Scholar and historian Helen Grey Edmonds was the first African American woman to earn a doctoral degree from Ohio State University and the first black woman to second the nomination for a candidate for President of the United States. Edmonds was born December 3, 1911 … Read MoreHelen Grey Edmonds (1911-1995)
Milton Arthur Galamison, minister and civil rights activist, was the leader of New York City’s school integration movement in the 1960s. Born and raised in Philadelphia, where he experienced poverty and hostile racial relations that influenced his later activism, Galamison received a B.A. with honors … Read MoreMilton A. Galamison (1923-1988)
Samuel DuBois Cook is a retired Dillard University president and, with his appointment to the Duke University faculty in 1966, was the first African American professor to hold a regular faculty appointment at any predominantly white college or university in the South. Cook also served … Read MoreSamuel DuBois Cook (1928- )
Political activist Kathryn Magnolia Johnson was born on December 15, 1878 in Darke County, Ohio. She was the daughter of Walter and Lucinda Jane McCown Johnson. Kathryn Johnson graduated at the top of her high school class in New Paris, Ohio in 1895 and worked … Read MoreKathryn Magnolia Johnson (1878-1955)
Franklin D. Burgess’s remarkable life as a star basketball player at Gonzaga University and a Federal Judge in Western Washington earned him the description “a legend on two courts.” Franklin Burgess was born on March 9, 1935 in Eudora, Arkansas. Raised with seven siblings, he … Read MoreFranklin D. Burgess (1935-2010)
When thirty-year-old Katie Barton followed her husband to the small town of Pasco in Washington State in 1948, she did not foresee that she would embark on a life of fighting for black equality and serving her community, nor did she envision becoming the first … Read MoreKatie D. Morgan Barton (1918-2010)
Benjamin L. Hooks is most notably known for serving as leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1977 to 1992. Born on January 31, 1925 in Memphis, Tennessee to Robert and Bessie White Hooks, he was the fifth of … Read MoreBenjamin L. Hooks (1925-2010)
William H. Wilson established The Northwest Enterprise, a Seattle, Washington weekly newspaper for the African American community, in 1920 and continued to be its editor until 1935. He also served as a board member of Seattle’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of … Read MoreWilliam H. Wilson (?-?)
Lucile Bluford was a pioneering black journalist who sought to integrate the University of Missouri in 1939, shortly after the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) test case centering on Lloyd Gaines, Gaines v. Canada, stalled when Gaines mysteriously disappeared. Although Bluford … Read MoreLucile Bluford (1911-2003)
Minister and civil rights activist Robert W. Bagnall served as Director of Branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) during the organization’s first significant period of growth in the early 20th century. A graduate of Bishop Payne Divinity School in … Read MoreRobert W. Bagnall Jr.(1883-1943)
