Eartha Mae Kitt was born on January 26, 1928, in the city of North in South Carolina. Her sharecropper parents abandoned Kitt and her half-sister as young children, forcing them to live with a foster family until they moved to New York City, New York … Read MoreEartha Mae Kitt (1928-2008)
Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback was born on May 10, 1837 to parents William Pinchback, a successful Virginia planter, and Eliza Stewart, his former slave. The younger Pinchback was born in Macon, Georgia during the family’s move from Virginia to their new home in Holmes County, … Read MorePinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (1837-1921)
Carrie Meek was born on April 29, 1926, in Tallahassee, Florida. Her parents were sharecroppers and her childhood neighborhood was racially segregated. Meek attended and graduated from Florida A&M University. Graduate schools in Florida were still segregated at this time so she was forced to … Read MoreCarrie Meek (1926-2021)
Mentor to Louis Armstrong and pioneer of what would become known as the Harmon trumpet mute, Joe “King” Oliver was a key figure in the first period of jazz history. His most significant ensemble, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, was a live sensation and also … Read MoreJoseph “King” Oliver (1885-1938)
Opened in 1923, the Cotton Club on 142nd St & Lenox Ave in the heart of Harlem, New York was operated by white New York gangster Owney Madden. Madden used the Cotton Club as an outlet to sell his “#1 Beer” to the prohibition crowd. … Read MoreCotton Club of Harlem (1923- )
Absalom Jones was born into slavery in Sussex, Delaware in 1746. He taught himself to read in his early teens from books he purchased by saving pennies given to him by visitors to his master’s home. At the age of sixteen, Jones’ family was separated … Read MoreAbsalom Jones (1746-1818)
Moranda Smith was a union organizer and rank-and-file leader of tobacco workers in North Carolina, who throughout the 1940s initiated a challenge to the racial discrimination, disfranchisement, and economic exploitation of workers in the South. The first African-American woman to sit on an international union’s … Read MoreMoranda Smith (1915-1950)
On February 1, 1960, four Black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, demanded service at a Woolworth’s lunch counter. When the staff refused to serve them, they stayed until the store closed. In the following days and weeks, this “sit-in” idea spread through the South. … Read MoreStudent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC (1960-1973)
Charles Fuller was born on March 5, 1939 to parents Charles H. Sr. and Lillian Anderson Fuller of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Fuller was the oldest of three children, but would see his parents welcome some twenty foster children into their home over the years. Fuller attended … Read MoreCharles Henry Fuller Jr. (1939- )
Paul Chiles is the youngest of three children, born to Ruth and Raymond Chiles in Spokane, Washington on April 11, 1949. Raised in Seattle, he graduated from Garfield High School. Chiles was drawn to civil rights at an early age and founded the Black Student … Read MorePaul Chiles (1949- )
