Who are they: Amanda S. C. Gorman is a poet and activist. In 2017 she became the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate. In 2021 at the Presidential Inauguration of President Joe Biden, she read her poem “The Hill We Climb.” Why … Read MoreAmanda S. C. Gorman (1998- ) [Children’s Edition]
Poet and activist Amanda S. C. Gorman was born on March 7, 1998, in Los Angeles, California. She has an older brother, Spencer, and a twin sister, Gabrielle. All three were raised by single mother Joan Wicks, a sixth grade English Teacher. Amanda was born … Read MoreAmanda S. C. Gorman (1998- )
Diplomat, Historian, Poet, Frenise Avedis Logan, Sr. was born September 30, 1920, in Albany, Georgia but grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. Both of his parents were educators and he had one brother. In 1938, Logan enrolled in Fisk University and participated in basketball, tennis, track … Read MoreFrenise Avedis Logan, Sr. (1920-1995)
Dominga de la Cruz-Becerril, socialist, lecturer, poet, and declamadora, was born April 22, 1909 in Bueno Aires, Ponce, Puerto Rico (PR) to Catalina Becerril of Fajardo and Domingo Clarillo Cruz of Ponce. Reared in Mayagüez, both parents and godparents died while she was a pre-teen. … Read MoreDominga Cruz-Becerril (1909-1981)
Yvonne Denis-Rosario, columnist, librettist, narrator, novelist, poet, professor, radio/ TV host and producer, was born March 9, 1967 in San Juan, Puerto Rico (PR) to Alejandrina Rosario Román, a public employee, and Juan Denis Estrada, a dry cleaning business owner. One of seven siblings, her … Read MoreYvonne Denis-Rosario, (1967- )
Jesús Abraham “Tato” Laviera Sánchez, community activist, poet, declamador, playwright, author, and “a chronicler of life in El Barrio,” was born May 9, 1951 in Santurce, Puerto Rico to Maria Sánchez Ramos, an embroiderer, and Pablo Laviera Ramírez, a political nationalist, bricklayer, and contactor. Laviera … Read MoreTato Laviera (1951-2013)
Julia de Burgos was a celebrated literary icon of the Americas whose themes of Blackness, feminism, love, migration, nationalism, and nature helped birth the 1960s Nuyorican movement. Julia Constanza Burgos García, teacher, activist, journalist, and poet, was born February 17, 1914 in Santa Cruz, Carolina, … Read MoreJulia de Burgos (1914-1953)
A professor, poet, and playwright of English, Dutch, and African descent, Derek Walcott was a 1981 MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant recipient who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992. Born on January 23, 1930 to Warwick, a civil servant, and Alix Maarlin Walcott, an … Read MoreDerek Walcott (1930-2017)
In June of 1932, poet Langston Hughes, political activist Louise Thompson, and 22 other African American artists, filmmakers, and actors, traveled to the Soviet Union (USSR) to create a film about African American life in the American south. The film, aptly titled Black and White, was to focus on the many examples of racial discrimination … Read MoreLangston Hughes’ Visit to the Soviet Union (1932-1933)
Luis Gonzaga Pinto da Gama (Luis Gama) was a Brazilian poet, journalist, legal activist, abolitionist leader, and former slave. He was born in 1830, a free mulatto in Salvador, the capital of Brazil’s Bahia province. His mother, Luisa Mahin, was a black woman from Ghana … Read MoreLuis Gama (1830-1882)
