John Sella Martin was born into slavery in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was carried to Georgia and escaped from there to the North in 1856. Martin lived successively in Chicago, Detroit and Buffalo, where by that point he was a minister and led a church … Read More(1867) John Sella Martin, A Speech Before the Paris Antislavery Conference
William Levi Dawson was a well-known Chicago, Illinois lawyer who became one of the city’s most influential politicians. His career paralleled the rising significance of African Americans in the Democratic Party. Dawson was born in Albany, Georgia on April 26, 1886. Little is known of … Read MoreWilliam Levi Dawson (1886-1970)
Samuel George Harker Philander is Knox Taylor Professor of Geosciences at Princeton University. Born in Caledon, Republic of South Africa on June 25, 1942, he received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Cape Town in 1962 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University … Read MoreS. George Philander (1942- )
The career of Robert Henry Bragg was highlighted by his success in employing x-ray techniques to reveal the structural makeup and electrical properties of carbon and composite materials. The son of a union organizer and a seamstress, he was born in Jacksonville, Florida on August … Read MoreRobert H. Bragg (1919-2017)
Malcolm X, one of the most influential African American leaders of the 20th Century, was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska on May 19, 1925 to Earl Little, a Georgia native and itinerant Baptist preacher, and Louise Norton Little who was born in the West … Read MoreMalcolm X (1925-1965)
Quintessential gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, often called the “Queen of Gospel,” was born on October 26, 1911, to an impoverished family in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her father, John A. Jackson, Sr., was a dockworker and barber who later became a Baptist minister. Her mother, Charity … Read MoreMahalia Jackson (1911-1972)
James Arthur Baldwin, fiction writer, essayist, dramatist, and poet, was born on August 2, 1924 in Harlem, New York during the Harlem Renaissance. After graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx in 1942, he began his formal career as a writer. Baldwin was … Read MoreJames Baldwin (1924-1987)
Forrest Oran Wiggins was born in 1907 to Charles and Cora Cosby Wiggins. A native of Vincennes, Indiana, Wiggins attended public schools in Vincennes and Indianapolis. In 1928 Wiggins received his B.A. from Butler University and in the following year earned a certificate in French … Read MoreForrest Oran Wiggins (1907-1982)
With expertise in the mechanisms and kinetics of the oxidation of transitions metals, and in agricultural chemistry, Fillmore Freeman has become one of the three most frequently cited African American chemists in the nation (the other two being Donald J. Darensbourg at Texas A&M University … Read MoreFillmore Freeman (1936- )
Mathematician Charles Bernard Bell, Jr., one of the leading African American mathematicians of the twentieth century, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in August 20, 1928. At age 19 he graduated from Xavier University in 1947 and earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from Notre Dame … Read MoreCharles B. Bell, Jr. (1928-2010)
