Image Courtesy of Suzie Dod Thomas Author and activist Piri Thomas became one of the first Americans of Puerto Rican descent to win literary acclaim when he published his 1967 memoir Down These Mean Streets. Born Juan Pedro Tomas to Cuban and Puerto Rican parents … Read MorePiri Thomas (1928-2011)
William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr., a prominent Republican lawyer and businessman, served as Secretary of Transportation under President Gerald Ford. Born on July 7, 1920 to a middle class Philadelphia, Pennsylvania family, Coleman attended a segregated elementary school. When he moved to Germantown High School he … Read MoreWilliam T. Coleman Jr. (1920-2017)
Ernest J. Gaines was born on January 15, 1933 on River Lake Plantation near Oscar, Louisiana, in Point Coupee Parish. His parents, Manuel and Adrienne worked as sharecroppers on the same plantation their ancestors had labored as slaves. Ernest was the oldest of seven children … Read MoreErnest James Gaines (1933-2019)
Charles Gordone was born Charles Edward Fleming on October 12, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio to parents William and Camille Fleming. He took his stepfather’s surname of Gordon when his mother remarried when he was five years old. The family moved to Elkhart, Indiana, his mother’s … Read MoreCharles Gordone (1925-1995)
The grandson of a British explorer and the son of a pharmacist, Augustus Freeman “Gus” Hawkins was born in Shreveport, Louisiana but moved with his family to Los Angeles, California in 1918. He earned a degree in economics from the University of California at Los … Read MoreAugustus Hawkins (1907-2007)
Charles Diggs was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1922. His father was Charles Coles Diggs and his mother was Mayme Jones Diggs. Young Diggs had an upper middle class background; his father, a prominent mortician and real estate developer, served in the Michigan State Senate. … Read MoreCharles Diggs (1922-1998)
The Niagara Movement was a civil rights group organized by W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter in 1905. After being denied admittance to hotels in Buffalo, New York, the group of twenty-nine business owners, teachers, and clergy who comprised the initial meeting gathered at … Read MoreNiagara Movement (1905-1909)
The Scottsboro Boys were nine young black men, falsely accused of raping two white women on board a train near Scottsboro, Alabama in 1931. Convicted and facing execution, the case of Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson, Eugene Williams, … Read MoreScottsboro Boys Trial and Defense Campaign (1931–1937)
Miriam Matthews was the first African American librarian in the Los Angeles Public Library system. Hired in 1927, she served in the library until her retirement in 1960 where she was instrumental in preserving the history and cultural heritage of black Angelenos. Miriam Matthews was … Read MoreMiriam Matthews (1905–2003)
In March 1897 the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature created a land grant college to train African American teachers, calling it the Colored Agricultural and Normal University. Classes opened in the fall of 1898 in a church in the town of Langston. Langston had been founded in … Read MoreLangston University (1898- )
