Livingston Leroy Wingate was a Harlem civic leader and a state supreme court judge in Manhattan, New York. Wingate was born on September 2, 1915 in Timmonsville, South Carolina, a small town of two thousand residents. Wingate lived with his father, a barber, and his mother, who did domestic work. In … Read MoreLivingston Wingate (1915-1995)
Charles Warner Cansler was a railway mail clerk, lawyer, educator, and noted mathematician. He spent most of his life working to better the lives of African Americans in Eastern Tennessee by way of education. Some of his contributions included organizing the East Tennessee Association of Teachers in Colored Schools and … Read MoreCharles Warner Cansler (1871-1953)
Democratic representative of New York City, New York, Charles Bernard Rangel, first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1970 and retiring in 2017, served 46 years in Congress. Rangel was born in Brooklyn, New York City in 1930 to Blanche Mary Wharton and Ralph … Read MoreCharles Bernard Rangel (1930- )
Samuel W. Allen was an accomplished lawyer, translator, academic, and poet who wrote his African-inspired poetry under the pseudonym Paul Vesey. He was one of the first black poets to achieve significant recognition in Europe and the United States. Allen was born in Columbus, Ohio on December 9, 1917 to college-educated … Read MoreSamuel W. Allen (1917-2015)
In 1965, Cyril Michael became one of the first four judges to be elected in the newly instituted Municipal Court systems established in the United States Virgin Islands. Cyril Michael was born on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas, Danish West Indies to Andre and Wilhelmina Michael on January 22, 1898. He … Read MoreCyril Michael (1898-1978)
Michelle Denise Bernard is the President and CEO of the Bernard Center for Women, Politics, and Public Policy. Born on July 30, 1963 in Washington D.C., she is a graduate of Howard University, earning a BA in Philosophy and a minor in Political Science, and the Georgetown University Law Center, earning … Read MoreMichelle D. Bernard (1963- )
Scipio Africanus Jones was a prominent Arkansas African American defense attorney in the late 19th and early 20th century. He opposed Arkansas’s Jim Crow laws and successfully argued cases before the United States Supreme Court between 1913 and 1925. Known for his pro bono work for impoverished African American defendants, Jones … Read MoreScipio Africanus Jones (1863-1943)
Paula Mae Weekes is the current and sixth President of Trinidad and Tobago. With Weekes’s inauguration, Trinidad and Tobago becomes the only nation in Latin America and the Caribbean to currently have a woman head of state. Paula Mae Weekes was born in Trinidad and Tobago on December 23, 1958. … Read MorePaula Mae Weekes (1958- )
Apolinar Salcedo is a blind attorney and a former mayor of the city of Cali, Colombia, population 2.3 million. He was born in El Cerrito, Colombia, on February 22, 1955, the son of Luis Alfonso Salcedo, a cane cutter and tanner, and Zoraida Caicedo, a washerwoman. At age six he … Read MoreApolinar Salcedo Caicedo (1955- )
Wiley William Manuel, the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the State of California, was the son of a railroad dining car waiter, and a domestic worker. He was born on August 28, 1927 in an impoverished area of Oakland, California and attended public … Read MoreWiley W. Manuel (1927-1981)
