On August 4, 1914, Britain joined the Great War. The First World War, 1914-1918, is usually viewed as a predominantly white European conflict. In fact, many Africans, Asians, black Britons, and Caribbeans fought for the British Empire. At the beginning of the war, the British War Office, however, was reluctant to allow blacks to enlist … Read MoreBritish West Indian Regiment (BWIR) (1915-1918)
Ota Benga was a teenage boy brought from his homeland in central Africa and displayed like an animal at the Bronx Zoo in New York City, New York. Benga was born sometime in 1883 in the Ituri Forest in what would soon become the Congo Free State (now … Read MoreOta Benga (1883-1916)
Bessie Virginia Blount, pioneer physical therapist, inventor, and scientist, was born in Hickory (today Chesapeake), Virginia, on November 24, 1914. In the sixth grade, she had to discontinue her elementary education, although she would later earn a GED after her family moved to New Jersey. She studied nursing at the Community … Read MoreBessie Blount Griffin (1914-2009)
Tatiana Rusesabagina, best known for helping her husband Paul Rusesabagina in protecting 1,268 refugees in the Hotel des Milles Collines during the Rwandan genocide, was born as Tatiana Mukangamije on October 24, 1958 in Butare, Rwanda into a Tutsi family. She studied to become a nurse in the Rwandan city of Ruhengeri … Read MoreTatiana Rusesabagina (1958- )
Paul Rusesabagina, a former Rwandan hotel manager who protected 1,268 people from the 1994 Rwandan genocide, was born in 1954 in a Hutu family of farmers. Before working in the hotel business, Rusesabagina went to a missionary school in central Rwanda and attended the Faculty of Theology in Cameroon. In 1984, he became … Read MorePaul Rusesabagina (1954- )
Juvénal Habyarimana, President of Rwanda, was born on March 8, 1937, in Gasiza, in the Gisenyi province of what was at this time the Ruanda-Urundi mandate, controlled by Belgium. Habyarimana was an Hutu, whose parents, Jean-Baptiste Ntibazilikana and Suzanne Nyirazuba, were Christians. He went to a Catholic primary school, but then … Read MoreJuvénal Habyarimana (1937-1994)
Berta de los Angeles Soler Fernandez is a Cuban dissident and activist. She is the co-founder and current leader of Ladies in White, or Damas de Blanco, an all-female organization of the wives and female relatives of political prisoners. Soler was born July 31, 1963 in Matanzas, Cuba. She studied … Read MoreBerta Soler (1963- )
Harry Cole, the first black justice on the Maryland Supreme Court, was born on January 1, 1921, in Washington, D.C., to a tailor and his wife. Shortly after his birth, Cole’s father died, and his mother moved him and his four siblings to her hometown, Baltimore, Maryland. Cole attended Douglass High School, … Read MoreHarry A. Cole (1921-1999)
Habib Koité is a Malian musician, born in Thies, Senegal, in 1958. He grew up in a family of griots, who are story-tellers and musicians of the Khassonke ethnic group. Koité entered the Institute of Art of Bamako (INA) in Bamako, the capital of Mali, in 1978, and … Read MoreHabib Koité (1958- )
Josef Nassy was an Afro-Jewish artist and Holocaust survivor. Born on January 19, 1904 in Paramaribo, Surinam (Dutch Guiana), he was one of seven children born to Adolf Philipus Nassy, a prosperous Jewish businessman who was elected to the Surinam Parliament, and Elisabeth Carolina Natalia Nassy (born de Maesschalk), … Read MoreJosef Johan Cosmo Nassy (1904-1976)
