Dr. Endesha Ida Mae Holland was born into abject poverty in Greenwood, Mississippi on August 29, 1944. She experienced extreme racism, lack of options, and little support to change her life. As a teenager she quit school, turned to prostitution and theft as a way … Read MoreEndesha Ida Mae Holland (1944-2006)
Even before finishing graduate school Elijah Walter Miles had a record of civil disobedience in support of civil rights objectives. Born in Hearne, Texas on May 4, 1934, Miles received his bachelor’s degree from the Prairie View A&M University in 1955. A two-year stint as … Read MoreElijah Walter Miles (1934-2020)
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)
Cottrell Lawrence Dellums was born in Corsicana, Texas and came to the San Francisco Bay area as a young man. He became a major African American trade union activist, and was the uncle of Ron Dellums, who represented Oakland in the U.S. Congress for many … Read MoreC.L. Dellums (1900-1989)
Clayton D. Russell was an important religious and political leader in the African American community in Los Angeles in the middle of the twentieth century. For much of his life Russell was associated with the People’s Independent Church of Christ, one of the largest congregations … Read MoreClayton D. Russell (1910-1981)
Chester Himes was an important writer of fiction and autobiography. Although Himes’s most widely read novels were detective stories set in Harlem, his first two published novels reflected his experiences in Los Angeles, where he lived from 1940 until 1944. Himes was born in Jefferson … Read MoreChester Himes (1909-1984)
Charlotte L. Brown is best known as a civil rights activist in San Francisco, California in the 1860s. Brown was the daughter of James E. and Charlotte Brown and sister to Margaret Ann. James Brown was also a well regarded civil rights activist in Gold Rush Era … Read MoreCharlotte L. Brown (?-?)
Despite its charm, Hawaii was a peculiar setting for a young black woman from Brooklyn, New York in the late nineteenth century. The third child of T. McCants Stewart and Charlotte Pearl Harris, Carlotta Stewart was born in 1881 in Brooklyn, New York, where she … Read MoreCarlotta Stewart Lai (1881-1952)
Civil rights activist, ambassador of interracial goodwill, editor and publisher of the (Portland) Advocate, Oregon’s first African American female to practice law — Beatrice Morrow Cannady spent nearly 25 years working for equal rights for Oregon’s two thousand black citizens. Born in 1889 in Littig, … Read MoreBeatrice Hulon Morrow Cannady (1889-1974)
Born in 1822 to a Virginia slave and a white plantation owner, Barney L. Ford grew up in South Carolina where he learned to read and write from another servant. Ford escaped slavery at age twenty-six when his master hired him out to work on … Read MoreBarney L. Ford (1822-1902)
