Independent Historian

Karla Kelling Sclater is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at the University of Washington. Her dissertation examines the lives of the female working poor in nineteenth-century Philadelphia. She has published “Rise of the Free Soil Party,” and “Formation of Factory Girls’ Association in Lowell, Massachusetts” in Alice Kessler-Harris, ed., The Encyclopedia of Labor History Worldwide (Chicago: Gale Group, 2003); “The Labor and Radical Press 1820-the present,” The Labor Press Project, and a vignette, “Nettie J. Asberry: African American Club Woman in the Pacific Northwest” in Quintard Taylor and Shirley Moore, eds.’ African American Women Confront the West, 1600-2000 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003). Her areas of study include African American, Labor, and Women’s History.

Grafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918)

Grafton Tyler Brown was a cartographer, lithographer, and painter, widely considered the first professional African American artist in California. Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1841, Brown learned lithography in Philadelphia and then became part of a cohort of African Americans who sought better economic and … Read MoreGrafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918)