Strive Masiyiwa is a Zimbabwean businessman and philanthropist. He is best known for being the founder and chairman of Econet Wireless International and Zimbabwe’s first billionaire. Masiyiwa was born on January 29th, 1961 in Zimbabwe. His father was a miner who later became a businessman, … Read More … Read MoreStrive Masiyiwa (1961- )
Ernest William Chambers, Africana intellectual, has lived in the semi-segregated community of North Omaha, Nebraska for his entire life. A community activist in the 1960s, Chambers rode into office in the Nebraska State Legislature on the crest of new-black electoral power in 1970. As a … Read More … Read MoreErnest William Chambers (1937- )
Reggae Sunsplash, founded in 1978 to promote a slow summer tourist season in Jamaica, was the first Caribbean music festival to introduce reggae to a global audience. The idea of the festival originated with a group of young entrepreneurs who called themselves Synergy. They were … Read More … Read MoreReggae Sunsplash (1978-1996)
Robert Mugabe led Zimbabwe from its independence in 1980 until he was forced to step down in 2017. He remained in power through his tight control of the government bureaucracy and the armed forces. Robert Mugabe was born on February 21, 1924, at Katuma Jesuit … Read More … Read MoreRobert Gabriel Mugabe (1924-2019)
In the account below Edith Lee-Payne recalls the day she was photographed as a 12 year old participant in the March on Washington, and the curious history of that photograph through 2011. My grandparents, Marie and John Spencer Lee, left Culpeper, Virginia for Washington, D.C. … Read More … Read MoreMarch on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963: One Participant Remembers
James Horton, African surgeon, soldier and nationalist, challenged prevailing views on the inferiority of Africans and proposed ideologies for African self-government. His philosophies became the basis for future African independence. Horton was born in British colonial Sierra Leone outside of Freetown, the son of former … Read More … Read MoreJames Africanus Beale Horton (1835-1883)
“Image Ownership: Public Domain” On August 5, 1999 President William Clinton appointed Gregory Lee Johnson U.S. Ambassador to Swaziland. He served in that post from November 16, 1999 to October 18, 2001. Johnson began his career in the Foreign Service in 1968 and has served … Read More … Read MoreGregory Lee Johnson (1945- )
Operation Hammer, a law enforcement program by the Los Angeles Police Department that began in 1987 was ostensibly an attempt to crack down on gang violence in Los Angeles, California. Many critics, however, saw the operation as racial profiling because it targeted the city’s African … Read More … Read MoreOperation Hammer (1987-1990)
In the following article Professor Emeritus Jere L. Bacharach, a specialist in Medieval Middle Eastern history, describes the little known saga of one of the largest groups of persons of African descent in the region, military slaves. These enslaved men, utilized for centuries in the … Read More … Read MoreAfrican Military Slaves in the Muslim Middle East
Milton Apollo Obote was the first Prime Minister of Uganda from the time of its independence in 1962 until 1966 when he became President of the Republic of Uganda. In 1967 Obote gave a speech on language and nation building at a conference on national … Read More … Read More(1967) Milton Obote, “Language and National Identification”
