Veteran auto racer Bill Lester was born February 6, 1961, in Washington, D.C. Lester earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1984 and worked at Hewlett-Packard for a year before becoming a race … Read MoreWilliam (Bill) Alexander Lester, III (1961- )
William L. Patterson, born in San Francisco on August 27th, 1891, was a Marxist lawyer, author, and civil rights activist. His mother had been born a slave on a Virginia plantation in 1850 and lived there until she was ten. Before the outbreak of the … Read MoreWilliam L. Patterson (1891-1980)
Leonard Randolph (Lenny) Wilkens was born in Brooklyn, New York, on October 28, 1937, son of an African American father and white mother. He grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section, one of the toughest sections in the city, where he endured many hardships, including the … Read MoreLenny Wilkens (1937- )
Reverend Leon Howard Sullivan Jr. was a successful minister, civil rights advocate, humanitarian and corporate leader known for his creation of the Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America and the Sullivan Principles to promote political reform in South Africa. Leon Sullivan was born in Charleston, West … Read MoreLeon Howard Sullivan, Jr. (1922-2001)
Milton Price Webster is best known as one of the founders and long-time Vice President of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids (BSCP) Union. He helped organize the BSCP’s local in Chicago, one of the largest in the nation with over 15,000 … Read MoreMilton P. Webster (1887-1965)
Rosemary Brown has the distinction of being the first black woman in Canada to be elected to public office. She was elected to the British Columbia Legislative Assembly in 1972 and served in the provincial legislature until 1986. She was also the first woman to … Read MoreRosemary Brown (1930-2003)
Fred Hampton, deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, was born on August 30, 1948 and raised in the Chicago suburb of Maywood, Illinois. In high school he excelled in academics and athletics. After Hampton graduated from high school, he enrolled … Read MoreFred Hampton (1948-1969)
Stanley G. Grizzle founded the Railway Porter’s Trade Union Council and served as president of the Toronto Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) Division of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) from 1946 to 1962. Grizzle was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1918, to Jamaican parents … Read MoreStanley G. Grizzle (1918- )
Charley Pride, born on March 18, 1938, on a cotton farm in Sledge, Mississippi, eventually became one of the most successful black entertainers in country music. Although he loved music and taught himself to play the guitar as a teenager, Pride’s first dream was to … Read MoreCharley Pride (1938-2020)
Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the independent nation, the Republic of Congo, was born July 2, 1925, in Onalua in Kasai province of the Belgian Congo. With just primary education, Lumumba emerged to become one of Africa’s most vocal critics of colonialism. Early … Read MorePatrice Emery Lumumba
(1925-1961)
