Charles Lenox Remond was born into an elite free Black family in Salem, Massachusetts. His parents, John and Nancy Lenox Remond, had been married by the Rev. Thomas Paul, a prominent African American minister and anti-slavery activist, in 1807. Nancy Lenox’s father was a veteran … Read MoreCharles Lenox Remond (1810-1873)
Founded in October of 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP) became the most famous black power organization of the late 1960s. Newton and Seale met in 1965 at Merritt College where they were exposed to a burgeoning wave of Black Nationalism, … Read MoreBlack Panther Party (U.S.A.)
The Congress of Racial Equality pioneered direct nonviolent action in the 1940s before playing a major part in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Founded by an interracial group of pacifists at the University of Chicago in 1942, CORE used nonviolent tactics … Read MoreCongress of Racial Equality (1942)
Robert Franklin Williams was a militant civil rights leader whose open advocacy of armed self-defense anticipated the movement for “black power” in the late 1960s and helped inspire groups like the Student National Coordinating Committee, the Revolutionary Action Movement, and the Black Panther Party. Williams … Read MoreRobert F. Williams (1925-1996)
African American civil rights and political activists in Seattle had been working throughout the early 1960s to integrate and bring equality to the city’s black population. By 1967, however, many blacks in Seattle began to criticize integration and the civil rights movement as a whole … Read MoreCentral Area Committee for Peace and Improvement
Born in Chatfield, Texas on June 19, 1872, Sutton E. Griggs attended Bishop College in Marshall, Texas and Richmond Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. A noted author, Baptist minister, and promoter of his race, Griggs championed the cause of racial equality in his life and … Read MoreSutton Elbert Griggs (1872-1933)
Ethiopianism is an Afro-Atlantic literary-religious tradition that emerged out of the shared political and religious experiences of Africans from British colonies during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Ethiopianism linked Africa historically to the ancient classical era, challenging the then prevailing idea that the … Read MoreEthiopianism
Harvard University’s Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government Emeritus, Dr. Martin L. Kilson, Jr. bears his professional prominence very easily, descending from three generations of clergy with skills of persuasion, presentation and organization. Before the Civil War, his great-great-grandfather, The Reverend Isaac Lee, founded the … Read MoreMartin L. Kilson, Jr. (1931- )
Civil Rights activist Gloria Hayes Richardson was born Gloria St. Clair Hayes on May 6, 1922 in Baltimore, Maryland to parents John and Mabel Hayes. During the Great Depression her parents moved the family to Cambridge, Maryland, the home of Mabel Hayes. Young Gloria grew … Read MoreGloria Richardson (1922-2021)
The youngest of thirteen children, Anthony Burns was born into slavery in Virginia on May 31, 1834. His family was owned by John Suttle. His mother married three times. Burns’s father was her third husband, but he died when Anthony was very young. After John … Read MoreAnthony Burns (1834-1862)
