James E. Walton, longtime professor of English at California State University, Fresno, was born on September 13, 1944 in Bessemer, Alabama to Willie Walton, Sr. and Mary Woods Cutts. Walton attended a two-room schoolhouse in Alabama. At age three, his grandmother taught him to read … Read More … Read MoreJames E. Walton (1944-2019)
[vc_row el_class=”no-border”][vc_column el_class=”no-border”][vc_column_text]Welcome to our African Heads of State page. What you see below are the profiles of the first post-Independences Heads of State of 55 African nations and their contemporary counterparts, the current Heads of State. Please return to the page often as we … Read More … Read MoreAfrican Heads of State
Ahmed Ben Bella was a leader of the Algerian War of Independence who became the first Prime Minister, and later, the first President of independent Algeria. Ben Bella was born in 1916 in Maghnia (Marnia), Oran, Algeria (then a French colony), the son of a … Read More … Read MoreAhmed Ben Bella (1916-2012)
In the article below, Syracuse University historian Herbert Ruffin explores the rapid rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2013 as the most recent development in the ongoing struggle for racial and social justice in the United States. In the summer of 2013, three … Read More … Read MoreBlack Lives Matter: The Growth of a New Social Justice Movement
In 1879 an unanticipated migration of nearly seven thousand African Americans from Mississippi and Louisiana to Kansas prompted a debate among national black leaders. Frederick Douglass thought it unwise that black women and men would leave the South. John Mercer Langston disagreed. As in this … Read More … Read More(1879) John Mercer Langston, “The Exodus: The Causes Which Led The Colored People of the South to Leave Their Homes – The Lesson”
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]We at BlackPast pay tribute to the singularly important event in African American history, the election of the first black president, through the Obama Page. From this central point visitors can find all information on or linked to BlackPast related to President Obama, his family, … Read More … Read MoreThe Barack Obama Page
On October 25, 1940, Benjamin O. Davis Sr. was appointed Brigadier General in the United States Army by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, becoming the first African American general in the history of the United States Military. Since then nearly 400 other African American women and … Read More … Read MoreThe Commanders: Admirals and Generals in the United States Military, 1940–
The Watts Truce was a peace agreement among rival Blood and Crips street gangs in Los Angeles, California, mainly in the neighborhood of Watts. The Watts Truce occurred days before the Rodney King Riots. This truce was a significant factor in the decline of street … Read More … Read MoreThe Watts Truce (1992)
