Born Florence Delorez Griffith on December 21, 1959, in Los Angeles, California, Florence Griffith Joyner was the seventh of 11 children. Joyner and her siblings were raised primarily by their mother in the impoverished Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. She began competitive sprinting at the … Read MoreFlorence Griffith Joyner (1959-1998)
A pioneer playwright and moralistic philosopher of constructive thinking, Garland Anderson was the first African American known to have a serious full-length drama produced on Broadway in New York. Active in the theatre for over 10 years during the 1920s and 1930s, he achieved national … Read MoreGarland Anderson (1886-1939)
The Watts Riot, also known as the Watts Rebellion, occurred in Los Angeles, California from August 11 to August 16, 1965. The riot took 34 lives and injured 1,032 people. There were nearly 4,000 arrests and $40 million in property damage in what was until … Read MoreWatts Riot (August 1965)
H. Claude Hudson was an important civil rights and business leader in two different cities: Shreveport, Louisiana, and Los Angeles. Hudson was born in Louisiana in 1886. He studied at Wiley College, in Marshall, Texas, and earned a degree from the dentistry school at Howard … Read MoreH. Claude Hudson (1886-1989)
E. Burton Ceruti was a prominent attorney and one of the founders of the Los Angeles branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Ceruti was born on August 14, 1875, in Nassau, the Bahamas. He moved to the United States when … Read MoreE. Burton Ceruti (1875-1927)
In the years prior to World War II, the Lincoln Hills Country Club was a renowned vacation development for African Americans in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Located in Gilpin County, an hour outside Denver, between Pinecliff and Rollinsville, Lincoln Hills was for years the … Read MoreLincoln Hills Country Club (1922-1966)
Paul R. Williams was one of the most well-known 20th Century African American architects. Early in his career, Williams designed mostly houses, but in the 1950s and 1960s he designed some of the most distinctive public buildings in Los Angeles. Williams’s best-known building is probably … Read MorePaul R. Williams (1894-1980)
In 1878 soprano Marie Selika Williams, known as the “queen of staccato,” became the first black artist to perform at the White House. Marie Selika was born c. 1849 in Natchez, Mississippi. Shortly after her birth, Selika’s family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where, as a … Read MoreMarie Selika Williams (ca. 1849-1937)
Fort Davis stands unique among frontier forts in that it became the Regimental Headquarters for all four Buffalo Soldier regiments that served during the last decades of the 19th-century. Troopers of the Ninth Cavalry were the first Buffalo Soldiers to garrison Fort Davis. Arriving in … Read MoreBuffalo Soldiers at Fort Davis, Texas (1867-1885)
Thomas Fleming was a founding editor and columnist of one of the leading African American newspapers in California, the San Francisco-based Sun-Reporter. Born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1907, Fleming migrated to Chico, California in 1918 to live with his mother upon her divorce from Thomas’s … Read MoreThomas Courtney Fleming (1907-2006)
