The African American conductor James DePreist was the nephew of the singer Marian Anderson. DePreist was the Permanent Conductor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Laureate Music Director of the Oregon Symphony, and Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies at the Juilliard School. DePreist has … Read MoreJames DePreist (1936-2013)
Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tyron, North Carolina in 1933, Nina Simone began playing the family piano at the age of three. Her mother Mary Kate Waymon, a minister and choir director at a Methodist church in Tyron, interpreted her daughter’s gift as a God-given … Read MoreNina Simone (1933-2003)
As one of the first known sub-Saharan Africans to study at a European university, the freed slave Jacobus Capitein became a celebrity in Holland for his academic and religious achievements and later returned to his homeland to evangelize the indigenous population. Capitein was born on … Read MoreJacobus Elisa Johannes Capitein (ca. 1717-1747)
Anton Wilhelm Amo, also known as Antonius Guilielmus Amo Afer ab Aximo in Guinea, was the first intellectual of African ancestry to study in Germany. He obtained a doctorate degree in philosophy and held lectures at the universities of Halle and Jena. Having spent forty … Read MoreAnton Wilhelm Amo (1703? -1753)
In 1921, Bessie Coleman became the first black woman to gain an international permit to fly. After learning French, she attended the famous flight school Ecole d’Aviation des Frères Caudron in Northern France. No schools in America would train a black person. She was inspired … Read MoreBessie Coleman (1892-1926)
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)
In 1866 the Fisk Free Colored School was established in Nashville, Tennessee by the American Missionary Association. Housed in abandoned Union hospital barracks, Fisk set out to educate former slaves with the support of donations from former abolitionists. As those donations declined over the next … Read MoreFisk Jubilee Singers
Jan Ernst Matzeliger was born on September 15, 1852 in Suriname (South America), the child of a biracial marriage. His father was a white engineer from Holland and his mother was a black woman in the Dutch colony. By his third birthday Matzeliger was sent … Read MoreJan E. Matzeliger (1852-1887)
