Fredi Washington was an actress and founding member of the Negro Actors Guild of America as well as a journalist for People’s Voice. Born in Savannah, Georgia, Washington moved as a child to New York and began her professional career as a chorus dancer in … Read MoreFredi Washington (1903-1994)
Ira Frederick Aldridge was the first African American actor to achieve success on the international stage. He also pushed social boundaries by playing opposite white actresses in England and becoming known as the preeminent Shakespearean actor and tragedian of the 19th Century. Ira Frederick Aldridge … Read MoreIra Aldridge (1807-1867)
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, one of the most influential 20th Century black nationalist and Pan-Africanist leaders, was born on August 17, 1887 in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. Greatly influenced by Booker T. Washington’s autobiography Up From Slavery, Garvey began to support industrial education, economic separatism, and … Read MoreMarcus Garvey (1887-1940)
James H. Williams is best known as an award–winning expert on applied mechanics and materials, specifically earthquake isolation research, shell theory, and nondestructive evaluation and composite materials, and a passionate advocate of African American representation in the academy. James Henry Williams, Jr. was born in … Read MoreJames H. Williams Jr. (1941- )
W.E.B. Du Bois would eventually emerge as a founder of the NAACP, a leading human rights activists and the most important African American intellectual of the 20th Century. However those developments lay in the future when the 32-year-old DuBois gave the closing address at the … Read More(1900) W.E.B. Du Bois, “To the Nations of the World”
Charles Lenox Remond (1810-1878), was one of the earliest black abolitionist speakers. Born in Salem, Massachusetts to free black parents, John and Nancy Remond, Charles became an agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1838 and traveled with William Lloyd Garrison to the World Anti-Slavery … Read More(1841) Charles Lenox Remond, “Slavery As It Concerns The British”
While a professor of biology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Robert Kent Trench earned the reputation as the world’s leading expert on corals and their symbiotic algae, more specifically strains of zooxanthellae adaptation to certain coral species. Born on August 3, 1940 … Read MoreRobert K. Trench (1940- )
The physical presence that black British actor Harry Baird brought to the movie screen was largely a consequence of the United Kingdom going through the birthing pain of racism during the 1950s and 1960s. Born in Guyana, this premier black actor was no Paul Robeson, … Read MoreHarry Baird (1931-2005)
We don’t know the name of one of the earliest orators against slavery. He was a West Indian who apparently was a former slave fortunate enough to be educated. He was also intimately familiar with slavery and the slave trade in that region. The themes … Read More(1789) An Unknown Free Black Author Describes Slavery In 1789
Prominent in the pantheon of Afrocentric scholars is Chancellor James Williams, the son of a former slave, born on December 22, 1898 in Bennettsville, South Carolina. Williams earned both his bachelor’s degree in education and master’s degree in history at Howard University where he began … Read MoreChancellor J. Williams (1898-1992)
