Melvin Luther Watt is a politician (Democrat) who has been the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency since 2014. Watt, a former member of the United States House of Representatives, was born on August 26, 1945 in the small community of Steele Creek in Mecklenburg … Read MoreMelvin L. Watt (1945- )
Currently in his 13th term in Congress, Edolphus Towns is a Democratic Representative from the State of New York. Towns was born in Chadbourn, North Carolina on July 21, 1934, and attended the public schools of Chadbourn before graduating with a B.S. degree from North … Read MoreEdolphus Towns (1934- )
Rep. John Lewis was a U.S. Congressman and civil rights icon, who chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from 1963 to 1966. He was a Democrat who represented Georgia’s 5th Congressional District from 1987 until his death in 2020. John Robert Lewis was born in … Read MoreJohn Lewis (1940-2020)
James Enos Clyburn was born in Sumter, South Carolina on July 21, 1940 to parents Enos and Almeta Clyburn. James Clyburn’s father was a minister and his mother was a cosmetologist. In 1957 James Clyburn graduated from Mather Academy located in Camden, South Carolina. Four … Read MoreJames Enos Clyburn (1940- )
Hand-picked by his American Express predecessor, CEO Harvey Golub, to lead the company upon Golub’s retirement, Kenneth Chenault is an attorney and the CEO and chairman of American Express. Named one of the fifty most powerful African American executives by Fortune magazine in 2001, Chenault … Read MoreKenneth Irvine Chenault (1951- )
Charles Vernon Johnson was an influential member of the Seattle African American community from the moment he moved out west in 1954 to attend law school at the University of Washington. Johnson, originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, was one of a few black graduate students … Read MoreCharles V. Johnson (1928- )
A marine biologist, academic, and administrator, Samuel Milton Nabrit was born in Macon, Georgia, to James Madison Nabrit and Gertrude West on February 21, 1905. Upon completing his elementary and high school education, he entered Morehouse College in 1921. There he earned the B.S. degree … Read MoreSamuel Milton Nabrit (1905-2003)
H. Claude Hudson was an important civil rights and business leader in two different cities: Shreveport, Louisiana, and Los Angeles. Hudson was born in Louisiana in 1886. He studied at Wiley College, in Marshall, Texas, and earned a degree from the dentistry school at Howard … Read MoreH. Claude Hudson (1886-1989)
E. Burton Ceruti was a prominent attorney and one of the founders of the Los Angeles branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Ceruti was born on August 14, 1875, in Nassau, the Bahamas. He moved to the United States when … Read MoreE. Burton Ceruti (1875-1927)
Recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, attorney Oliver White Hill spent more than 60 years in a practice devoted to civil rights causes. He was in the forefront of the legal effort to desegregate public schools, participating in the … Read MoreOliver W. Hill (1907-2007)
