Mary Frances Berry is a scholar, professor, author, and civil rights activist who served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Berry was born in Nashville, Tennessee on February 17, 1938 to parents Frances Southall Berry and George Ford Berry. Due to her mother’s poverty … Read MoreMary Frances Berry (1938- )
Yosef Ben-Jochannan was an Afrocentric historian whose work is focused mainly on black presence in ancient Egypt. He contends in his writings that the pharaohs came out of the heart of Africa and that the original Jews were from Ethiopia and were black Africans, and … Read MoreYosef Ben-Jochannan (1918-2015)
Scholar and historian Helen Grey Edmonds was the first African American woman to earn a doctoral degree from Ohio State University and the first black woman to second the nomination for a candidate for President of the United States. Edmonds was born December 3, 1911 … Read MoreHelen Grey Edmonds (1911-1995)
W.E.B. DuBois once lauded Dantès Bellegarde as the “International Spokesman of Black Folk” for his active career as a Haitian diplomat, historian, and advocate for the ending of United States’ occupation of Haiti. Louis-Dantès Bellegarde was born on May 18, 1877 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He … Read MoreDantès Bellegarde (1877-1966)
Bernice Johnson Reagon, singer/ composer, cultural historian, author, and producer, was born on October 4, 1942 in Dougherty County, Georgia, to Reverend Jessie Johnson and Beatrice Johnson. The third child of eight, she began singing at the age of five in her father’s church. As … Read MoreBernice Johnson Reagon (1942- )
Pioneering black reporter and historian Delilah Leonium Beasley was born in Cincinnati, Ohio around 1867 in what was then a small but thriving African American community. Beasley attended the city’s segregated public schools and by her teenage years, started publishing short social reports on the … Read MoreDelilah Leonium Beaseley (ca. 1867-1934)
The self-trained historian and journalist Drusilla Dunjee Houston was born in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia in 1876. Her parents were Rev. John William and Lydia Taylor Dunjee. Drusilla’s younger brother Roscoe was a journalist and Civil Rights activist in Oklahoma City. In 1915 he founded … Read MoreDrusilla Dunjee Houston (1876-1941)
Lerone Bennett Jr., historian of African America, has authored articles, poems, short stories, and over nine books on African American history. Bennett was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi the son of Lerone Bennett Sr. and Alma Reed. He and his family moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where … Read MoreLerone Bennett (1928-2018)
Noted historian, scholar, and educator Benjamin Author Quarles was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 23, 1904. His father Arthur Benedict Quarles was a subway porter, and his mother Margaret O’Brien Quarles was a homemaker. In his twenties, Quarles enrolled at Shaw University in Raleigh, … Read MoreBenjamin A. Quarles (1904-1996)
Image Ownership: Public Domain John Henrik Clarke, historian, black nationalist, and Pan-Africanist, was a pioneer in the formation of Africana studies in the United States. Principally a self-trained historian, Clarke dedicated his life to correcting what he argued was the prevailing view that people of … Read MoreJohn Henrik Clarke (1915-1998)
