The Richmond-Petersburg campaign was a series of battles around Petersburg, Virginia during the third year of the Civil War. The campaign consisted of nine months of trench warfare in which Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant, General George C. Meade, and Major General … Read MoreThe Battle of the Crater, Petersburg, Virginia (June 15-18, 1864)
The Second Ivorian Civil War was a five-month conflict in the west African country of the Ivory Coast (also known as Côte d’Ivoire) between 2010 and 2011. The main belligerents of the conflict were the military of the Ivory Coast, led by President Laurent Gbagbo … Read MoreSecond Ivorian Civil War (2010-2011)
Henry Davis Green was an anti-slavery activist (abolitionist) who was a participant in the Christiana Resistance (also known as the Christiana Riot) of 1851, the largest and most violent antebellum response to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Green, a teamster by occupation, was born … Read MoreHenry Davis Green (1827-1911)
Image Ownership: Public Domain Russell Simmons, a multimillionaire who is estimated to be the third wealthiest man in the Hip-Hop industry, just behind Jay-Z and Sean “Diddy” Combs, was born on October 4, 1957 in Queens, New York City. His parents were Damian Simmons, … Read MoreRussell Simmons (1957– )
Rennie Harris, hip hop dancer, artist, teacher, artistic director, choreographer, and founder of Rennie Harris Puremovement (RHPM), was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1963. At the age of 15, Harris began teaching workshops and classes at universities around the country, educating the public of the … Read MoreLorenzo “Rennie” Harris (1963- )
The Last Poets, a group of musicians and poet performers, originated out of the civil rights movement, with an emphasis on the black re-awakening. The original Last Poets were founded on Malcolm X’s birthday, May 19, 1968 at the former Mount Morris Park (Now Marcus … Read MoreThe Last Poets (1968- )
Rap Music, and the culture that surrounds rapping itself, hip-hop, is a genre of music and a lifestyle which originated in the housing projects of New York City, New York in the late 1970s but which now has global influence. While not without controversy and … Read MoreRap/Hip Hop
One of hip-hop culture’s most influential pioneers, Afrika Bambaataa was the first to articulate an ideology for the emerging youth culture, using the music to illustrate hip-hop’s expansive potential as a global movement. As a DJ and recording artist, Bambaataa embraced every musical genre to … Read MoreAfrika Bambaataa (1957- )
Although he will more than likely be remembered best for releasing “The Message,” the first rap song to delve into social commentary about the plight of African Americans in the inner-city, Grandmaster Flash was also the original technological virtuoso of the early hip-hop movement to … Read MoreGrandmaster Flash/Joseph Saddler (1958- )
In 1853, the Lumbee Indians, a triracial people who are descendants of several southeastern Indian tribes, whites, and African Americans, named themselves after the Lumber River, which flows through their homeland in North Carolina. According to the Lumbee historian Adolph Dial, they are also descended … Read MoreHenry Berry Lowry (ca. 1846-1872)
