An inventor, abolitionist, and trained medical professional, Dr. Thomas Elkins played a significant role in supporting the Underground Railroad in Albany, New York during the 1840s and 1850s. He also made an important contribution to the development of refrigeration techniques, and patented several inventions for other household furniture items during the latter … Read MoreThomas Elkins (1818-1900)
The Second Liberian Civil War was an intense four-year conflict that involved child soldiers on all sides and extensive civilian casualties. It was also one of the few civil wars that spread into neighboring countries, in this case, Guineaand Sierra Leone. The conflict began in April 1999 when a … Read MoreSecond Liberian Civil War (1999-2003)
In the article below independent historian Kyle Haddad-Fonda describes the Asian-African Conference popularly known as the Bandung Conference which was the first significant gathering of independent and soon-to-be independent nations in Asia and Africa. From April 18 to April 24, 1955, delegates from twenty-nine countries … Read MoreThe Asian-African (Bandung) Conference: Fact and Fiction
William Henry Hunt, African American U.S. diplomat, was born a slave in Tennessee in 1863. Hunt claimed to have been born on June 29, 1869, so he could get into school at the age of twenty-six posing as a twenty-year-old, a lie he kept to … Read MoreWilliam Henry Hunt (1863-1951)
Image Ownership: Public domain Elton Clay Fax, a prolific African-American cartoonist, author, and illustrator, was born on October 9, 1909, in Baltimore, Maryland. His parents were Mark Oakland Fax, a clerk, and Willie Estelle Fax, a seamstress. Elton’s younger brother, Mark, was a music prodigy … Read MoreElton Fax (1909-1993)
The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) was a rebel army that fought in the Sierra Leone Civil War, 1991–2002. The RUF was created by Foday Sankoh along with allies that included Abu Kanu, Rashid Mansaray, and most of the Mende ethnic group in the southern and … Read MoreRevolutionary United Front (1991–2002)
Foday Saybana Sankoh was the founder and leader of the Sierra Leone rebel group, Revolutionary United Front (RUF), during the Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002). That conflict, the first civil war in the nation’s history, resulted in the death of an estimated fifty thousand people … Read MoreFoday Saybana Sankoh (1937–2003)
William Richard Tolbert Jr. was the twentieth president of Liberia from 1971 to 1980, when he was killed in a coup led by then Liberian Army Sergeant Samuel Doe. Tolbert was trained as a civil servant when he entered Liberia’s House of Representatives in 1943 … Read MoreWilliam Richard Tolbert Jr. (1913-1980)
The First Liberian Civil War was one of Africa’s bloodiest civil conflicts in the post-independence era. The war claimed more than two hundred thousand Liberian lives in a nation of 2.1 million people and displaced a million other citizens in refugee camps in neighboring countries. … Read MoreFirst Liberian Civil War (1989-1996)
Joseph Jenkins Roberts was the first (1848-1856) and seventh (1872-1876) president of Liberia. Roberts was born free in Norfolk, Virginia on March 15, 1809. His father was of Welsh origin, and his mother, Amelia, was described as a mulatto. His mother married a free black … Read MoreJoseph Jenkins Roberts (1809–1876)
