Lucy (Lucile) Berkeley Buchanan Jones was the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Colorado. Buchanan was born on June 13, 1884, on the second floor of the family’s mule and horse barn in the town of Barnum, southwest of Denver, Colorado. … Read MoreLucy (Lucile) Berkeley Buchanan Jones (1884-1989)
Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1884, Saint Elmo Brady became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in the field of chemistry when he completed his graduate studies at the University of Illinois in 1916. The eldest child of Thomas and Celesta Brady, Saint … Read MoreSaint Elmo Brady (1884-1966)
In the years prior to World War II through segregation, Lincoln Hills Country Club was a renowned vacation development for African Americans in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Located in Gilpin County, an hour outside Denver, between Pinecliff and Rollinsville, Lincoln Hills was for years … Read MoreWinks Lodge (1928-1965)
In the years prior to World War II, the Lincoln Hills Country Club was a renowned vacation development for African Americans in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Located in Gilpin County, an hour outside Denver, between Pinecliff and Rollinsville, Lincoln Hills was for years the … Read MoreLincoln Hills Country Club (1922-1966)
On July 31, 1966, Stokely Carmichael, the newly appointed Chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), describes black power to a mostly African American audience at Cobo Auditorium in Detroit. Part of the address appears below. Now we’ve got to talk about this thing … Read More(1966) Stokely Carmichael, “Definitions of Black Power”
The following speech, a sermon Dr. Martin Luther King gave at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 3, 1968, was the last public appearance before his assassination the next day. King, in Memphis to support a strike by sanitation workers, gives a poignant vision … Read More(1968) Martin Luther King, Jr., “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”
Paul R. Williams was one of the most well-known 20th Century African American architects. Early in his career, Williams designed mostly houses, but in the 1950s and 1960s he designed some of the most distinctive public buildings in Los Angeles. Williams’s best-known building is probably … Read MorePaul R. Williams (1894-1980)
Born on the campus of Howard University on May 1, 1901, Sterling Allen Brown was the last of six children and the only boy born to the Rev. Sterling Nelson, a former slave and prominent professor in the Howard Divinity School, and Adelaide (Allen) Brown. … Read MoreSterling A. Brown (1901-1989)
In 1878 soprano Marie Selika Williams, known as the “queen of staccato,” became the first black artist to perform at the White House. Marie Selika was born c. 1849 in Natchez, Mississippi. Shortly after her birth, Selika’s family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where, as a … Read MoreMarie Selika Williams (ca. 1849-1937)
Fort Davis stands unique among frontier forts in that it became the Regimental Headquarters for all four Buffalo Soldier regiments that served during the last decades of the 19th-century. Troopers of the Ninth Cavalry were the first Buffalo Soldiers to garrison Fort Davis. Arriving in … Read MoreBuffalo Soldiers at Fort Davis, Texas (1867-1885)
