Haben Girma, both blind and deaf, is a disability rights advocate and attorney who became the first deaf and blind graduate of Harvard Law School in Massachusetts when she graduated with a Juris Doctor degree (JD) in 2013. Girma was born on July 29, 1988, … Read More … Read MoreHaben Girma (1988- )
Ibrahim Omer is an Eritrean-born New Zealander politician. He is best known for becoming the first African and second former refugee to become a member of the National Parliament of New Zealand. Omer was born and raised in Eritrea where he spent much of his … Read More … Read MoreIbrahim Omer (1978- )
Operating for 59 years, the Indianapolis Clowns, a Negro American League baseball team, was the longest playing black professional team in U.S. history. They were also the first team to have black women and white men as players. In the early years of this team, … Read More … Read MoreIndianapolis Clowns (1930-1989)
The East African presence in the royal courts of India can be traced back to the 13th century. By the 16th century several Abyssinians (or Habshis as they were known there), the descendants of Ethiopian slaves, had become military generals and government ministers in Delhi … Read More … Read MoreIkhlas Khan (a.k.a. Malik Raihan Habshi, ?-1656)
Henry Washington, slave, loyalist, and colonizer, was born in Africa, perhaps in the Senegambia (present day Senegal and Gambia). Transported as a slave to America, he was bought by George Washington in 1763 to work on a project for draining the Great Dismal Swamp in … Read More … Read MoreHenry Washington (ca. 1740-ca. 1801)
The details of the birth and appearance of Russian shipbuilder and military Gen. Mikhail M. Egypteos remain uncertain. There are two competing stories: One is that as a teenager from an aristocratic Ethiopian family he was taken, perhaps by force, to the Russian Empire by … Read More … Read MoreMikhail Milhailovich Egypteos (1861-1932)
For nine days in early 2006, Saad Al-Salim Al-Sabah headed the government of Kuwait. He was born in 1930, the son of a Ethiopian slave named Jameela (or Jamila) who was one of the five wives of his father, Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah, the 11th ruler … Read More … Read MoreSaad Al-Salim Al-Sabah (aka Sheikh Saad Al-Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah) (1930-2008)
Until his abrupt resignation from office, Dominik Feri, the youngest-ever and first African-descended legislator in the Czech Parliament, had been a rock star of European politics and a darling of the press. Born July 11, 1996, in Kadaň, Czech Republic, he is the son of … Read More … Read MoreDominik Feri (1996- )
In 1953 baritone Robert McFerrin Sr. made history as the first African American to win the Metropolitan Opera House’s Auditions of the Air radio contest. On January 27, 1955, in the role of Ethiopian King Amonasro in Verdi’s Aida, McFerrin made history again by becoming … Read More … Read MoreRobert Keith McFerrin, Sr. (1921-2006)
Yosef Ben-Jochannan was an Afrocentric historian whose work is focused mainly on black presence in ancient Egypt. He contends in his writings that the pharaohs came out of the heart of Africa and that the original Jews were from Ethiopia and were black Africans, and … Read More … Read MoreYosef Ben-Jochannan (1918-2015)
