Although little remembered today, Leidesdorff was a social, economic and political force in pre-gold rush San Francisco, California with a number of “firsts” credited to his name. When he was named the U.S. Vice Consul to Mexico in 1845, he became the nation’s first African … Read MoreWilliam Alexander Leidesdorff (1810-1848)
Walter Moses Burton holds the distinction of being the first black elected sheriff in the United States. Burton was also a State Senator in Texas. Burton was brought to Fort Bend County, Texas as a slave from North Carolina in 1850 at the age of twenty-one. … Read MoreWalter Moses Burton (1829?-1913)
Dr. W.H.C. Stephenson, the first black doctor in Nevada, practiced medicine in Virginia City, Nevada, during the heyday of the Comstock Lode. Born in Washington, D.C., he lived in Pennsylvania and California prior to Nevada. He was trained at one of the Eclectic Medical Institutes … Read MoreW.H.C. Stephenson (1825-circa 1873)
Mary Ann Shadd (1823-1893) was born into an affluent free black family in Wilmington, Delaware. Nonetheless after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, Shadd joined thousands of other African Americans in emigrating to Canada. She briefly taught the children of the emigrants … Read More(1858) Mary Ann Shadd, “Break Every Yoke and Let The Oppressed Go Free”
Schoolteacher, dentist, physician, lawyer, graduate of the American Medical College in Philadelphia, member of the Massachusetts bar, proficient in Greek and Latin, Dr. John S. Rock was unequivocally one of the most distinguished African American leaders to emerge in the United States during the antebellum … Read More(1858) John S. Rock, “I Will Sink or Swim with My Race”
By 1857 “Bleeding Kansas’ and the Dred Scott Decision had intensified sectional tensions over slavery and moved the nation closer to civil war. Against that backdrop, Charles Lenox Remond, on July 10, 1857, addressed the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society where he joined a growing chorus of … Read More(1857) Charles Lenox Remond, “An Anti-Slavery Discourse”
Frances Ellen Watkins was born of free parents in Baltimore in 1825. After teaching in New York and Pennsylvania Watkins became a full-time abolitionist speaker for the Maine Anti-Slavery Society. By the 1850s she was one of the most noted speakers on that subject as … Read More(1857) Frances Ellen Watkins, “Liberty For Slaves”
In January 1856, Sara G. Stanley, representing the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society of Delaware, Ohio, addressed the all-male Convention of Disfranchised Citizens of Ohio who met at the Columbus City Hall. She called upon the forty delegates who included among their ranks John Mercer Langston, Peter … Read More(1856) Sara G. Stanley Addresses The Convention Of Disfranchised Citizens Of Ohio
In September 1855, the Supreme Court of Massachusetts ruled in Boston v. Roberts that a separate school could not be maintained at taxpayer expense by the city of Boston. This decision marked the first significant victory in what would be a 99 year struggle to … Read More(1855) William C. Nell, “The Triumph Of Equal School Rights In Boston”
On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass was invited to address the citizens of his hometown, Rochester, New York. Whatever the expectations of his audience on that 76th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Douglass used the occasion not to celebrate the nation’s … Read More(1852) Frederick Douglass, “What, To The Slave, Is The Fourth Of July”
