Poet, novelist, playwright, librettist, essayist, and translator, James Mercer Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902, to parents Caroline (Carrie) Mercer Langston, a school teacher, and James Nathaniel Hughes, an attorney. His parents separated before Langston was born and he spent … Read MoreLangston Hughes (1902-1967)
A radical theoretician, anti-colonialist, labor organizer, and civil rights activist, Harry Haywood was one of the most prominent and influential African American Communists of the twentieth century. Haywood, the son of former slaves, was born in South Omaha, Nebraska in 1898. He migrated to Chicago … Read MoreHarry Haywood (1898-1985)
Charles Hamilton Houston, a renowned civil rights attorney, is widely recognized as the architect of the civil rights strategy that led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education. He was also a mentor to Thurgood Marshall who successfully litigated the … Read MoreCharles Hamilton Houston (1895-1950)
The Cuban leader Antonio Maceo Grajales is considered the “most popular leader of the nationalist movement.” Maceo was the son of a Venezuelan mulatto and an Afro-Cuban woman. He joined the independence movement in 1868. During the thirty year period of the Cuban War, he … Read MoreAntonio Maceo Grajales (1845-1896)
Veteran of the Spanish Civil War and World War II, Walter Garland was born in New York City on 27 November 1913. After serving in the U.S. Army for two years, he enrolled at Brooklyn College where he studied mathematics. Garland joined the Communist Party … Read MoreWalter Benjamin Stephen Garland (1913-197?)
Born 13 July 1913 in Akron, Ohio, Salaria Kee was orphaned in her infancy and raised by family and friends. After high school, she resolved to become a nurse but was denied by three nursing schools on account of her race. Leveraging connections to Eleanor … Read MoreSalaria Kee O’Reilly (1913-1991)
Spanish Civil War veteran and militant poet Ramón Durem was born in Seattle, Washington, in 1915 of mixed heritage. Leaving home at fourteen, he briefly served in the U.S. Navy before suffering a leg injury that forced his discharge. He then worked as a laborer … Read MoreRamón Durem (1915-1963)
Trinidad-born dental surgeon and Spanish Civil War veteran Arnold Donowa was born on December 1895 in Trinidad. Very little is known about his childhood there but by the early 1920s he was living in the United States and earned his D.D.S. from Howard University in … Read MoreArnold Bennett Donowa (1896-1964)
