Floyd C. Covington was a leader in Los Angeles’s black community for more than fifty years. A native of Denver, Colorado, Covington endured many traumatic experiences during his childhood. The 1910 manuscript census indicates that Covington’s father did not live with his family. Covington’s mother … Read MoreFloyd C. Covington (1901-1989)
Philadelphia Dentist John S. Rock would eventually become a medical doctor and attorney who in 1865 would become the first African American lawyer to argue a case before the United States Supreme Court. In 1850, however, he was also an abolitionist and civil rights activist. … Read More(1850) John S. Rock, “Address to the Citizens of New Jersey”
Although he has served as a public school teacher, attorney, and Michigan State Supreme Court Justice, Dennis Archer is best know as the Mayor of Detroit and the first African American to become president of the American Bar Association. Born on January 1, 1942 in … Read MoreDennis Archer (1942- )
David N. Dinkins is best known as the first and, so far, only black mayor of New York City. In November 1989, he defeated his challenger, former federal prosecutor Rudolph (Rudy) Giuliani, to become the first African American mayor of New York City. Giuliani. in … Read MoreDavid N. Dinkins (1927-2020)
Lee Patrick Brown, known as “The Father of Community Policing,” became the first African American Mayor of Houston, Texas in 1997. Brown was born to sharecropper parents Andrew and Zelma Brown in the town of Wewoka, Oklahoma in 1937. He received a B.A. in criminology … Read MoreLee P. Brown (1937- )
Reverend Emanuel Cleaver II, born in Waxahachie, Texas in 1944, is best known as the first African American mayor of Kansas City, Missouri. Cleaver, who grew up in a public housing project in Wichita Falls, Texas, graduated from Prairie View A & M University in … Read MoreEmanuel Cleaver (1944- )
Best known as the first African American Mayor of Philadelphia, Woodrow Wilson Goode was born in 1938 into a family of tenant farmers near the town of Seaboard, North Carolina. Goode moved to Philadelphia with his family in 1954. In 1961, he received a B.A. … Read MoreW. Wilson Goode (1938- )
Kenneth Allen Gibson, the first African American mayor of Newark, New Jersey, was born in 1931 in the town of Enterprise, Alabama. He graduated from high school in Enterprise in 1950 and joined the U.S. Army as a civil engineer. He remained in the Army … Read MoreKenneth A. Gibson (1931- )
Alphonso Michael Espy in 1986 became the first black Congressman elected from Mississippi since John R. Lynch, who served during Reconstruction. He was also the first African American to hold the post of Secretary of Agriculture. Mike Espy was born in Yazoo City, Mississippi. He … Read MoreMike Espy (1953- )
Dempsey Jerome Travis is a civil rights activist, business leader, military veteran, and author. From the inception of his first realty company to his time serving three presidential administrations, Travis has served in both local and national theaters of private and civic life. Born 1920 … Read MoreDempsey Jerome Travis (1920- )
