Islamic preacher, reformer, scholar, and statesman, Usman dan Fodio was born on December 15, 1754 in the village of Maratta, in the Hausa city-state of Gobir, in what is today northern Nigeria. He was a descendant of the early Fulani settlers in Hausaland in the … Read MoreUsman dan Fodio (1754-1817)
Haki R. Madhubuti is a poet, professor, and founder of Third World Press, the nation’s oldest publisher of Black thought and literature. Madhubuti was born Don L. Lee in Little Rock, Arkansas, on February 23, 1942. After a move to Detroit, his father abandoned the … Read MoreHaki R. Madhubuti (Don L. Lee) (1942- )
Akinwande Ouwole “Wole” Soyinka, the first African writer to win a Nobel Prize in Literature (1986) was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria on July 13, 1934. His father, Canon S.A. Soyinka, was an Anglican minister and his mother, Grace Eniola, was the daughter of an Anglican … Read MoreWole Soyinka (1934- )
20th Century poet Dudley Felker Randall was born January 14, 1914 in Washington D.C. He later moved to Detroit, Michigan. Born to Clyde and Ada Viola Randall, Dudley showed an interest in poetry at age four, writing lyrics to the song “Maryland, my Maryland” which … Read MoreDudley Randall (1914-2000)
Brenda Ray Moryck was a Washington, D.C.-based black writer and social activist often associated with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. While Moryck and her female peers did not receive as much mainstream public attention as did many black male artists, she published short stories, … Read MoreBrenda Ray Moryck (1894-1949)
James L. Walton is Tacoma, Washington’s first black city manager. Born in Dallas, the youngest of five children, he grew up in the small Texas town of Mineola. After high school graduation in 1959, he followed his brother, Willie Brown, who would become a prominent … Read MoreJames L. Walton (1939- )
William Stanley Braithwaite, the acclaimed poet and anthologist, was born in Boston on December 6, 1878. He was the second of five children born to William Smith Braithwaite and Emma Dewolfe Braithwaite. William Stanley Braithwaite’s father, originally from British Guiana, was a man of mixed … Read MoreWilliam Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite (1878-1962)
The literary movement, Negritude, was born out of the Paris intellectual environment of 1930s and 1940s. It is a product of black writers joining together through the French language to assert their cultural identity. Aimé Césaire was the first to coin the word in his … Read MoreNegritude Movement
James A. Bland was an entertainer and a prolific composer who wrote sentimental songs about the American South for use in minstrel shows. Bland was born in Flushing, New York on October 22, 1854 to educated, free parents. He briefly studied at Howard University in … Read MoreJames A. Bland (1854-1911)
