ms. Elders became the
           first African American
           to serve in this
           position.
Carol Moseley-Braun
       1947-
          • In 1992 she became
            the first African
            American woman
            elected to the U. S.
            Senate. She served in
            the Illinois House of
            representatives before
            that.
Scott Joplin
1868-1917
      • The musical stylist
        created “ragtime”
        which became popular
        all over the country.
        His cong “Maple Leaf
        Rag” was the most
        popular piece of music
        of the time in 1899.
William (W.C.) Handy
      1873-1958
          • Known as the “father
            of the blues.” Many of
            his famous songs,
            including “Memphis
            Blues” and “St. Louis
            Blues”, are still being
            played today.
Marian Anderson
  1897-1993
        • She became America‟s
          most famous opera
          singer. She gave an
          outdoor concert in
          Washington, D.C. that
          75,000 people attended.
          She was the first African
          American singer to
          perform with the famed
          Metropolitan Opera
          House in New York City.
Thomas Dorsey
  1899-1993
       • Considered the “father
         of gospel music”. He
         wrote more than 1,000
         gospel songs. His most
         famous song, “Take
         My Hand Precious
         Lord, has been
         translated into more
         than 50 languages.
Ela Fitzgerald
 1917-1996
       • She was called the
         “first lady of jazz”. She
         is one of best-selling
         singers in history. She
         had a great ability to
         sing in a style called
         “scat.” In scat, a person
         sings nonsense words
         to go with the music.
Louis Armstrong
  1901-1971
        • Was the leading
          trumpet player in jazz
          history. He was also a
          popular bandleader,
          film star and
          comedian.
Mahalia Jackson
  1911-1972
        • People in countries
          around the world learned
          about gospel music from
          singer Mahalia Jackson.
          She is one of the most
          famous gospel singers of
          all time. She sang at the
          ceremony when John F.
          Kennedy became
          President of the United
          States.
Dean Dixon
1915-1976
     • The first African
       American symphony
       conductor. He
       conducted the New
       York Philharmonic
       Symphony Orchestra
       in 1941. He also led
       other orchestras
       throughout the world.
              Madame C. J. Walker
                 (1867-1919)
•   Born in Delta, Louisiana, raised on farms there and in Mississippi, married
    by age fourteen and widowed at twenty, Madame C. J. Walker went on to
    become a successful hair and cosmetics entrepreneur - and, by the early
    twentieth century, the richest self-made woman in America. Yet, Walker
    saw her personal wealth as not an end in itself, but a means to help
    promote and expand economic opportunities for others, especially African
    Americans. She took great pride in the profitable employment - and
    alternative to domestic labor - that her company afforded many thousands
    of black women who worked as commissioned agents. Walker was also
    well kown for her philantrophy, supporting African American eductional
    and social institutions from the national to the grassroots levels. Walker‟s
    daughter, A‟Leila, carried on this tradition, opening her mother‟s and her
    homes to writers and artists of the emergent Harlem Renaissance and
    becoming a catalytic figure in that movement.
                        Althea Gibson
                           (1927 - )
•   Althea gibson was a talented kd with a tennis racket growing up in New
    York City during World War II. By virtue of her skill and toughness as a
    competitor she would eventually rise to the top of her sport - and, amidst
    the changing social climate in the United States, she would become the
    player who broke the racial barrier in championship tennis. She handled
    the latter difficult role with both equanimity and the same ripping serves
    she used to dispatch opponents. A native of South carolina, Gibson was a
    star in the Negro youth leagues in New York by 1943, and five years later
    she won the women‟s title for the first of five times. In 1950 she became
    the first African American to play at the U. S. Open, and in 1951, at
    Wimbledon. Thereafter she honored her skills while working as an athletic
    instructor and playing team tennis. In 1956 her game came together, and
    for the next three years she burned up the tournament circuit, sweeping
    most of the majors in both 1957 and 1958. Gibson was elected to the
    National Lawn Tennis Hall of Fame in 1971.
                          Pearl Bailey
                          (1918-1990)
•   From singing and dancing in her father‟s church at age three, she went on
    to become one of the most enduring and admired personalities of the age.
    Pearl Bailey‟s realm of expression was indeed anywhere and everywhere,
    whether she was singing with a frank, world-weary sexuality, conducting a
    television cooking show, or earning a bachelor‟s degree from Georgetown
    University in her sixties. Bailey began her stage career as a chorus girl
    before gaining fame as a singer on the nightclub circuit during the 1940s.
    A unique and underrated vocal stylist, Bailey had a string of hit records
    before making her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman. She worked
    extensively in movies and theater, where her biggest triumph was in a
    1960s revival of Hello, Dolly, for which she won a special Tony award.
    Bailey was also known for her humanitarian work, ranging from travelss
    as an international goodwill envoy to AIDS fundraising. The day she died
    (of a heart attack, at age seventy--two), she had been scheduled to address
    the United Nations.
    Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington
                             (1899-1974)
•   Composer, pianist, and bandleader Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington
    was one of the great innovators of modern American music, taking
    big.band jazz into new realms of harmony, form, and tonal color. Raised in
    Washington, D.C., and with a self-possession and aristocratic bearing that
    gained him his nickname in childhood, Ellington turned down a
    scholarship in commercial art to pursue music, organizing his first band in
    1918. For the next fifty years Ellington molded his ensembles into
    uniquely expressive vehicles for his musical and social visions, which
    eventually came to encompass large-scale and religious works as well.
    Long associated with some of jazz‟s most esteemed players, such as
    saxophonists Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster, Ellington also created
    enduring popular standards that included “Sophisticated Lady,” “Mood
    Indigo,” and “It don‟t Mean A Thing (If It Ain‟t Got That Swing).”
    Though ever seeking to grow and expand as a musician, Ellington seldom
    strayed from the heart of the matter: “If it sounds good,” he said, “it is
    good.”
              Madame C. J. Walker
                 (1867-1919)
•   Born in Delta, Louisiana, raised on farms there and in Mississippi, married
    by age fourteen and widowed at twenty, Madame C. J. Walker went on to
    become a successful hair and cosmetics entrepreneur - and, by the early
    twentieth century, the richest self-made woman in America. Yet, Walker
    saw her personal wealth as not an end in itself, but a means to help
    promote and expand economic opportunities for others, especially African
    Americans. She took great pride in the profitable employment - and
    alternative to domestic labor - that her company afforded many thousands
    of black women who worked as commissioned agents. Walker was also
    well kown for her philantrophy, supporting African American eductional
    and social institutions from the national to the grassroots levels. Walker‟s
    daughter, A‟Leila, carried on this tradition, opening her mother‟s and her
    homes to writers and artists of the emergent Harlem Renaissance and
    becoming a catalytic figure in that movement.
           Edith Spurlock Sampson
                 (1901-1979)
•   Edith Spurlock Sampson was an achiever, a trailblazer and ultimately an
    enduring example of te person who, resolutely and often without fanfare,
    changes a system from within. As a child in Philadelphia she determined to get
    an education and work to relieve in some way the plight of the urban poor
    around her, a desire that led first to social work and then to the study of law.
    As a pioneering African American female law student and then lawyer, she
    racked up many firsts in her career and came to be widely known and
    respected as a practicing attorney in Chicago. A natural in the courtroom, she
    claimed to “speak from the heart and let the law take care of itself.” In 1962
    Sampsopn became the first black female judge in America, and she later
    served as an alternative delegate to the United Nations, traveling widely
    abroad as a goodwill ambassador. Sampson also gave unsparingly of herself to
    ensure that as many youths as possible could follow in the path she had forged.
    In fact, it was her appearance at a high school career day in Texas that inspired
    a young Barbara Jordan (in a process Jordan would later liken to a religious
    conversion) to pursue a career in law.
              William “Bill” Cosby
                    (1937 - )
•   The first African American to fill a staring role on network television -
    that of agent Alex Scott on “I Spy” in 1965, from which the picture here
    dates - Bill Cosby was still breaking ground on network television twenty
    years later as star of The Cosby Show, one of the most successful (and
    stereotype-challenging) series in the history of the medium. Cosby‟s early
    years as a lover of radio comedy and budding funnyman are well known to
    the millions who first discovered his recorded stand-up routines in the
    early 1960s; his humor, often autobiographical and child centered, struck a
    universal chord and made him the first black comedian to achieve
    crossover success. Since the, Cosby‟s wide-ranging works has included
    producing television shows such as the animated “Fat Albert” series;
    earning a doctoral degree in education; and authoring a series of best-
    selling books. With his wife, Camille, Cosby has also been an active
    philanthropist. Their 1988 donation to Spelman College in Atlanta was the
    single largest gift ever made to a black college.
          Mary Cardwell Dawson
               (1894-1962)
• Mary Cardwell Dawson was the driving force behind the National
  Negro Opera Company (NNOC)m which she founded in 1941 as a
  vehicle for young African American singers, whose opportunities in
  established opera companies were limited by racial discrimination.
  Dawson studied at the New England Conservatory and Chicago
  Musical College, and in 1927 she established the Cardwell School of
  Music in Pittsburg. There she also founded and directed the Cardwell
  Dawson Center, which toured often and won a number of awards in
  the years preceding World War II. A woman of enormous energy and
  accomplishment, Dawson for twenty-one years oversaw the NNOC
  and its affiliated guilds in New York, Washington, and Chicago.
  Among the company‟s celebrated productions were Verdi‟s Aida and
  La Traviata, Nathaniel Dett‟s The Ordering of Moses, and Clarence
  Cameron White‟s Ouango, the first production to be staged by an
  outside company at the Metropolitan Opera House.
                Katherine Dunham
                    (1909 - )
• One of the greatest innovators of twentieth-century dance, Katherine
  Dunham has always regarded artistic innovation as but a means to an
  end: individual, and ultimately societal, transformation. Growing up
  primrily in Chicago, Dunham was exposed to music and theater via
  church, friends, and relatives. Eventually she made her way to the
  University of Chicago, where she studied anthropology and also began
  choreographing and teaching dance. Dismayed at widespread
  ignorance of the often African roots of popular dance, she vowed to
  study ethnic dance in its original settings; in time she covered much of
  the globe as she collected dances and folklore of Africa, Asia, and the
  Americas and brought them to new and enthusiastic audiences. Still
  indefatigable, inspiring, and with a wide range of interests in her
  eighties, Dunham stands as one of the true legends of modern
  performing art.
                 Zora Neale Hurston
                    (1891-1960)
•   Some people- perhaps the greatest people - are destined to be controversial
    not only in their own lifetimes, but beyond, ever provoking even as they
    uplift, gratify, and edify. Such a figure is Zora Neale Hurston, the brilliant,
    multifaceted chronicler of African American life as she saw it. Hurston‟s
    dominant influence was her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, the first
    incorporated all-black township in the United States. She grew up there
    independent and self-reliant, her imagination fired by the rich oral
    traditions of the rural African American South and her sense of self
    undistorted by prejudice. She later studied at Howard and Columbia
    University and was a lively presence in the Harlem Renaissance before
    undertaking the field studies of southern black folklore that would be
    documented in the classic Mules and Men (1935) and would permeate
    much of her best fiction. In the mid-1930s, Hurston made two trips to
    Haiti and Jamaica; the picture here shows her beating the Hountar, or
    “Mama Drum.”
                      Jessee Owens
                       (1913-1980)
By virtue of the four gold medals he won at the 1936 Olympic Games in
   Berlin, Jesse Owens is remembered as one of the greatest track stars
   ever to compete in the Olympics. But Owens's triumphs had a
   resonance hr beyond sports-and have become the stuff of modern
   legend - above all for the stinging blow they delivered, before the eyes
   of thc world, to the racial doctrines of Adolf Hitler. The Nazi regime
   had hoped to make the 1936 games a showcase of white superiority;
   but Owens, who was working his way through Ohio State University,
   gave a stunning performance that. demonstrated not only black power
   but the power of sport to transcend ideology and prejudice. Believing
   that an African American who achieves success "should think in terms
   of not only himself but also how he can reach down and grab another
   black child and pull him to the top." Owens later became a celebrated
   public speaker and promoter of youth sports programs
        DANIEL A. P. MURRAY
             (1852-1925)
Librarian, historian, and businessman Daniel A. P. Murray believed that „the
   true test of the progress of a people is to be found in their literature.‟
   Determined that the written record of African American voices not be lost
   in mainstream American history, Murray devoted much of his life to
   collecting and documenting black literature For fifty-two years Murray
   was employed by the Library of Congress, where he developed his
   professional capacities as a scholar and bibliographer, making full use of
   the unique perspective his position afforded him. One official duty, for
   example was to secure a copy of every book and pamphlet in existence by
   black author for an exhibit at the Paris Exposition in 1900. Murray also
   assembled a private collection of some 1,500 books and pamphlets that are
   now part of the Library's holdings and provide particularly strong
   documentation of African American life during the fifty years following
   emancipation. An important if quiet figure in the movement to preserve
   and promote black history Daniel A. P. Murray‟s legacy continues to
   provide successive generations with a vital link to the past.
  JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
        (1871-1938)
James Weldon Johnson's life was a glittering reflection of his “abhorrence
   of spare time.” While working as a teacher and a school principal
   Johnson studied law, becoming the first African American admitted to
   the Florida bar since the Civil War. He studied music as well and
   became a successful songwriter and an opera librettist. He was a poet
   (God's Trombones) and an influential anthologist (The Book of
   American Negro Poetry). The Autobiography of an Ex Colored Man,
   his only novel and perhaps his best known literary work, was first
   published in 1912, four years before he became field secretary of the
   NAACP. Over the next sixteen years Johnson expanded NAACP
   membership and coordinated its programs, resigning, finally, to accept
   a professorship at Fisk University. He continued to write poetry,
   essays, and magazine articles through all those years, as well as the
   historical study Black Manhattan and his autobiography “Along This
   Way”.
               BESSIE COLEMAN
                  (1892-1926)
•   The first African American aviator was "Brave Bessie" Coleman. She let
    nothing stop her from getting into the air and became a beacon of
    inspiration to countless others in her brief but meteoric career as a
    barnstormer. Coleman first became interested in aviation from reading
    newspaper and magazine articles.. When she decided to take up flying she
    found schools closed to her by restrictions of race, gender or both. On the
    advice of Chicago Defender publisher Robert Abbott, Coleman went to
    Europe in pursuit of her goal.
•   In France, Coleman was trained by French and German aviators, and in
    1921 she earned her pilot's license. A year later she gained an international
    pilots license. Soon thereafter she began her career in the United States as
    an exhibition pilot appearing in shows all over the country and speaking
    on opportunities in aviation. It was her intention to open a flying school
    for black youth, but as she was nearing this goal she died in Jacksonville,
    Florida, when the controls of her plane jammed and she was thrown from
    the cockpit.
                     DAISY BATES
                       (B. 1914)
Civil rights activist and journalist Daisy Bates never knew her parents. Her mother
   had been abducted assaulted, and murdered by three white men, and her father
   grief-stricken and wary of reprisals if the murderers were prosecuted (they
   never were)., fled the small town of Huttig, Arkansas, never to return. Bates,
   raised by adoptive parents, learned of thc story at age eight; from it and her
   own experiences with racism grew a determination to do whatever she could to
   change a society that allowed such horrors to exist. As longtime coeditor (with
   her husband) of the Arkansas State Press, Bates used that newspaper to fight
   segregation, police brutality, and other injustices; and as president of thc
   Arkansas NAACP she organized the Little Rock Nine and engineered the
   desegregation of Little Rock‟s Central High School. Bates‟s leadership in that
   agonizingly violent struggle was indomitable, even when her home was
   bombed and her newspaper became the target of economic reprisals. Honored
   as a pillar of the civil rights movement Bates was also the only female pilot in
   the Arkansas Civil Air Patrol during World War II.
     JESSIE REDMON FAUSET
            (1882-1961)
As literary editor of the NAACP‟s Crisis magazine (1919-1926), Jessie
   Redmon Fauset was one of three people Langston Hughes credited with
   “mid wifing” the so-called New Negro literature into being. Kind and
   critical…. “they nursed us along until our books were born.” Redmon,
   among the first African Americans to be graduated (Phi Beta Kappa) from
   Cornell University nursed along books of her own as well. She produced
   four novels (There Is Confusion; Plum Bun; The Chinaberry Tree; and
   Comedy, American Style) dominated by a single theme: the fundamental
   importance of human relationships in a world rife with racial and sexual
   barriers. They were written in the midst of other jobs and other writing
   (poetry, essays, magazine articles and material for the children's magazine
   Brownies' Book which she also edited), a fact that moved her to tell one
   interviewer of her longing to devote a year or two solely to a novel , “just
   to see what I really could do if I had my full time and energy to devote to
   my work:'
    MARY CHURCH TERRELL
         (1863-1954)
Mary Church Terrell came from an affluent family and was light skinned enough
  to "pass" (as a white person) in most situations if she so chose. Instead she
  placed herself squarely in the struggle for African American empowerment
  and achieved a lifetime of accomplishments in education, social service, and
  politics. Terrell began her career teaching at Wilberforce University in Ohio,
  then moved to secondary school teaching in Washington, D.C. Her later
  appointment to the District of Columbia Board of Education was a first for an
  African American woman. As the first president of the Colored Women's
  League of Washington and later as president of the National Association of
  Colored Women, Terrell was instrumental in local affiliates' establishment of
  kindergartens, day care centers, and nursing schools. She joined Frederick
  Douglass in pushing for antilynching measures and after his death continued to
  pursue another common cause, woman suffrage Terrell was a pioneer in
  attacking segregation in Washington. Her motto “Keep on going, keep on
  insisting, keep on fighting injustice
           FANNIE LOU HAMER
               (1917-1977)
Fannie Lou Hamer picked cotton as a child and had worked for eighteen years as a
   sharecropper when, in 1962, her unsuccessful attempt to vote in the county
   seat of Indianola, Mississippi brought severe economic reprisals and physical
   violence - and galvanized Hamer to civil rights activism for the rest of her life
   Best known for her contributions to securing federally guaranteed voting rights
   for African Americans, Hamer was also a mover in economic and community
   development programs As a founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic
   Party (MFDP), Hamer gained national attention during the 1964 Democratic
   National Convention, when, the MFDP demanded to be seated along with the
   all white regular state delegation. Hamer's dramatic leadership and oratory
   turned momentary defeat into an important media victory. Beatings at the
   hands of police, which caused permanent damage to her arm and kidneys,
   never deterred Hamer. “Sick and tired of being sick and tired”, she embodied
   the ordinary African American s defiance of racial discrimination and terror -
   and the power that such defiance could unleash.
  NANNIE HELEN BURROUGHS
         (1879-1961)
"We specialize in the wholly impossible" was the motto of the National
  Training School for Women. and Girls in Washington, D.C., which
  Nannie Helen Burroughs opened in 1901. At a time when African
  Americans were held down and hemmed in on every side, black
  empowerment - let alone black female empowerment - was quite often
  "impossible” Yet it was steadily and systematically accomplished in a
  burgeoning network of black institutions whose dynamism embodied
  that of the individuals behind them. Nannie Burroughs was a brilliant
  force in many such institutions and today she stands beside such great
  female African American educators as Lucy Laney and Mary McLeod
  Bethune Tough minded and outspoken, Burroughs was ahead of her
  time both as an exponent of the literal and figurative beauty of people
  of color and is an African American feminist who refused to rank one
  form of discrimination over another.
             WILLARD MOTLEY
               (c. 1909-1965)
“My race”; said Willard Motley, “is the human race”; and his books and
  stories addressed the depersonalization and violence he saw afflicting that
  race as it struggled with the problems of urbanization. Born to a middle-
  class family in Chicago, Motley roamed the country gathering the broad
  experiences he felt he needed to be a writer. The main character in his first
  novel, „Knock on Any Door‟ (1947), was based, in part, on someone he
  had met on those travels. The story of young Nick Romano‟s plunge from
  a secure childhood through the treacheries of poverty and crime to his
  execution for murder, the book was a phenomenal success. Its sequel, „Let
  No Man Write My Epitaph‟ was not as successful, though it, like his first
  novel was made into a popular film. Motley spent the last part of his life in
  Mexico, where he completed „Let Noon Be Fair‟ just before his death.
  Another reflection of his concern with social justice, this novel dealt with
  North American exploitation of a country Motley had come to respect and
  regard as his own.
                    BESSIE SMITH
                     (1894-1937)
The 1920s in America were, among so many other things, a veritable golden
   age of the powerful blues woman. And at the pinnacle stood Bessie Smith,
   whose personal and musical power pushed out the boundaries of both
   female and African American expression for a new mass audience. Smith
   first performed at around age eight in her hometown of Chattanooga,
   Tennessee, and began her professional career in earnest when she
   performed in the same show as blues immortal Gertrude “Ma” Rainey in
   the years between 1912 and 1915. From there she toured to minstrel and
   cabaret shows until pianist (Clarence Williams brought her to New York to
   record „Downhearted Blues‟ in 1923. It quickly established her as the most
   successful black recording artist of her day, and for the next five years she
   recorded and toured with great success Though she made her last
   recording in 1933 (with Jack Teagarden and Benny Goodman), Smith
   continued touring until a car accident took her life at age forty-three.
      LORRAINE HANSBERRY
           (1930-1965)
"I think that the human race does command its own destiny and that that
    destiny can eventually embrace the stars." During her brief lifetime,
    Lorraine Hansberry became a commanding presence in American letters.
    Her best-known work, the 1959 play „A Raisin in the Sun‟- the first play
    by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway--won the
    Drama Critics' Circle Award. The story of the Younger family and their
    various and conflicting dreams for escaping the stultifying life of a
    Chicago ghetto, the play became a landmark in American theater and has
    been published and produced in over thirty countries. Other Hansberry
    works include the plays „The Sign in Sidney Brustein‟s Window‟ and „Les
    Blancs‟ and text for the photographic journal „The Movement: A
    Documentary of a Struggle for Equality‟ (1964) Excerpts from
    Hansberry's diaries, journals, essays, and litters were blended by Robert
    Nemiroff into a two-act drama „To Be Young, Gifted, and Black‟ (1969),
    which was also published as a book
                PAULI MURRAY
                  (1910 - 1985)
The first black woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest, Pauli Murray
   spent much of her activist life helping to dismantle barriers of racial
   and gender discrimination. She often attributed her fighting spirit to
   her upbringing in a Midwestern working-class family that put a
   premium on education, character and upward mobility From
   integrating Washington, D.C., lunch counters during her law school
   days at Howard University in the 1940s through becoming a founder
   of the National Organization for Women in the early 1970s, Murray
   took challenges head-on. In discussing sexism at Howard, she said,
   “The only way I could counter it was to lead my class. Which I did.
   For three years.” She went on to teach at several universities and
   compile a massive reference work on state race laws. In her later years
   Murray turned her energies to the spiritual, attending the Virginia
   Theological Seminary and serving as an Episcopal priest in Baltimore.
                    ROSA PARKS
                      (B 1913)
Rosa Park's place in history lies in a single courageous action, her refusal
  to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus on
  December 1, l955. Her subsequent arrest, resulted in a mass boycott of
  city buses and brought thc civil rights movement and Martin Luther
  King Jr. to national prominence. Yet the popular view of Parks's
  catalytic action as that of a simple, tired seamstress is not altogether
  accurate. Though indeed a woman of quiet dignity, Parks was also a
  longtime mover in the Montgomery NAACP and a well trained,
  disciplined activist, attuned in every respect to what she was setting
  into motion. Parks and her husband, Raymond, moved to Detroit in the
  wake of the bus boycott, and for many years she worked in the office
  of Michigan congressman John Conyers. Still lending her energies to
  the struggle for equal rights, Parks remains a powerful figure of hope
  and inspiration to millions.
              LEONTYNE PRICE
                 (B. 1927)
• Regarded as one of the greatest sopranos of the century, Leontyne
  Price possesses not only an extraordinary native gift but a certain inner
  majesty - nothing but a mirror, in her view, of the grandeur of operatic
  expression itself. In a long, distinguished, and sometimes
  controversial career, Price has embodied this spirit of the artist at its
  most finely developed level. Raised by proud, hardworking parents in
  Laurel, Mississippi, at age nine Price heard Marian Anderson in
  concert and immediately determined to pursue a music career. She won
  a scholarship to Juilliard, and her first big performing break came in
  1952., when Virgil Thomson cast her in a revival of „Four Saints in
  Three Acts‟. In her 1961 debut at the Metropolitan Opera, she received
  an ovation that lasted forty-two minutes. Asked by an interviewer
  about competitive feelings toward younger stars, she replied “Why
  should I feel threatened? There'll never be another me.”
           LANGSTON HUGHES
              (1902-1967)
"I like: Tristan, goat‟s milk, short novels, lyric poems, heat, simple folk,
    boats, and bullfights; I dislike Aida, parsnips, long novels, narrative
    poems cold, pretentious folk, buses, and bridge," A man of eclectic
    tastes1and experiences (he worked as a ranch hand, a busboy, a cook
    and a seaman), Langston Hughes forged poems, novels, plays, opera
    libretti, lyrics for musicals, and a cantata out of the various themes of
    his life to become one of America‟s leading men of letters. His work,
    vivid and strong, engages readers in heart to-heart conversation even as
    in his words "I try to interpret and make a bridge between one section
    of our American public and another.” The creative process itself was,
    for Hughes, another sort of communication: In an envelope marked: /
    Personal” / God addressed me a letter. / In an envelope marked: /
    Personal” / I have given my answer.
                       RITA DOVE
                         (b.1952)
Rita Dove's twelfth-grade English teacher took her to meet poet John Ciardi.
   Though Dove had already been writing creatively for years, "That day, I
   realized…it was possible to be a writer, to write down a poem or story in
   the intimate sphere of one's own room, and then share it with the world.”
   She went on to become a college professor, an editor, the recipient of
   many awards and fellowships for writing, and a judge for the Pulitzer
   Prize and the National Book Award. In 1987 she won the Pulitzer for the
   story, in poetry, of her maternal grandparents Thomas and Beulah, Her
   other books include a poetry collection The Yellow House on the Corner(
   1980); a volume of short stories, Fifth Sunday (1985); a novel, Through
   The Ivory Gate (1992) and a verse play The Darker Face of the Earth
   (1994). In 1993 Dove was appointed US poet laureate by the Librarian of
   Congress-the youngest poet, and the first African American, to receive this
   honor. The engaging energy with which she served as spokesperson for
   poetry throughout the country resulted in a one-year extension of her
   appointment in 1994.
    ARNA (ARNAUD) WENDELL
           BONTEMPS
           (1902-1973)
"We were heralds of a dawning day,” proclaimed Arna Bontemps in his
  1972 anthology The Harlem Renaissance Remembered, The "we" were
  African American writers, artists, and musicians whose creativity in
  the 1920s forever transformed the way black culture was perceived in
  America. Bontemps took that same heady Harlem spirit and carved his
  own literary renaissance, which extended beyond New York City and
  lasted nearly half a century thereafter. He produced more than twenty-
  five books: novels depicting aspects of black history and experience
  (God Sends Sunday, 1931 Black Thunder ,1936) anthologies that
  celebrated black culture (The Poetry of the Negro and The Book of
  Negro Folklore, edited with Langston Hughes Great Slave Narratives),
  poetry, history and black juvenilia. With consummate skill, dignity,
  and thoughtfulness he became a "keeper of the flame" of African
  American heritage
                 Madame C. J. Walker
                    (1867-1919)
• Born in Delta, Louisiana, raised on farms there and in
  Mississippi, married by age fourteen and widowed at twenty,
  Madame C. J. Walker went on to become a successful hair and
  cosmetics entrepreneur - and, by the early twentieth century, the
  richest self-made woman in America. Yet, Walker saw her
  personal wealth as not an end in itself, but a means to help
  promote and expand economic opportunities for others,
  especially African Americans. She took great pride in the
  profitable employment - and alternative to domestic labor - that
  her company afforded many thousands of black women who
  worked as commissioned agents. Walker was also well kown for
  her philantrophy, supporting African American eductional and
  social institutions from the national to the grassroots levels.
  Walker‟s daughter, A‟Leila, carried on this tradition, opening
  her mother‟s and her homes to writers and artists of the
  emergent Harlem Renaissance and becoming a catalytic figure
  in that movement.
                       Althea Gibson
                          (1927 - )
• Althea gibson was a talented kd with a tennis racket growing up
  in New York City during World War II. By virtue of her skill
  and toughness as a competitor she would eventually rise to the
  top of her sport - and, amidst the changing social climate in the
  United States, she would become the player who broke the
  racial barrier in championship tennis. She handled the latter
  difficult role with both equanimity and the same ripping serves
  she used to dispatch opponents. A native of South carolina,
  Gibson was a star in the Negro youth leagues in New York by
  1943, and five years later she won the women‟s title for the first
  of five times. In 1950 she became the first African American to
  play at the U. S. Open, and in 1951, at Wimbledon. Thereafter
  she honored her skills while working as an athletic instructor
  and playing team tennis. In 1956 her game came together, and
  for the next three years she burned up the tournament circuit,
  sweeping most of the majors in both 1957 and 1958. Gibson was
  elected to the National Lawn Tennis Hall of Fame in 1971.
                Pearl Bailey
                (1918-1990)

• From singing and dancing in her father‟s
  church at age three, she went on to become
  one of the most enduring and admired
  personalities of the age. Pearl Bailey‟s
  realm of expression was indeed anywhere
  and everywhere, whether she was singing
  with a frank, world-weary sexuality,
  conducting a television cooking show, or
  earning a bachelor‟s degree from
  Georgetown University in her sixties.
     Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington
                 (1899-1974)
• Composer, pianist, and bandleader Edward
  Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was one of the
  great innovators of modern American
  music, taking big.band jazz into new realms
  of harmony, form, and tonal color. Raised
  in Washington, D.C., and with a self-
  possession and aristocratic bearing that
  gained him his nickname in childhood,
  Ellington turned down a scholarship in
  commercial art to pursue music, organizing
            Madame C. J. Walker
               (1867-1919)

• Born in Delta, Louisiana, raised on farms
  there and in Mississippi, married by age
  fourteen and widowed at twenty, Madame
  C. J. Walker went on to become a
  successful hair and cosmetics entrepreneur -
  and, by the early twentieth century, the
  richest self-made woman in America. Yet,
  Walker saw her personal wealth as not an
  end in itself, but a means to help promote
  and expand economic opportunities for
          Edith Spurlock Sampson
                (1901-1979)

• Edith Spurlock Sampson was an achiever, a
  trailblazer and ultimately an enduring
  example of te person who, resolutely and
  often without fanfare, changes a system
  from within. As a child in Philadelphia she
  determined to get an education and work to
  relieve in some way the plight of the urban
  poor around her, a desire that led first to
  social work and then to the study of law. As
  a pioneering African American female law
            William “Bill” Cosby
                  (1937 - )

• The first African American to fill a staring
  role on network television - that of agent
  Alex Scott on “I Spy” in 1965, from which
  the picture here dates - Bill Cosby was still
  breaking ground on network television
  twenty years later as star of The Cosby
  Show, one of the most successful (and
  stereotype-challenging) series in the history
  of the medium. Cosby‟s early years as a
  lover of radio comedy and budding
          Mary Cardwell Dawson
               (1894-1962)

• Mary Cardwell Dawson was the driving
  force behind the National Negro Opera
  Company (NNOC)m which she founded in
  1941 as a vehicle for young African
  American singers, whose opportunities in
  established opera companies were limited
  by racial discrimination. Dawson studied at
  the New England Conservatory and
  Chicago Musical College, and in 1927 she
  established the Cardwell School of Music in
             Katherine Dunham
                 (1909 - )

• One of the greatest innovators of twentieth-
  century dance, Katherine Dunham has
  always regarded artistic innovation as but a
  means to an end: individual, and ultimately
  societal, transformation. Growing up
  primrily in Chicago, Dunham was exposed
  to music and theater via church, friends, and
  relatives. Eventually she made her way to
  the University of Chicago, where she
  studied anthropology and also began
             Zora Neale Hurston
                (1891-1960)

• Some people- perhaps the greatest people -
  are destined to be controversial not only in
  their own lifetimes, but beyond, ever
  provoking even as they uplift, gratify, and
  edify. Such a figure is Zora Neale Hurston,
  the brilliant, multifaceted chronicler of
  African American life as she saw it.
  Hurston‟s dominant influence was her
  hometown of Eatonville, Florida, the first
  incorporated all-black township in the
               Jessee Owens
                (1913-1980)

By virtue of the four gold medals he won at
 the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Jesse
 Owens is remembered as one of the greatest
 track stars ever to compete in the Olympics.
 But Owens's triumphs had a resonance hr
 beyond sports-and have become the stuff of
 modern legend - above all for the stinging
 blow they delivered, before the eyes of thc
 world, to the racial doctrines of Adolf
 Hitler. The Nazi regime had hoped to make
          DANIEL A. P. MURRAY
               (1852-1925)

Librarian, historian, and businessman Daniel
  A. P. Murray believed that „the true test of
  the progress of a people is to be found in
  their literature.‟ Determined that the written
  record of African American voices not be
  lost in mainstream American history,
  Murray devoted much of his life to
  collecting and documenting black literature
  For fifty-two years Murray was employed
  by the Library of Congress, where he
       JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
             (1871-1938)

James Weldon Johnson's life was a glittering
  reflection of his “abhorrence of spare time.”
  While working as a teacher and a school
  principal Johnson studied law, becoming
  the first African American admitted to the
  Florida bar since the Civil War. He studied
  music as well and became a successful
  songwriter and an opera librettist. He was a
  poet (God's Trombones) and an influential
  anthologist (The Book of American Negro
             BESSIE COLEMAN
                (1892-1926)

• The first African American aviator was
  "Brave Bessie" Coleman. She let nothing
  stop her from getting into the air and
  became a beacon of inspiration to countless
  others in her brief but meteoric career as a
  barnstormer. Coleman first became
  interested in aviation from reading
  newspaper and magazine articles.. When
  she decided to take up flying she found
  schools closed to her by restrictions of race,
               DAISY BATES
                 (B. 1914)

Civil rights activist and journalist Daisy Bates
  never knew her parents. Her mother had
  been abducted assaulted, and murdered by
  three white men, and her father grief-
  stricken and wary of reprisals if the
  murderers were prosecuted (they never
  were)., fled the small town of Huttig,
  Arkansas, never to return. Bates, raised by
  adoptive parents, learned of thc story at age
  eight; from it and her own experiences with
        JESSIE REDMON FAUSET
               (1882-1961)

As literary editor of the NAACP‟s Crisis
 magazine (1919-1926), Jessie Redmon
 Fauset was one of three people Langston
 Hughes credited with “mid wifing” the so-
 called New Negro literature into being.
 Kind and critical…. “they nursed us along
 until our books were born.” Redmon,
 among the first African Americans to be
 graduated (Phi Beta Kappa) from Cornell
 University nursed along books of her own
        MARY CHURCH TERRELL
             (1863-1954)

Mary Church Terrell came from an affluent
 family and was light skinned enough to
 "pass" (as a white person) in most situations
 if she so chose. Instead she placed herself
 squarely in the struggle for African
 American empowerment and achieved a
 lifetime of accomplishments in education,
 social service, and politics. Terrell began
 her career teaching at Wilberforce
 University in Ohio, then moved to
           FANNIE LOU HAMER
               (1917-1977)

Fannie Lou Hamer picked cotton as a child
  and had worked for eighteen years as a
  sharecropper when, in 1962, her
  unsuccessful attempt to vote in the county
  seat of Indianola, Mississippi brought
  severe economic reprisals and physical
  violence - and galvanized Hamer to civil
  rights activism for the rest of her life Best
  known for her contributions to securing
  federally guaranteed voting rights for
     NANNIE HELEN BURROUGHS
            (1879-1961)

"We specialize in the wholly impossible" was
 the motto of the National Training School
 for Women. and Girls in Washington, D.C.,
 which Nannie Helen Burroughs opened in
 1901. At a time when African Americans
 were held down and hemmed in on every
 side, black empowerment - let alone black
 female empowerment - was quite often
 "impossible” Yet it was steadily and
 systematically accomplished in a
            WILLARD MOTLEY
              (c. 1909-1965)

“My race”; said Willard Motley, “is the
 human race”; and his books and stories
 addressed the depersonalization and
 violence he saw afflicting that race as it
 struggled with the problems of urbanization.
 Born to a middle-class family in Chicago,
 Motley roamed the country gathering the
 broad experiences he felt he needed to be a
 writer. The main character in his first novel,
 „Knock on Any Door‟ (1947), was based, in
              BESSIE SMITH
               (1894-1937)

The 1920s in America were, among so many
 other things, a veritable golden age of the
 powerful blues woman. And at the pinnacle
 stood Bessie Smith, whose personal and
 musical power pushed out the boundaries of
 both female and African American
 expression for a new mass audience. Smith
 first performed at around age eight in her
 hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and
 began her professional career in earnest
        LORRAINE HANSBERRY
             (1930-1965)

"I think that the human race does command its
  own destiny and that that destiny can
  eventually embrace the stars." During her
  brief lifetime, Lorraine Hansberry became a
  commanding presence in American letters.
  Her best-known work, the 1959 play „A
  Raisin in the Sun‟- the first play by an
  African American woman to be produced
  on Broadway--won the Drama Critics'
  Circle Award. The story of the Younger
              PAULI MURRAY
                (1910 - 1985)

The first black woman to be ordained an
 Episcopal priest, Pauli Murray spent much
 of her activist life helping to dismantle
 barriers of racial and gender discrimination.
 She often attributed her fighting spirit to her
 upbringing in a Midwestern working-class
 family that put a premium on education,
 character and upward mobility From
 integrating Washington, D.C., lunch
 counters during her law school days at
               ROSA PARKS
                 (B 1913)

Rosa Park's place in history lies in a single
 courageous action, her refusal to give up her
 seat to a white man on a Montgomery,
 Alabama bus on December 1, l955. Her
 subsequent arrest, resulted in a mass boycott
 of city buses and brought thc civil rights
 movement and Martin Luther King Jr. to
 national prominence. Yet the popular view
 of Parks's catalytic action as that of a
 simple, tired seamstress is not altogether
             LEONTYNE PRICE
                (B. 1927)

• Regarded as one of the greatest sopranos of
  the century, Leontyne Price possesses not
  only an extraordinary native gift but a
  certain inner majesty - nothing but a mirror,
  in her view, of the grandeur of operatic
  expression itself. In a long, distinguished,
  and sometimes controversial career, Price
  has embodied this spirit of the artist at its
  most finely developed level. Raised by
  proud, hardworking parents in Laurel,
           LANGSTON HUGHES
              (1902-1967)

"I like: Tristan, goat‟s milk, short novels,
  lyric poems, heat, simple folk, boats, and
  bullfights; I dislike Aida, parsnips, long
  novels, narrative poems cold, pretentious
  folk, buses, and bridge," A man of eclectic
  tastes1and experiences (he worked as a
  ranch hand, a busboy, a cook and a
  seaman), Langston Hughes forged poems,
  novels, plays, opera libretti, lyrics for
  musicals, and a cantata out of the various
                RITA DOVE
                  (b.1952)

Rita Dove's twelfth-grade English teacher
  took her to meet poet John Ciardi. Though
  Dove had already been writing creatively
  for years, "That day, I realized…it was
  possible to be a writer, to write down a
  poem or story in the intimate sphere of one's
  own room, and then share it with the
  world.” She went on to become a college
  professor, an editor, the recipient of many
  awards and fellowships for writing, and a
      ARNA (ARNAUD) WENDELL
                BONTEMPS
                (1902-1973)
"We were heralds of a dawning day,”
 proclaimed Arna Bontemps in his 1972
 anthology The Harlem Renaissance
 Remembered, The "we" were African
 American writers, artists, and musicians
 whose creativity in the 1920s forever
 transformed the way black culture was
 perceived in America. Bontemps took that
 same heady Harlem spirit and carved his
 own literary renaissance, which extended