Raymond Pace Alexander, a prominent civil rights activist, jurist, and Harvard-trained attorney was born on October 19, 1897 in Philadelphia to a family of seven, His father, Hillard Boone Alexander, and his mother, Virginia Pace, both were former slaves who migrated to Philadelphia from Virginia … Read MoreRaymond Pace Alexander (1897-1974)
Born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1823, Mary Ann Shadd was a teacher, journalist, and outspoken leader of the Canadian emigration movement during the 1850s. Shadd grew up in an abolitionist household. She was the eldest child of Abraham Doras Shadd, a prosperous shoemaker and veteran … Read MoreMary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893)
George H. White served as a member of the fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth United States Congresses (March 4, 1897-March 3, 1901) from North Carolina’s Second Congressional District during what historian Rayford Logan has termed the nadir in race relations for the post-Reconstruction South. Born in Rosindale, … Read MoreGeorge Henry White (1852-1918)
A major figure in Harlem community politics and the Communist Party during the 1930s and 1940s, Benjamin Davis, Jr. was born into a prominent African American family in Atlanta, Georgia in 1903. He migrated north to Massachusetts to attend college at Amherst, where he was … Read MoreBenjamin Davis, Jr. (1903-1964)
