Lester Walton was a journalist, entertainment professional, and diplomat who promoted civil rights at home and abroad. Born Lester Aglar Walton on April 20, 1882 in St. Louis, Missouri, his early life was spent as a journalist. At the age of 20 in 1902, when … Read MoreLester Aglar Walton (1882-1965)
Bestselling author, journalist, and public intellectual Malcolm Gladwell was born in Fareham, Hampshire in southern England on September 3, 1963, the second son of Graham Gladwell, a British mathematics professor, and Joyce Nation, a psychotherapist from Jamaica. The couple first met at University College in … Read MoreMalcolm Gladwell (1963- )
Acclaimed African writer Bessie Head was born on July 6, 1937, at Fort Napier Mental Institution in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Her mother, Bessie Amelia Emery (from the wealthy South African Birch family) had suffered from mental illness and was confined there at the time. Bessie … Read MoreBessie Head (1937-1986)
Ted Poston, the first African American journalist to work at a mainstream newspaper, was born on July 4, 1906, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. His mother, Mollie Cox, died when he was ten and he was raised mostly by his eight older siblings, while his father, Ephraim, … Read MoreTed Poston (1906-1974)
As a generation of young African Americans broke new artistic and political ground in the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s, three thousand miles away in Los Angeles, Fay Jackson helped to fuel a similar, if less well known movement. Jackson and her friends, including future … Read MoreFay Jackson (1902-1988)
Charles Waddell Chesnutt was born the son of free black parents on June 20, 1858 in Cleveland, Ohio. His parents had recently moved to Cleveland from Fayetteville, North Carolina in response to the growing restrictions placed on free blacks in that slave state. By 1866, … Read MoreCharles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932)
