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)
As one of the first known sub-Saharan Africans to study at a European university, the freed slave Jacobus Capitein became a celebrity in Holland for his academic and religious achievements and later returned to his homeland to evangelize the indigenous population. Capitein was born on … Read MoreJacobus Elisa Johannes Capitein (ca. 1717-1747)
Anton Wilhelm Amo, also known as Antonius Guilielmus Amo Afer ab Aximo in Guinea, was the first intellectual of African ancestry to study in Germany. He obtained a doctorate degree in philosophy and held lectures at the universities of Halle and Jena. Having spent forty … Read MoreAnton Wilhelm Amo (1703? -1753)
Antillean author Maryse Condé was born on February 11, 1937, in Pointe-á-Pitre, Guadeloupe, where her parents were members of the island’s black middle class. After a childhood she describes as “not at all interesting,” Condé left Guadeloupe at sixteen to complete her formal education in … Read MoreMaryse Condé (1937- )
In their introduction to Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, co-editors Henry Louis Gates and Kwame Anthony Appiah describe W.E.B. Du Bois’s half century campaign to publish an encyclopedia that would encompass the African diaspora. That introduction appears below. Between 1909 … Read MoreW.E.B. Du Bois and the Making of the Encyclopedia Africana, 1909-1963
Ethiopianism is an Afro-Atlantic literary-religious tradition that emerged out of the shared political and religious experiences of Africans from British colonies during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Ethiopianism linked Africa historically to the ancient classical era, challenging the then prevailing idea that the … Read MoreEthiopianism
Born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri in 1928, she received the nickname “Maya” from her brother Baldwin. At the age of four Maya and her brother were sent to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. A couple of years later they moved back … Read MoreMaya Angelou (1928-2014)
Educator, essayist, journalist, scholar, social critic, and activist W.E.B. DuBois, was born to Mary Sylvina Burghardt and Alfred Dubois on February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He excelled in the public schools of Great Barrington, graduating valedictorian from his high school in 1884. Four … Read MoreWilliam Edward Burghardt DuBois (1868-1963)
Musicologist, playwright, novelist and political activist Lola Shirley Graham, born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1896, became the second wife to W.E.B. Du Bois in 1951. Lola Shirley Graham was taught at a young age to stand up to injustice. She wrote her first editorial to … Read MoreShirley Graham Du Bois (1896 – 1977)
A leading intellectual and activist of the post-WWII period, Alphaeus Hunton Jr. was the executive director of the Council on African Affairs (CAA) and editor of the CAA’s publication, New Africa, from 1943 through the organization’s dissolution in 1955. In this capacity, Hunton did more … Read MoreWilliam Alphaeus Hunton Jr. (1903-1970)
