Nolle Smith, cowboy, politician, diplomat, was born on his parents’ ranch in Horse Creek, Wyoming in 1888 but grew up in Cheyenne where he graduated as valedictorian of his high school class at Cheyenne High School in 1907. The son of a white father and … Read MoreNolle Smith (1888-1982)
William Saunders Scarborough, born in 1852 in Macon, Georgia, the son of a free black father and an enslaved mother eventually became the first graduate of Atlanta University and at 23 a professor of Latin and Greek at Wilberforce University in Ohio. In 1908 he … Read More(1894) William Saunders Scarborough, “The Ethics of the Hawaiian Question”
Although little remembered today, Leidesdorff was a social, economic and political force in pre-gold rush San Francisco, California with a number of “firsts” credited to his name. When he was named the U.S. Vice Consul to Mexico in 1845, he became the nation’s first African … Read MoreWilliam Alexander Leidesdorff (1810-1848)
Barack Obama was the 44th President of the United States and the first African American to occupy the White House. Obama was born August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was a Kenyan graduate student studying in the United States, and … Read MoreBarack Obama Jr. (1961- )
The daguerreotypist James Presley (J.P.) Ball was born in 1825 in Virginia, probably a freeman. As a young man he learned daguerreotyping and opened his first studio in Cincinnati, Ohio at age twenty. The city was a center for anti-slavery activity as well as the … Read MoreJames Presley Ball (1825-1904)
World War II war hero Doris “Dorie” Miller was born in Waco, Texas on October 12, 1919 to Conery and Henrietta Miller who were farmers just outside the city. Miller grew to 6 feet 3 inches, weighed over 200 pounds, and played football at Waco’s … Read MoreDoris (“Dorie”) Miller (1919-1943)
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)
Teacher, author, clergyman, and civil rights leader, Thomas McCants Stewart was born in Charleston, South Carolina on December 28, 1853, to George Gilchrist and Anna Morris Stewart. Young Stewart attended the Avery Normal Institute before enrolling in Howard University in 1869. Although only fifteen when … Read MoreT. McCants Stewart (1853-1923)
First organized in 1916 as the 15th New York National Guard Infantry Regiment and manned by black enlisted soldiers with both black and white officers, the U.S. Army’s 369th Infantry Regiment, popularly known as the “Harlem Hellfighters,” was the best known African American unit of … Read More369th Infantry Regiment “Harlem Hellfighters”
