Image Ownership: Public domain Lusia “Lucy” Harris, a former American basketball player, is considered to be one of the pioneers of women’s basketball. She played for Delta State University in Mississippi and won a silver medal with the U.S. Women’s Basketball Team in the 1976 … Read MoreLusia Harris (1955- )
“Image Ownership:Public Domain” Orlando Ashford is the president of Holland America Line. He assumed this position in December 2014. Holland America Line was founded in 1873, and until 1989, it was a Dutch-owned passenger and cargo shipping line operating primarily between the Netherlands and North America. In 1989 … Read MoreOrlando Ashford (1968– )
On November 8, 2016, Kamala Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate from California, becoming the second African American woman to sit in that body after Carol Mosely-Braun of Illinois was elected to represent Illinois 24 years earlier in 1992. Before her election to the … Read MoreKamala Devi Harris (1964– )
“Image Ownership: Public Domain” African American artist and dancer Thelma Johnson Streat was born in Yakima, Washington on August 29, 1912, the second of Gertrude Beatrice Carson and James A. Johnson’s five children. Streat’s artistic ability was evident at a young age. She graduated from … Read MoreThelma Beatrice Johnson Streat (1912-1959)
“Image Ownership: Public Domain” Career Foreign Service Officer Bernadette Mary Allen was commissioned into the U.S. diplomatic service in January 1980. Twenty-five years later, on October 26, 2005, President George W. Bush appointed Allen to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Niger. She … Read MoreBernadette Mary Allen (1955- )
Image Ownership: Public Domain Canadian entrepreneur Viola Desmond was arrested in 1946 for refusing to leave a segregated section of a Nova Scotia movie theatre. She was physically injured by police in the incident but was convicted and fined by local courts. She was posthumously … Read MoreViola Davis Desmond (1914-1965)
Born into slavery in Charleston, South Carolina on June 29, 1849, William J. Simmons served as the second president of what would later become Simmons College of Kentucky between 1880 and 1890. He was also a prominent historian and biographer of African American men. Simmons’s … Read MoreWilliam J. Simmons (1849-1890)
Image Ownership: Public Domain Michael Norman Manley, longtime prime minister of Jamaica, was born December 10, 1924 in the suburbs of Kingston, Jamaica to a well-off family. His father, Norman Manley, was a lawyer and political activist in Jamaica and considered by many to be … Read MoreMichael Norman Manley (1924-1997)
Sister Eliza Healy was both an educator and noted first African American Mother Superior of a Catholic convent. Healy was born on a plantation near Macon, Georgia on December 23, 1846 to a white father, Michael Morris Healy and one of his mulatto slaves, Eliza … Read MoreEliza [Sister Mary Magdalen] Healy (1846-1918)
Willie O’Ree, the National Hockey League’s (NHL) first black player, is an African–Canadian, born on October 15, 1935, in Fredricton, New Brunswick. He began skating at an early age and quickly developed into one of the best players in eastern Canada. O’Ree joined the Quebec … Read MoreWillie O’Ree (1935- )