Alan Gilbert, University of Denver political scientist and anti-racist activist, is the author of Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence, one of the few works that examines the free and enslaved blacks who joined the American Patriots and the … Read MoreFighting for Freedom on Both Sides of the American Revolution
Grace Bumbry was one of the most successful opera singers of the late 20th century. She had a long career as a performer, spanning over four decades. A Grammy-award-winning mezzo-soprano and the first Black singer to perform at the Bayreuth festival in Germany. Bumbry, along … Read MoreGrace Bumbry (1937-2023)
Clements Kadalie, an early South African trade unionist and political activist, was born in April 1896 in Nkhata Bay District in Nyasaland (now Malawi). Kadalie was the younger of the two sons born to Mr. and Mrs. Musa Kadalie Muwamba. In 1913, Kadalie graduated from … Read MoreClements Kadalie (1896-1951)
Jonas Malheiro Savimbi, Angolan insurgent fighter and longtime leader of The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), was born in Munhango, Angola on August 3, 1934 to Helena Mbundu Savimbi and Loth Savimbi. Savimbi’s father was a railway stationmaster and part-time Protestant … Read MoreJonas Malheiro Savimbi (1934-2002)
Legendary opera star Mattiwilda Dobbs, was born July 11, 1925 in Atlanta, Georgia. Although she was the fifth of six daughters and her father worked as a mail clerk, he was able to provide her and all of her sisters with a college education. Dobbs … Read MoreMattiwilda Dobbs (1925-2015)
Debi Thomas is a figure skater and physician, and the first African American woman to win a medal in the Winter Olympics. Thomas was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1967 and first started skating around the age of five. However she did not get … Read MoreDebi Thomas (1967- )
Professional tennis player Venus Williams was born June 17, 1980 in Lynnwood, California. She is the daughter of Richard Williams and Oracene Price. Both parents coached Venus and her younger sister, Serena, who is also a top-ranked professional tennis player. Venus Williams, the second youngest … Read MoreVenus Ebony Starr Williams (1980- )
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and eight-time Grammy Award-winning singer Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in Nutbush, Haywood, County, Tennessee. The youngest daughter of a family of sharecroppers, Turner’s father, Floyd Richard Bullock, was an African American … Read MoreTina Turner (1939-2023)
By the 1970s Lucy Mvubelo had become a powerful force in the black South African Labor Union Movement. Born in Johannesburg in 1920 she first joined the Garment Workers Union in 1946 and eventually became the first black woman on the National Executive Council of … Read More(1973) Lucy Mvubelo, “My Plea to the International Labor Organization”
