The Jamaica Bobsled Federation (JBF) was initially created in 1987 by two American businessmen living in Jamaica, George Fitch and William Maloney. After watching a local pushcart race, Fitch and Maloney recognized similarities with bobsledding. Already aware of Jamaica’s athletic history, particularly around sprinting and … Read MoreJamaica Bobsled Team (1987- )
Expatriate novelist, journalist, and memoirist Andrea Lee was raised in a well-to-do African American family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The youngest of three children, her father was a Baptist minister and her mother an elementary school teacher. The product of private school education, she recalls both … Read MoreAndrea Lee (1953- )
Image Ownership: Public Domain Jazz trumpeter Thomas “Tommy” Ladnier was born in Florenville/Mandeville, Louisiana on May 28, 1900. His father was Alfred Ladnier and his mother Willie Williams Ladnier. He played in local bands beginning in 1914 and one of his teachers was trumpeter Bunk … Read MoreThomas James Ladnier (1900–1939)
Yale University literature scholar and historian Vladimir Alexandrov introduces The Black Russian— his new biography of a forgotten African American who led an extraordinary life in Russia and Turkey at the beginning of the twentieth century. The story of this book began six years ago, … Read MoreRussia’s Black Entertainment Empresario: The Remarkable Saga of Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas (Frederick Bruce Thomas)
Simon Lamont Estes is a prominent and critically acclaimed African American opera singer. He has made singing appearances before six U.S. presidents, including Barack Obama, numerous other presidents and world leaders, and dignitaries such as Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He has appeared in … Read MoreSimon Estes (1938- )
Jefferson August Beaver, banker, businessman, local politician, and civil rights activist, was born in Warren, Arkansas on May 20, 1908 to parents Rev. Robert Jefferson Beaver, a minister with the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and Ethel Jordan. Beaver’s family resided in Monticello, Arkansas before … Read MoreJefferson A. Beaver (1908-1991)
In August 1955 at the age of 20, Raven Wilkinson became the first African American woman to receive a contract to dance full time with a major ballet company, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo of New York City. She was promoted to soloist during … Read MoreAnne Raven Wilkinson (1935-2018)
Desmond Power, a third-generation British subject born in Tientsin (now Tianjin), China in 1923, was incarcerated along with 1,500 other foreign nationals in 1943 in Weihsien, a Japanese Prisoner of War camp in North China during World War II. In the article below, Power recalls … Read MoreJazz in Occupied China: Black Jazzmen at the Japanese Prison Camp in Weihsien, China during World War II
Roger Sauvage was one the few pilots of African descent to fly in both the French and Russian Air Forces in World War II. Sauvage was born in Paris on March 26, 1917, the son of a white Frenchwoman, Marie Sauvage, and a black soldier … Read MoreRoger Sauvage (1917-1977)
Today the phrase “Uncle Tom” evokes a powerfully negative image in American society. It depicts a weak, subservient, cringing black man who betrays his race and its struggle for liberation. David Reynolds, an English professor in the Graduate School of the City University of New … Read MoreUncle Tom Revisited: Rescuing the Real Character from the Caricature
