Elijah McCoy, one of the two most prolific black inventors of the 19th Century (the other was Granville T. Woods), was born on May 2, 1843 in Colchester, Ontario, Canada to runaway slave parents who used the Underground Railroad to escape. Once the McCoy family … Read MoreElijah McCoy (1843-1929)
Patrick Healy was one of the successful Healy siblings of the early 19th century who openly acknowledged being of part African or black ancestry. Known as the first American of acknowledged African descent to earn a doctorate, Patrick Healy was also the first African American … Read MorePatrick Healy (1834-1910)
Martin Robison Delany was an African American abolitionist, the first African American Field Officer in the U.S Army, and one of the earliest African Americans to encourage a return to Africa. Delany was born in Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia) to a slave father … Read MoreMartin Robison Delany (1812-1885)
Born a free person of color in New Orleans, Thomy Lafon was the son of a Frenchman and a free woman of Haitian descent who had been born in Louisiana to a slave mother. Lafon’s father deserted the family when Lafon was a young boy. … Read MoreThomy Lafon (1810-1893)
William Chase was born in 1854 to a free black family in Washington, D.C. Chase was raised in integrated neighborhoods and attended local area schools including Howard University Law School. Chase combined the practice of law with journalism for most of his career and was … Read MoreWilliam Calvin Chase (1854-1921)
A native of Tuskegee, Alabama, Nathaniel Oglesby Calloway was a pioneer in the field of chemistry. As a child growing up in Tuskegee, he spent time with George Washington Carver, a well-known soil chemist and faculty member at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University). In 1930, … Read MoreNathaniel Oglesby Calloway (1907-1979)
A native of Montgomery, Alabama and grandson of slaves, Percy Lavon Julian, born April 11, 1899, was a trailblazer in the chemical sciences. His parents Elizabeth Lena Adams, a school teacher, and James Sumner Julian, a railroad mail clerk who loved mathematics, raised six children, … Read MorePercy Lavon Julian (1899-1975)
James Augustine Healy was the first born of ten children to Michael and Mary Eliza Healy on April 6, 1830 on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Michael Healy was a former Irish soldier who immigrated to America. He became a planter after the war of … Read MoreJames Augustine Healy (1830-1900)
By 1994 Colin Powell, the son of a Jamaica-born Harlem merchant, had already served as National Security Adviser to President George Herbert Walker Bush and chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Persian Gulf War. He would become the first African American Secretary … Read More(1994) General Colin Powell Urges African American Students to Reject Racial Hatred
