Sister Ethel Muhammad Sharrieff was the Supreme and National captain of the women’s auxiliary unit of the Nation of Islam (NOI) known as the MGT (Muslim Girls Training) between 1950 and 1975. She was the second child and oldest daughter of eight children born to … Read MoreSister Ethel Muhammad Sharrieff (1922-2002)
Thomas Detter, late 19th century black businessman, Methodist minister, and civil rights advocate, was one of the first black literary figures to emerge in the U.S. West. The son of a free stonemason, Detter was born near Washington, D.C. around 1830. Very little is known … Read MoreThomas Detter (ca. 1830-1891)
Wilfred DeFour was an aircraft technician and member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African American pilots and support personnel who were in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II. DeFour was born on April 12, 1918 in Colon, Panama to … Read MoreWilfred DeFour (1918-2018)
Entrepreneur and tech aficionado, Malcolm CasSelle, was one of the early pioneers in blockchain technology and Bitcoin development. Born March 22, 1970 on a farm near Allentown, Pennsylvania, CasSelle was the descendant of entrepreneurs including his grandfather who was a successful funeral home operator in … Read MoreMalcolm CasSelle (1970-2020)
Clara Belle Drisdale, the first African American to graduate from New Mexico State University, was born to sharecroppers Isaac and Carrie Melinda Moppins Drisdale in LaGrange, Texas on October 29, 1885. She was first educated in a one room country school house near LaGrange but … Read MoreClara Belle Drisdale Williams (1885-1994)
Barry Jenkins is a film director, writer, producer, and screenwriter. In 2016, he won the Academy Award for Best Picture for Moonlight as well as the Golden Globe Award. His screen adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel If Beale Street Could Talk received critical acclaim and … Read MoreBarry Jenkins (1979- )
Irene Amos Morgan Kirkaldy was a civil rights activist who won her 1946 U.S. Supreme Court case in Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, which declared interstate transport racial segregation to be unconstitutional, nearly a decade before the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Irene Amos was born … Read MoreIrene Morgan Kirkaldy (1917-2007)
Reby Cary, educator, community activist, politician, entrepreneur and World War II veteran, was born on September 9, 1920, in Fort Worth, Texas, to Reverend Smith and Maggie B. Cary. A graduate of I. M. Terrell High School in 1937, he received his Bachelor of Arts … Read MoreReby Cary (1920-2018)
Eugene Moszee was a civil rights activist in Seattle during the 1940s. Born in Floresville, Texas, in 1914, the first of ten children of illiterate farm laborers, Moszee moved to Seattle during the 1930s and by 1937 owned and operated his own Mobile gas station … Read MoreEugene Moszee (1914-1945)
Antonio Ramon Delgado is an attorney, business owner, former entertainer and the first person of African American or Hispanic descent to be elected to Congress from upstate New York. On January 3, 2019, he was sworn into the 116th United States Congress. A Democrat, he … Read MoreAntonio Delgado (1977- )
