Adrienne Kennedy has earned a place as one of contemporary America’s most renowned and admired African American authors, lecturers, and playwrights. Kennedy was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 13, 1931 to Cornell Wallace and Etta (Haugabook) Hawkins. Kennedy spent her childhood in Cleveland, Ohio, … Read MoreAdrienne Kennedy (1931- )
Lydia Flood Jackson was a champion of women’s rights and suffrage in California for African American women and other people of color. The outspoken activist was the first black student to attend an integrated public school in Oakland, California. Flood’s mother, Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood, … Read MoreLydia Flood Jackson (1862-1963)
Marion Motley was born June 5, 1920, in Leesburg, Georgia. Motley played football at Canton McKinley High School in Canton, Ohio, and went on to South Carolina State University and then to the University of Nevada, where he played football while participating in other collegiate … Read MoreMarion Motley (1920-1999)
Camp George Jordan was a United States Army facility established in Seattle, Washington, during World War II. It was generally known as a Black army camp, because it was segregated in such a way that the African Americans were housed on one side of the … Read MoreCamp George Jordan
Prince Whipple fought at the battles of Saratoga and in Delaware during the War for Independence. He was also one of twenty enslaved men who petitioned the New Hampshire legislature for freedom in 1779. His owner, General William Whipple, was a signer of the Declaration … Read MorePrince Whipple (1750-1796)
Jordan Hatcher was a seventeen-year-old enslaved tobacco worker in Richmond, Virginia, who in 1852 rose from obscurity to notoriety when charged with assaulting and killing white overseer William Jackson. According to newspaper accounts and trial records, Hatcher was working at the Walker & Harris tobacco … Read MoreJordan Hatcher Case (1852)
Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in March 1860, Charles Henry Harvey was the youngest of nineteen children of Albert and Elsy (Brewer) Harvey. Albert and Elsy were married on Valentine’s Day in 1839 in Halifax County, North Carolina, where their first child, Jesse, was born a … Read MoreCharles Harvey (1860-1937)
Chap. VII.—An Act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters. Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That whenever the executive authority of any state … Read More(1793) Fugitive Slave Act
Following the momentum of student-led sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina and Nashville, Tennesssee in early 1960, an interracial group of activists, led by Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Executive Director James Farmer, decided to continue to challenge Jim Crow segregation in the South by organizing … Read MoreFreedom Rides (1961)
The endowment named in honor of V Ethel Willis White is unusual in that the person honored was not a wealthy woman in the usual sense of the word. Instead V Ethel Willis White’s wealth derived from her inspiration to others. White began life in … Read MoreV. Ethel Willis White (1920-2003)
