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)
Bernice Johnson Reagon, singer/ composer, cultural historian, author, and producer, was born on October 4, 1942 in Dougherty County, Georgia, to Reverend Jessie Johnson and Beatrice Johnson. The third child of eight, she began singing at the age of five in her father’s church. As … Read MoreBernice Johnson Reagon (1942-2024)
Image Ownership: Public Domain Jermain Wesley Loguen was born into slavery on February 5, 1813, in Tennessee. His mother was owned by Loguen’s father and master. In 1834, Loguen escaped from bondage and fled to St. Catherine’s, Ontario, where he stayed there briefly before finding … Read MoreJermain Wesley Loguen (1813-1872)
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)
Alexander Walters was born in 1858 into a slave family in Bardstown, Kentucky, the sixth of eight children. By the age of ten, Walters had shown such academic progress that he was awarded by the African Episcopal Zion Church a full scholarship to attend private … Read MoreBishop Alexander Walters (1858-1917)
William Still was born in Burlington County, New Jersey in 1821, as the last of eighteen children of former slaves Levin and Charity Still. By 1844, Still moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he spent the majority of his life and where he was appointed secretary … Read MoreWilliam Still (1821-1902)
John Carter Leftwich was born on June 6, 1867 in Forkland, Alabama. The first son of Frances Edge and Lloyd Leftwich, one of Alabama’s last black Reconstruction Era state senators, John graduated from Selma University in 1890. As a young man, Leftwich held a deep … Read MoreJohn C. Leftwich (1867-1923)
Born a free person of color in New Orleans, Thomy Lafon was the son of a Frenchman and a free woman of Haitian descent who had been born in Louisiana to a slave mother. Lafon’s father deserted the family when Lafon was a young boy. … Read MoreThomy Lafon (1810-1893)
With the beginning of World War II African Americans would get their chance to be in “the toughest outfit going,” the previously all-white Marine Corps. The first recruits reported to Montford Point, a small section of land on Camp Lejeune, North Carolina on August 26, 1942. By October, only 600 recruits had … Read MoreMontford Point Marines (1942-1949)
Francis Grimké was a Presbyterian minister and a leading advocate of civil rights. He was born to a wealthy landowner, Henry Grimké and his slave mistress Nancy Weston. After his father’s death in 1852, he moved to Charleston, South Carolina where he lived as a … Read MoreFrancis Grimké (1850–1937)
