Cora Mae Brown was part of a generation of African American women who translated their community work into political struggle during the first half of the twentieth century. Born on April 19, 1914 in Bessemer, Alabama, Brown’s family migrated to Detroit, Michigan when she was … Read MoreCora Mae Brown (1914-1972)
Hoping for a much better life outside the racially oppressive South and Alexandria, Louisiana where Arnaud Wendell Bontemps was born on October 13, 1902, the middle class Bontemps family moved to the Watts community just south of Los Angeles. They soon abandoned Catholicism and became … Read MoreArna Bontemps (1902-1973)
David Abner, black Texas legislator, was born enslaved in Selma, Alabama, in 1826 and brought to Texas in 1843 by the daughter of his master who, with her husband, settled in Upshur County. Abner remained there until after the Civil War. In 1866 he moved … Read MoreDavid Abner Sr. (1826-1902)
Andrew Young, Jr., came into prominence as a civil rights activist and close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during the modern civil rights movement in the United States. Young worked with various organizations early in the movement, but his civil rights work was … Read MoreAndrew Young (1932- )
An unusual incidence of interracial solidarity between blacks and Asian Americans occurred during Booker T. Washington’s visit to Seattle. In March 1913, Washington embarked on a national speaking tour in order to raise money for Tuskegee Institute, the chronically underfunded “Normal and Industrial School” in … Read MoreBooker Washington in Seattle, 1913
Born in 1837 in North Carolina, Sara G. Stanley was a member of a free, educated and economically secure family. She attended Oberlin College and later moved to Delaware after her family immigrated there. Following the tradition of other free black women Sara joined the … Read MoreSara G. Stanley (1837-1918)
Leroy Robert Paige, one of the few African American baseball athletes to play in both the Negro Baseball Leagues and in Major League Baseball. He was also the first player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame because of his career in the … Read MoreLeroy Robert “Satchel” Paige (1906-1982)
Booker T. Washington is one of the most controversial and dominant figures in African American history. According to his autobiography Up From Slavery (1901), he did not know the exact year, date, and place of his birth or his father’s name. Yet, it is widely … Read MoreBooker T. Washington (1856-1915)
Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on May 25, 1918, Coleman Young arrived in Detroit, Michigan with his family when he was five. The Colemans settled in the working class neighborhood of Black Bottom (East Detroit), where his father operated a dry cleaning business and his mother … Read MoreColeman A. Young (1918-1997)
Clara Mae Luper was born in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma, to Ezell and Isabell Shepard on May 3, 1923. She attended all-Black schools and was bussed several miles to Grayson High School, where she graduated in a class of five. After graduating from the segregated Langston … Read MoreClara Luper (1923-2011)
