Diallo Telli Boubacar was the first General Secretary of the Organization of the African Unity (OAU), the pan-African body created in 1963 in the aftermath of independence of many African nations and replaced on July 9, 2002 by the African Union (AU). Telli was born … Read MoreDiallo Telli (1925-1977)
Victoria Eugenia Santa Cruz Gammara is widely considered the mother of Afro-Peruvian dance. Victoria Santa Cruz was born in Lima, Peru, on October 27, 1922, to a large Peruvian family of 10 children. Her father was Nicomedes Santa Cruz Aparicio, and her mother, Victoria Gamma … Read MoreVictoria Eugenia Santa Cruz Gamarra (1922-2014)
Salome Bey was an American-born, Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, and actress who, after emigrating to Toronto, became known as “Canada’s first lady of the blues.” Salome Wideman was born in Newark, New Jersey, on October 10, 1933, to Andrew and Victoria Wideman. Her father was a … Read MoreSalome Bey (1933-2020)
Artist Nancy Elizabeth Prophet was born in Warwick, Rhode Island on March 19, 1890, the second of three children. Her mother, Rose Walker Profitt was African American; her father, William H. Profitt was a Narragansett Indian. Prophet was married to Francis Ford from 1915 to … Read MoreNancy Elizabeth Prophet (1890-1960)
As a child, concert violinist and professor Elwyn A. Adams was a musical prodigy of some notoriety in the African American community of Cleveland, Ohio, where he was born on August 3, 1933. At age five he gave his first violin recital at East Mt. … Read MoreElwyn Albert Adams (1933-1995)
Olympic and world heptathlon champion Nafissatou Thiam was born in Namur, Belgium, 43 mile southeast of Brussels, on August 19, 1994, one of the four children of Bamba Thiam, a native of Senegal who worked as a sculptor and painter, and Belgian citizen Danièle Denisty … Read MoreNafissatou Thiam (1994- )
Donald Jasper Harris is a Jamaican American economist, author, and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University in Stanford, California, since his retirement in 1998. He is now best known as the father of Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s Vice-Presidential Nominee. Harris joined the Stanford faculty in … Read MoreDonald Jasper Harris (1938- )
Alfred-Amédée Dodds, one of the ablest French army generals in the late 19th century, was mixed-race. Dodds was born February 6, 1842 in Saint-Louis, Senegal. He was the oldest of the seven children of Antoine Henry Ermery Dodds, a metis (mixed race) director of the … Read MoreAlfred-Amédée Dodds (1842-1922)
Having achieved considerable success after switching careers, Thomas “Detour” Evans has been in big demand as a muralist and portrait artist. Born December 12, 1984 in Dayton, Ohio, the son of Leroy M. Evan, an Army lieutenant colonel, Evans lived on military base on two … Read MoreThomas Neil-Abraham Evans (1984- )
