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.
Born into slavery on the eastern shore of Maryland in 1807, James William Charles Pennington escaped from slavery in 1828 and settled for a time in Long Island, where he studied in night school. Devoted to black education, he became an antislavery preacher, teacher, activist, … Read MoreJames W. C. Pennington (1807-1870)
Born in West Africa, Prince Mortimer was captured by slave traders as a young boy. After enduring a brutal passage to the Americas, he arrived in Connecticut around 1730. In the late 1750s he was sold in Middletown, Connecticut to Philip Mortimer, who trained him … Read MorePrince Mortimer (ca. 1724-1834)
Born on the Eastern Shore of Virginia on March 7, 1890, William Sherman Savage was forced to withdraw from primary school at age 11 to help his family in the fields, but he never gave up his dream of attaining a full education. Finally finishing … Read MoreW. Sherman Savage (1890-1981)
Marie Maynard Daly, born in Queens, New York to Helen and Ivan Daly, was the first black woman to earn a Ph.D. in Chemistry. Her father, an immigrant from the West Indies, had hoped to earn a degree in Chemistry at Cornell University but was … Read MoreMarie Maynard Daly Clark (1921-2003)
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1941, Ernest Gideon Green was no stranger to the Civil Rights Movement as his mother was a NAACP member and took part in protests against unequal pay between whites and blacks. Partly inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. … Read MoreErnest G. Green (1941- )
Hosea Hudson was a Communist Party (CP) activist and industrial union organizer in Alabama and Georgia during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. He embodied the CP’s turn toward black civil rights in the early 1930s and the attraction many working-class southern blacks felt toward the … Read MoreHosea Hudson (1898-1988)
Roger Arliner Young, born in Clifton Forge, Virginia in 1889, was the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in zoology and to conduct research at the prestigious Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Young researched the anatomy of paramecium and the effects of … Read MoreRoger Arliner Young (1889-1964)
Born Lottie Hawkins in Henderson, North Carolina, in 1883, her family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, early in her childhood to avoid racial discrimination in their home state. In Cambridge, she attended Allston Grammar School, Cambridge English High School and Salem State Normal School in Salem, … Read MoreCharlotte Eugenia Hawkins Brown (1883-1961)
Jazz pianist and popular singer Nathaniel Adams Coles was born into a musical family in Montgomery, Alabama on March 17, 1919. His mother Perlina was a choir director in his father Edward’s Baptist church. His three brothers, Edward, Ike, and Freddy, became professional musicians. Cole … Read MoreNat “King” Cole (1919-1965)
Dr. Mark Dean, an American inventor and computer engineer, is one of the most important figures in the emergence of the personal computer in the late 20th Century. Three of the nine patents on the original personal computer (PC) by International Business Machines (IBM) are … Read MoreMark Dean (1957- )
