Caterina Jarboro was born one of three children in Wilmington, North Carolina, to an American Indian mother and a black father who was a local barber. She was christened Katherine Lee Yarborough at St. Thomas Catholic Church in Wilmington. She received elementary school education at … Read MoreCaterina Jarboro (1903-1986)
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)
Charles Lewis was a sailor and soldier during the American Revolutionary War. Lewis was born sometime around 1760 in Spotsylvania County, Virginia on Bel Aire, the Lewis Family Plantation owned by John Lewis. John and a free mulatto woman, Josephine Lewis, were the parents of … Read MoreCharles Lewis (ca. 1760-1833)
Image Ownership: Fair Use William Francis Yardley was a politician, businessman, lawyer, and civil rights advocate in post-Civil War Tennessee. Born free on January 8, 1844 to an Irish mother and a black father in Knoxville, Tennessee, he was abandoned at the doorstep of the … Read MoreWilliam Francis Yardley (1844-1924)
Charley Patton, born in Hinds County, Mississippi near the town of Edwards, is by consensus the Father of Delta blues and one of the most important American musicians of the 20th century. Legendary bluesmen Son House, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, … Read MoreCharley Patton (1891-1934)
Walter Mosley, a prominent African American novelist who specializes in criminal mystery fiction, was born on January 15, 1952 in Los Angeles to Ella and Leroy Mosley. Mosley was born in Watts but grew up from age 12 in relatively affluent West Los Angeles. Mosley’s … Read MoreWalter Mosley (1952- )
Lewis Leary was one of several Black men who were killed during John Brown’s raid on the Harpers Ferry arsenal in October 1859. It was a defining moment in African American history. Born Sherrard Lewis Leary (sometimes referred to as Lewis Sheridan Leary), he was … Read MoreSherrard Lewis Leary (1835-1859)
Stephen Bonga was part of a prosperous Minnesota fur trading family, the first African American residents of that state. Fluent in Native American languages, Stephen and his brothers traveled as translators and voyageurs throughout the upper Great Lakes region of the Midwest. Bonga was born … Read MoreStephen Bonga (1799-1884)
The area of South Texas known as the Lower Rio Grande Valley became in the period between the U.S. Civil War and World War I one of the few regions south of the Mason-Dixon Line where racial miscegenation laws were frequently challenged. As a consequence … Read MoreBorder Love on the Rio Grande: African American Men and Latinas in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas (1850-1940)
