The following are short descriptions of the women and men who have contributed to the shaping of African American history. These encyclopedia entries serve as a starting point for much more inclusive descriptions and discussions that appear in other sources. For additional information please consult the print or website sources cited in the entry.
Physician, educator, and social activist Dorothy Celeste Boulding Ferebee led efforts to improve the health care of African Americans. As a member of several civic organizations, she fought to lower the mortality rate among African Americans in southern rural communities. She also used these organizations … Read MoreDorothy Celeste Boulding Ferebee (1898-1980)
Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood, born a free woman in 1828, is known as the mother of desegregated education for children of color in California. Flood led the battle to open the public schools of California to her own children and paved the way for integrated … Read MoreElizabeth Thorn Scott Flood (1828-1867)
Lytle was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee sometime in 1875 to parents John R. and Mary Ann “Mollie” Lytle. The Lytle family, which also included three other siblings and her grandmother, migrated to Kansas in 1882 shortly after the Exoduster Movement which took over six thousand … Read MoreLutie Lytle (1875-?)
Romare Bearden was a twentieth century African American artist who specialized in paintings and collages and also produced works in the performing arts and literature. Romare Howard Bearden was born on September 2, 1911, to Howard and Bessy Bearden in Charlotte, North Carolina. Bearden grew … Read MoreRomare Bearden (1912-1988)
Jazz pianist Thelonious Monk became one of the 20th Century’s most influential and innovative jazz musicians. Born on October 10, 1917 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the son of Thelonious and Barbara Monk, young Thelonious Monk grew up in New York City after the family … Read MoreThelonious Monk (1917-1982)
Billie Holiday is considered by many critics and fans to have been one of the most important jazz vocalists of the twentieth century. Her difficult life of poverty, abusive relationships, and drug abuse helped give her voice a deep, raw emotion that was expressed in … Read MoreBillie Holiday (1915-1959)
Born in Michigan in 1869, James David Corrothers became an important literary figure in the 1890s. Corrothers grew up in South Haven, a southern Michigan town established by abolitionists, fugitive slaves, and free blacks during the years before the civil war. For a time he … Read MoreJames David Corrothers (1869-1917)
Born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri in 1928, she received the nickname “Maya” from her brother Baldwin. At the age of four Maya and her brother were sent to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. A couple of years later they moved back … Read MoreMaya Angelou (1928-2014)
Miles Davis was one of the most influential and innovative jazz musicians of the 20th Century. He constantly altered his sound to introduce new forms of jazz and led the progression of jazz from the 1940s to the 1980s. Miles Dewey Davis III was born … Read MoreMiles Davis (1926-1991)
Born Dana Elaine Owens on March 18, 1970 in Newark, New Jersey, Queen Latifah is the most influential woman in the history of rap music. The Muslim name “Latifah,” which translates roughly to “delicate, sensitive and kind,” was adopted by Owens at the age of … Read MoreQueen Latifah (1970- )
