Charles “Chuck” Stone, Jr., pioneering African American newspaper columnist, editor, author, and professor was born on July 21, 1924 to Charles and Madeline Stone in St. Louis, Missouri. Soon after, the family moved to Connecticut where Stone’s mother worked for the Hartford Board of Education … Read MoreCharles Sumner “Chuck” Stone, Jr. (1924-2014)
As a six-year-old boy named Quetto, Michele Amatore witnessed his village of Commi in the Nuba Mountains of southern Sudan decimated by Egyptian soldiers and their leaders who profited from the slave trade. The oldest of four children, his father was a village chief named Bolingia; … Read MoreMichele Amatore (1826?-1883)
St. Maurice is commemorated throughout churches in modern Germany as a black African dressed as a Roman Solider. That depiction originated with the renowned statue in the Cathedral of St. Catherine and St. Maurice in Magdeburg, Germany. However, according to some historical authorities, he was … Read MoreSt. Maurice (ca. 250-ca. 287)
Scholar, playwright, journalist, and African nationalist, Duse Mohamad Ali was born in Alexandria, Egypt on November 24, 1866 to an Egyptian father, Ali Abdul Salam and a Sudanese mother, whose name is unknown. At a very young age Ali was sent to study in England … Read MoreDuse Mohamad Ali (1866-1945)
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 MoreYosef Ben-Jochannan (1918-2015)
With the exception of the well-publicized Operation Moses, Joshua, and Solomon Airlift of 20,000 Ethiopian Jews from that war and famine ravaged nation to Israel between 1984 and 1991, few people outside the Middle East are aware of the tens of thousands of people of … Read MoreThe Black Diaspora in Israel, 1965 to 2011
Cairo, the current capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Middle East and Africa, has been a major cultural, religious and political center of the Arab, Islamic and African worlds for centuries. The year 2011 saw unprecedented civil and political upheaval in the … Read MoreCairo, Egypt (founded ca. 969 C.E.)
Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat, third President of post-independence Egypt (governing from 1970 to 1981), was born of peasant background in the Nile Delta village of Mit Abu al-Kum on December 25, 1918. The son an Egyptian army clerk and a Sudanese housewife, Sadat was educated in … Read MoreMuhammad Anwar al-Sadat (1918-1981)
Khartoum, the capital of the modern state of Sudan, is located in an area of rich farmland where the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet. Khartoum initially grew because of the Turko-Egyptian conquest of Sudan in 1821. Mohammed Ali Pasha (1769-1849), nominally an Ottoman … Read MoreKhartoum, Sudan (1821- )
Benjamin Zephaniah, poet, playwright, novelist and activist, was born on April 15, 1958, the first of eight children, in Birmingham, England. Zephaniah grew up in Wandsworth until the age of nine when his mother, a Jamaican nurse, fled his father, a postman from Barbados. Leaving … Read MoreBenjamin Zephaniah (1958- )
