Jack Tanner was born in Tacoma, Washington in 1919. His father, Ernie Tanner, was a respected local leader in the Tacoma local of the International Longshoremen’s Union, an organization that Jack Tanner eventually joined when he worked on the city’s docks. Before joining the union, … Read MoreJack Tanner (1919-2006)
James Everett Chase, businessman and politician, was born the youngest of seven children in Wharton, Texas in 1914. He attended high school in Ballinger, Texas. During the Great Depression, Chase became an enrollee at a Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) camp in El Paso. Upon completion … Read MoreJames E. Chase (1914-1987)
W.E.B. Du Bois would eventually emerge as a founder of the NAACP, a leading human rights activists and the most important African American intellectual of the 20th Century. However those developments lay in the future when the 32-year-old DuBois gave the closing address at the … Read More(1900) W.E.B. Du Bois, “To the Nations of the World”
Daniel Webster (80 John) Wallace, born a slave in Victoria County, Texas, on September 15, 1860, did not like farm work, and ran away to become a cowboy. Daniel worked for a number of ranchers in east-central Texas, but it was through his work as … Read MoreDaniel Webster Wallace (1860-1939)
In January 1901, at the beginning of a new century, George H. White was ending his term as a Congressman from North Carolina’s Second Congressional District. Realizing that he was bringing to a close a thirty two year period when nearly forty Southern African Americans … Read More(1901) Congressman George H. White’s Farewell Address To Congress
John Willis Menard, (1838-1893) was the first African American elected to Congress when on November 3, 1868 he received the majority of votes to fill the unexpired term of Louisiana Second District Congressman James Mann. On the strength of the vote Menard went to Washington … Read More(1869) John Willis Menard, “Speech Before the United States House of Representatives”
When James Lynch gave the speech that appears below, his great achievements lay in the future. Born in Baltimore in 1839, Lynch at the age of 24 went to South Carolina as one of the first A.M.E. missionaries to the freedmen and women. From 1866 … Read More(1865) James Lynch, “Colored Men Standing in the Way of their Own Race”
On January 13, 1864, Frederick Douglass was invited to deliver a speech before the Woman’s Loyal League at the Cooper Institute in New York City. He used the occasion to add his voice to the ongoing debate about the mission and meaning of the Civil … Read More(1864) Frederick Douglass “The Mission Of The War”
York was an African American slave best known for his participation in the (Meriwether) Lewis and (William) Clark Expedition of 1804-1806. York was born in Caroline County, Virginia in 1770. York, his father, mother (Rose), and younger sister and brother (Nancy and Juba) were all … Read MoreYork (1770-1832)
Wysinger v. Crookshank is the first case that rendered school segregation of African Americans in California contrary to the law. On October 1, 1888, 58-year-old Edmond Wysinger, a former slave who bought his freedom working in the California mines, moved to Visalia, California. When he … Read MoreWysinger v. Crookshank, 1888
