Hiram Young of Independence, Missouri manufactured freight wagons and equipment in the 1850s. Born about 1812 in Tennessee, he entered Missouri as a slave and worked for George Young of Greene County. In 1847, Young obtained freedom, either from his owner or possibly as a … Read MoreHiram Young (1812-1882)
Texas cowboy Robert Lemmons was one of the greatest mustangers of all time. He became a legend in his day by perfecting his unique method of catching wild mustang horses. Robert Lemmons was born a slave in Lockport, Caldwell County, Texas in 1848. He moved … Read MoreRobert Lemmons (1848–1947)
Joseph Winters was born in 1816 in near Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) to James Winters, an African American brick maker who worked at the federal arsenal there, and a Shawnee Indian mother whose name is unknown. Winters was raised by his grandmother Betsy Cross in Waterford, Virginia. Cross … Read MoreJoseph W. Winters (1816-1916)
Alexander Thomas Augusta was the highest-ranking black officer in the Union Army during the Civil War. He was also the first African American head of a hospital (Freedmen’s Hospital) and the first black professor of medicine (Howard University in Washington, D.C.). Augusta was born in … Read MoreAlexander T. Augusta (1825-1890)
Osborne Perry Anderson was one of the five African American men to accompany John Brown in the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in October 1859. Anderson was a free-born abolitionist, born in West Fallow Field, Pennsylvania on July … Read MoreOsborne P. Anderson (1830-1872)
The Union League of America (or Loyal League) was the first African American Radical Republican organization in the southern United States. The League was created in the North during the American Civil War as a patriotic club to support the Union. It was officially established … Read MoreUnion League (1863- )
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, commonly referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was created by Congress on March 3, 1865. Fashioned to provide temporary, one-year assistance to former slaves and destitute whites in the war-ravaged South, in July of the following year … Read MoreFreedmen’s Bureau (1865-1872)
The Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, commonly referred to as The Freedmen’s Bank, was incorporated on March 3, 1865. It was created by the United States Congress along with the Freedmen’s Bureau to aid the freedmen in their transition from slavery to freedom. By late … Read MoreFreedmen’s Savings and Trust Company (1865-1874)
The American Colonization Society (ACS), also known as the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color in the United States, emerged in 1816 as a national organization dedicated to promoting the manumission of the enslaved and the settlement of free blacks in West … Read MoreAmerican Colonization Society (1816-1964)
On January 16, 1865, Union General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15 which confiscated as Federal property a strip of coastal land extending about 30 miles inland from the Atlantic and stretching from Charleston, South Carolina 245 miles south to Jacksonville, Florida. … Read More(1865) General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15
