Image Ownership: Fair Use Twentieth century artist John Thomas Biggers was an educator, painter and muralist. His travels in Africa in the 1950s influenced the depiction of social and cultural themes in his work. John Thomas Biggers was born in Gastonia, North Carolina in 1924. … Read MoreJohn Thomas Biggers (1924-2001)
Nanny, known as Granny Nanny, Grandy Nanny, and Queen Nanny was a Maroon leader and Obeah woman in Jamaica during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Maroons were slaves in the Americas who escaped and formed independent settlements. Nanny herself was an escaped slave … Read MoreQueen Nanny of the Maroons (? – 1733)
William “Bill” Pinkney is the first African American, and only the fourth person in the world to circumnavigate the globe alone by boat. Pinkney was born on September 15, 1935, in Chicago, Illinois to Marion Henderson Pinkney and William Pinkney, Sr. He attended Tilden Tech … Read MoreWilliam “Bill” Pinkney (1935- )
Savannah State University, a historically black university in Savannah, Georgia, is the oldest state supported black institution of higher education in the state of Georgia. It was the first black public land grant college established in the state after the Morrill Act of 1890. Originally … Read MoreSavannah State University (1890- )
Accra is the political and economic capital of modern Ghana on the Gold Coast. Between 1500 and 1578, a fortress operated by the Portuguese stood at the site of modern Accra. This fort provided the Europeans with an outlet for trade, particularly in slaves, with … Read MoreAccra, Ghana (ca. 1500- )
Born to a Ghanaian father and a Scottish mother in Hackney, London, Paul Yaw Boateng became one of the first black British Members of Parliament in the general election of 1987. In 2002 he became the first Afro-Briton to serve in the Prime Minister’s Cabinet. … Read MorePaul Yaw Boateng (1951- )
Dorothy Porter Wesley (1905-1995), a scholar-librarian and bibliographer was born in Warrenton, Virginia in 1905, to her father, Hayes Joseph Burnett, a physician, and her mother, Bertha Ball Burnett, a tennis champion. After receiving her A.B., from Howard University in 1928, she became the first … Read MoreDorothy Porter Wesley (1905-1995)
Achimota College was founded in Achimota, Gold Coast (now Ghana) in 1924 by Dr. James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey, Rev. Alexander Garden Fraser, and Sir Gordon Guggisberg, the British Governor of the Gold Coast (1919-1927), as an elite secondary school based on the British model of public education. Governor Guggisberg urged … Read MoreAchimota College/Achimota School (1924- )
The Ashanti Empire was a pre-colonial West African state that emerged in the 17th century in what is now Ghana. The Ashanti or Asante were an ethnic subgroup of the Akan-speaking people, and were composed of small chiefdoms. The Ashanti established their state around Kumasi … Read MoreAshanti Empire/ Asante Kingdom (18th to late 19th century)
El Mina, a fortress erected by the Portuguese in what is now Ghana in 1482, was the first permanent structure south of the Sahara built by Europeans, and was the first of many facilities along the shore of West Africa designed to facilitate the growing … Read MoreEl Mina São Jorge da Mina
