A journalist, radical activist, and theoretician, George Padmore did more than perhaps any other single individual to shape the theory and discourse of Pan-African anti-imperialism in the first half of the twentieth century. Born Malcolm Nurse in Trinidad in 1901, Padmore moved to the United … Read MoreGeorge Padmore (1901-1959)
Hutchen R. Hutchins, born on June 30, 1903, was part of a small but active cadre of African American Communists operating in the Pacific Northwest during the 1930s. Originally from the East Coast, Hutchins attended the Lenin School in Moscow in the late 1920s. In 1932 … Read MoreHutchen R. Hutchins (1903-1990)
Cyril Briggs was a pioneering civil rights activist, journalist, black nationalist, and member of the American Communist Party. Born in 1888 on the Eastern Caribbean island of Nevis, Briggs immigrated to New York City in 1905 and joined a burgeoning community of radical West Indian … Read MoreCyril Briggs (1888-1966)
Spanish Civil War veteran and militant poet Ramón Durem was born in Seattle, Washington, in 1915 of mixed heritage. Leaving home at fourteen, he briefly served in the U.S. Navy before suffering a leg injury that forced his discharge. He then worked as a laborer … Read MoreRamón Durem (1915-1963)
A major figure in Harlem community politics and the Communist Party during the 1930s and 1940s, Benjamin Davis, Jr. was born into a prominent African American family in Atlanta, Georgia in 1903. He migrated north to Massachusetts to attend college at Amherst, where he was … Read MoreBenjamin Davis, Jr. (1903-1964)
Trinidad-born dental surgeon and Spanish Civil War veteran Arnold Donowa was born on December 1895 in Trinidad. Very little is known about his childhood there but by the early 1920s he was living in the United States and earned his D.D.S. from Howard University in … Read MoreArnold Bennett Donowa (1896-1964)
