James Farmer was born in Marshall, Texas on January 12, 1920, the grandson of a slave, and son of a minister and college professor, who was believed to be the first black man from Texas to obtain a doctorate. Farmer obtained advanced degrees from Wiley … Read MoreJames Farmer, Jr. (1920-1999)
George Edward Foreman was born in Marshall, Texas on January 10, 1949 and raised in Houston’s Fifth Ward. He took up boxing in his teens while working in the Job Corps. A successful amateur career was capped with a gold medal in the 1968 Olympic … Read MoreGeorge Foreman (1949- )
Madam C.J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove to former slaves, Owen and Minerva Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana on December 23, 1867. Breedlove became an orphan at age seven when her parents died. Three years later, ten-year-old Sarah and her sister moved across to river to Vicksburg, … Read MoreMadam C. J. Walker (1867-1919)
Born on January 31, 1914 in Merchantville, New Jersey, Arnold Raymond Cream was the son of immigrants from Barbados. He took up boxing at age fourteen after his father died and debuted professionally at age 16 as a lightweight where on September 9, 1930 he defeated Cowboy … Read More“Jersey” Joe Walcott (1914-1994)
Harriet Bell Hayden and her husband Lewis Hayden (c.1811-1889) escaped slavery in Kentucky in 1844, traveling first to Ohio, then Michigan and finally settling in Massachusetts, where they became active abolitionists in Boston. In addition to caring for their two children, Joseph and Elizabeth, Harriet … Read MoreHarriet Hayden (ca. 1820-1893)
African American audiences were generally ignored by the major motion picture studios in the first two decades of the 20th century. Nonetheless, demand for films aimed at black theaters in both the South and larger northern cities prompted the formation of several “black” motion picture … Read MoreLincoln Motion Picture Company
Reviled by Langston Hughes and many others for his film and stage portrayals of black characters as “lazy, shuffling, no-account Negroes,” Perry transformed himself from a minor-league minstrel clown into one of the most highly-paid black actors in Hollywood, California history at the expense of … Read MoreLincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew (“Stepin Fetchit”) Perry (1902-1985)
Charles “Sonny” Liston was born on May 8, 1932, in Sand Slough, Arkansas. He was the 24th of 25 children by a sharecropper named Tobe Liston, and one of ten by Tobe’s wife Helen. Sonny received little in the way of schooling and was essentially … Read MoreCharles “Sonny” Liston (1932-1970)
Francis Grimké was a Presbyterian minister and a leading advocate of civil rights. He was born to a wealthy landowner, Henry Grimké and his slave mistress Nancy Weston. After his father’s death in 1852, he moved to Charleston, South Carolina where he lived as a … Read MoreFrancis Grimké (1850–1937)
Grace Bustill Douglass, a Quaker abolitionist, was born into a distinguished black activist family in Burlington, New Jersey. She was the fifth of eight children born to Cyrus Bustill, a baker, and Elizabeth Morey Bustill, the daughter of an Englishman and a Delaware Indian woman. … Read MoreGrace Bustill Douglass (1782-1842)
