The Milice Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale (MVSN), or the (Militia of) National Security Volunteers was a Haitian paramilitary force founded in 1958 to defend the autocratic and corrupt regime of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier. The MVSN, commonly known as the Tonton Macoutes, was notorious … Read MoreTonton Macoutes (Milice Volontaires de la Securite Nationale – MSVN)
Born in Teoc, Mississippi in 1892 but raised in Avalon, Mississippi, “Mississippi” John Hurt spent the majority of his life employed as a farm hand. Though he briefly recorded in the 1920s, it was not until the 1960s that his music was widely distributed and … Read More“Mississippi” John Smith Hurt (ca. 1892-1966)
William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman, an Americo-Liberian, served 27 years as President of Liberia, longer than any president before or after him. Tubman, who is regarded by some in his country as the “father of modern Liberia,” was born on November 29, 1895 in Harper, Liberia. … Read MoreWilliam V. S. Tubman (1895-1971)
Arthur D. Shores, attorney and civil rights activist, was born in Birmingham, Alabama on September 23, 1903. He completed his primary and secondary education in that same city. In 1927 he earned a bachelor’s degree in education from Talladega College in Alabama and then a … Read MoreArthur D. Shores (1903-1996)
Zenzile Miriam Makeba, world renowned South African singer, was born in Johannesburg on March 4, 1932. She studied music for eight years at the Kilmerton Training Institute in Pretoria, South Africa and toured with amateur groups before beginning her professional career in 1954 with the … Read MoreMiriam Makeba (1932-2008)
Curt Flood, an American Major League Baseball player best known for his challenge of the “reserve clause,” was born January 18, 1938 in Houston, Texas and was raised in Oakland, California. Flood began playing baseball as a youth. Showing great promise he signed a contract … Read MoreCurtis Charles Flood (1938-1997)
Marita Odette Bonner (Occomy) was an African American writer, essayist, and playwright associated with the Harlem Renaissance Era. Born on June 16, 1899 to Joseph Andrew and Anne Noel Bonner in Boston, Massachusetts, she and her three siblings grew up in Brookline, a suburb of … Read MoreMarita Odette Bonner (1899-1971)
Singer, guitarist, songwriter, and music producer Curtis Lee Mayfield was born on June 3, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois. Mayfield began his career singing gospel music with the group the Northern Jubilee Singers. While with them he met Jerry Butler, another aspiring singer, and in 1957 … Read MoreCurtis Mayfield (1942-1999)
A supporter of the Gandhian philosophy of nonviolent protest, the Reverend James M. Lawson, Jr. was one of the Civil Rights Movement’s leading theoreticians and tacticians in the African American struggle for freedom and equality in the 1950s and 1960s. Raised in a household of … Read MoreJames Lawson (1928- )
By the early 1970s South African cleric Desmond Mpilo Tutu had not yet achieved worldwide fame as an opponent of Apartheid. Nonetheless, in a July 1973 paper delivered to the National Conference of the South African Council of Churches, Tutu explained to his audience the … Read More(1973) Desmond Tutu, “God-given Dignity and the Quest for Liberation”
