Paul B. Cornely is remembered today as a public health pioneer and civil rights leader whose activism contributed to the desegregation of national healthcare. Dr. Cornely was born on March 9, 1906. on the island of Guadeloupe in the West Indies and grew up in … Read MorePaul B. Cornely (1906-2002)
John Eric Teamer was a gay public high school teacher in Sacramento and San Francisco, California, who emerged as an important community activist in San Francisco and leader in the nationwide LBGTQ community. Teamer was born in Asheville, North Carolina, on April 26, 1941. Beginning … Read MoreJohn Eric Teamer (1941-1994)
Early in 1963, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King, Reverend Ralph Abernathy, and local Birmingham leader of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights Fred Shuttlesworth came together to lead a campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama, a city notorious for its … Read MoreThe Birmingham Children’s Crusade (May 1963)
What happened: In 1957, after a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that public school segregation was unconstitutional, nine Black students were selected to attend Little Rock, Arkansas’ Central High School (a previous all-white school). They were among the first Black students in the country … Read MoreLittle Rock Crisis (1957) [Children’s Edition]
Mabel Byrd, a life-long educator, researcher, and civil rights activist, was the first African American to attend the University of Oregon. Born in Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania on July 3, 1895, Byrd was the youngest daughter of Robert Byrd, a bricklayer, and Jennie Byrd. She moved with … Read MoreMabel Janet Byrd (1895-1988)
Mississippi State Penitentiary is less than an hour drive from where Emmett Till was murdered. One of three state prisons administered by the Mississippi Department of Corrections, it is also known as Parchman Penal Farm because it was owned by a prominent Sunflower county family, … Read MoreMississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman (1901 – )
Barbara Ann Rowan was the first Black woman to become a prosecutor in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Born on September 6, 1938, in Upper Manhattan, New York, she was the only child of Norman B. Rowan, … Read MoreBarbara Ann Rowan (1938-2020)
NASA scientist Hildreth “Hal” Walker, Jr. is most known for leading the team that used a laser to measure the distance between the earth and the moon for NASA during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. After astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set up … Read MoreHildreth “Hal” Walker, Jr. (1933- )
Historian, political activist, and educator Clarence Albert Bacote was born on February 24, 1906, in Kansas City, Missouri. His parents were Samuel William Bacote from Society Hill, South Carolina, a graduate of Richmond Theological Seminary (now Virginia Union University) and pastor at Second Baptist Church … Read MoreClarence Albert Bacote (1906-1981)
In the article below, independent historian Robert Fikes describes a little-known civil rights campaign in the late 1920s to desegregate the nursing staff in San Diego area hospitals. The campaign for racial justice in San Diego and the United States is often portrayed as a … Read MoreGo Anyplace But Here, Please: The Fight to Train Black Nurses in San Diego
