Robert Colescott’s massive paintings evoke powerful emotions and thoughtful contemplation. For the past thirty years, Colescott has engaged themes of race, gender, and social inequality. His art is both highly charged and also intrinsically beautiful. In 1997, Colescott was the first African American painter to … Read MoreRobert Colescott (1925-2009)
Originally the site of New York City’s first free black settlement, by 1850 the Five Points district in lower Manhattan had instead become infamous for its dance halls, bars, gambling houses, prostitution, and for its mixed-race clientele. To the larger white community, the Five Points … Read MoreFive Points District, New York City, New York (1830s-1860s)
Born into poverty, the grandson of a former slave, business executive Stanley O’Neal rose through the ranks of corporate America to become the first African American to head a major firm on Wall Street when Merrill Lynch named him chief executive officer in 2002. In … Read MoreStanley O’Neal (1951- )
Aviation company founder William J. Powell was born in Kentucky on July 27, 1897. His family soon moved to Chicago, Illinois where he attended school. In 1914 at the age of 17 Powell was accepted into the University of Illinois engineering program. His studies were … Read MoreWilliam J. Powell (1897-1942)
On March 26, 1938, Berry Lawson, a twenty-seven-year-old African American waiter staying at the Mt. Fuji Hotel located on Yesler Way in downtown Seattle, Washington, was reportedly asleep in a chair in the hotel lobby. He was spotted by three Seattle Police Department officers, who … Read MoreBerry Lawson Case (1938)
The Langston City Herald was a black newspaper based in the Oklahoma Territory but with circulation throughout the South. The paper was founded and edited by Edwin and Sarah McCabe in 1890 soon after they relocated from Kansas to the Oklahoma Territory. Because its readership … Read MoreLangston City Herald
Andrew J. Young (not related to Martin Luther King’s lieutenant and Southern Christian Leadership Conference member of the same name) was a civil rights activist in Seattle during the middle part of the twentieth century. A lawyer, Young first reached prominence when he served as … Read MoreAndrew Young (Seattle)
Robert Russa Moton was born in 1867 on the William Vaughan Plantation in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Moton attended the local freedman’s school and eventually went on to college at the Hampton Institute (now called Hampton University). At Hampton Institute, Moton distinguished himself academically and … Read MoreRobert R. Moton (1867-1940)
Lodie Biggs, one of the few black professional women in pre-World War II Seattle, was also a significant political activist in the 1920s and 1930s. She was also involved with the transformation of the Seattle branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored … Read MoreLodie Biggs (?-?)
The Colored Marines Employment Benevolent Association (CMEBA) was organization that united black maritime cooks and stewards who were seeking employment in Seattle. In the process it challenged the racism of the all-white, Maritime Cooks and Stewards Association of the Pacific (MCSAP). The CMEBA was founded … Read MoreColored Marine Employment Benevolent Association (1921-1934)
