Willie Melton was a farmer and a Civil Rights pioneer in Fort Bend, Texas, responsible for helping to settle what is now known as Kendleton, Fort Bend County, Texas. Melton was born on November 8, 1900, in Fort Bend, a county that in its origins … Read MoreWillie Melton (1900-1969)
James Edwards was one of the most successful African American homesteaders in the state of Wyoming. Born in Ohio on February 14, 1871, local tradition in Wyoming suggests that prior to venturing west, Edwards had served in an African American cavalry unit in Cuba, though … Read MoreJames Edwards (1871-1951)
The Langston City Herald was a black newspaper based in the Oklahoma Territory but with circulation throughout the South. The paper was founded and edited by Edwin and Sarah McCabe in 1890 soon after they relocated from Kansas to the Oklahoma Territory. Because its readership … Read MoreLangston City Herald
Peyton Colony was a freedmen’s community established in 1865 by Peyton Roberts (c.1820-1888), an ex-slave who migrated to Caldwell County, Texas. Roberts was born enslaved on the William Roberts Plantation in Virginia. Roberts and several families on the Roberts Plantation gained their freedom at the … Read MorePeyton Colony, Texas (1865- )
James “Jim” Kelly, born in Williamson County, Texas, was the son of manumitted slaves, “Uncle Amos” and “Aunt Phoebe” Kelly, who had belonged to the Olive clan, a family of powerful Texas cattlemen. After 1865 Kelly worked for Isom Prentice (Print) Olive, a former Confederate … Read MoreJames Kelly (ca. 1839-1912)
John Grant Pegg was born around 1869 in Virginia. He began his career in about 1890 as a Pullman porter, working out of Chicago. It was there that he met Mary Charlotte Page of Kansas, a seamstress. After their marriage they moved to Omaha, Nebraska … Read MoreJohn Grant Pegg (1869-1916)
Born into slavery on a plantation in Tennessee, George Washington Woodbey was largely self-educated and as young man supported himself as a miner and factory worker before becoming an ordained minister in 1874, and pastoring churches in Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. By the mid-1880s Woodbey, … Read MoreGeorge Washington Woodbey (1854-?)
Born in 1912, Ava Speese (Day) traveled with her family in 1915 to homestead in Cherry County, Nebraska. Taking advantage of the Kincaid Homestead Act of 1904, the Speese family, Charles and Rosetta Meehan Speese and their nine children, were among forty African American families … Read MoreAva Speese Day (1912-1988)
