Jean-Bédel Bokassa, longtime dictator and military leader of the Central African Republic, was born in Bobangui, Oubangui-Chari, French Equatorial Africa (present-day Central African Republic) on February 22, 1921. Bokassa’s father, a village chief of the Mbaka people, was murdered in November 1927 for refusing to … Read MoreJean-Bédel Bokassa (1921-1996)
The Tukulor Empire was a Muslim theocracy established during the mid-19th century major jihads (holy wars) in Western Africa. At its apogee, the empire extended from Senegal eastward to Timbuktu, a distance of 1,500 miles. The empire’s founder, Al Hajj Umar, a Senegalese Islamic scholar … Read MoreTukulor Empire (1852-1864)
Thomas Sankara, political leader of Burkina Faso in the 1980s, was born on December 21, 1949 in Yako, a northern town in the Upper Volta (today Burkina Faso) of French West Africa. He was the son of a Mossi mother and a Peul father, and … Read MoreThomas Sankara (1949-1987)
J. Max Bond, Jr. was a prominent African American architect. He was born in 1935 into a prominent intellectual family from Louisville, Kentucky. His father, J. Max Bond, Sr., who held doctorate degrees in economics and sociology from the University of Southern California, was a … Read MoreJ. Max Bond, Jr. (1935-2009)
W.E.B. DuBois once lauded Dantès Bellegarde as the “International Spokesman of Black Folk” for his active career as a Haitian diplomat, historian, and advocate for the ending of United States’ occupation of Haiti. Louis-Dantès Bellegarde was born on May 18, 1877 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He … Read MoreDantès Bellegarde (1877-1966)
Joseph Phillipe Lemercier Laroche, the only passenger of known African ancestry who died on the Titanic, was born on May 26, 1889 in Cap Haiten, Haiti. He was the son of a white French army captain and a Haitian woman who was a descendant of … Read MoreJoseph Phillipe Lemercier Laroche (1889-1912)
Edward Rudolph Bradley Jr., journalist, was born June 22, 1941, in Philadelphia. His father was a businessman and his mother a housewife. After Bradley’s parents divorced, he spent summers with his father in Detroit. He attended primary and secondary school in Philadelphia. In 1960 he … Read MoreEd Bradley, Jr. (1941-2006)
On October 2, 1958 Sekou Touré, proclaimed Guinea’s independence from France and became its first president. One year later he gave a speech in Conakry, the capital in which he outlined the role of political leaders in reflecting and developing the culture of their nations. … Read More(1959) Sekou Touré, “The Political Leader Considered as the Representative of a Culture”
In the years immediately following World War I, Prince Marc Kojo Tovalou Houènou was one of a small number of French Speaking Africans to openly challenge French rule on that continent. In his short book, L’Involutjon Métamorphoses et des Métempsychoses de l’univers, which was published … Read More(1924) Prince Marc Kojo Tovalou Houènou, “The Problem of Negroes in French Colonial Africa”
