The Chicago Bee was an African American newspaper founded to compete with the Chicago Defender, then the largest black-owned newspaper in the United States. The Bee’s founder, banker, and food and cosmetics manufacturer, Anthony Overton, wanted a publication that would replace his now defunct Half … Read MoreThe Chicago Bee (1926-1946)
The Pekin Theater in Chicago, Illinois, was the first theater in the city, and one of the first in the nation, to feature black performers. Iowa native Robert T. Motts, a professional gambler, turned his hotel/gambling saloon into the Pekin Theater. The theater was located … Read MoreThe Pekin Theater (1905-1911)
“Image Ownership: Public Domain” Historians rarely compare the mostly working-class and poor Korean population in Japan and African Americans seeking economic justice in the United States. Japanese scholar Kazuyo Tsuchiya of Kanagawa University takes on that task in her new book, Reinventing Citizenship: Black Los … Read MoreThe TransPacific Struggle over Citizenship: Seeking Welfare Rights in Kawasaki City, Japan and Los Angeles, California,1962-1982
Clarence Wesley Wigington, architect, was born April 21, 1883 in Lawrence, Kansas to Wesley Wigington and Jennie Mary Roberts. He was the fourth of twelve children. Between 1884 and 1908 the family moved seven times finally settling in Omaha, Nebraska where young Wigington was raised … Read MoreClarence Wesley Wigington (1883-1967)
Charles “Chuck” Stone, Jr., pioneering African American newspaper columnist, editor, author, and professor was born on July 21, 1924 to Charles and Madeline Stone in St. Louis, Missouri. Soon after, the family moved to Connecticut where Stone’s mother worked for the Hartford Board of Education … Read MoreCharles Sumner “Chuck” Stone, Jr. (1924-2014)
Preston Daniels, the first African American elected Mayor of Des Moines, Iowa, was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1945. Shortly afterwards his parents moved to Des Moines and he grew up in the Chesterfield section of southeast Des Moines, a working-class area also known as … Read MorePreston A. Daniels (1945- )
Mary Cardwell Dawson established the National Negro Opera Company (NNOC) in 1941 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Born in North Carolina, Dawson graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1925, the only African American in her class. Facing discrimination in her aspiration for a career … Read MoreNational Negro Opera Company (1941-1962)
Chaka Khan was born Yvette Marie Stevens in Chicago, Illinois on March 23, 1953, eldest of Charles Stevens’ and Sandra Coleman’s five children. As a teenager growing up on Chicago’s South Side community, the presence of the Black Panther Party had an influence on Stevens. … Read MoreChaka Khan (1953- )
Don Thompson, president and Corporate Executive Officer of McDonald’s Corporation, was born near the Cabrini-Green Housing Project on Chicago, Illinois’s Near North Side. Little is known about his childhood except that he was raised by his grandmother. Thompson was a bright student who entered the … Read MoreDon Thompson (1963- )
Richard Durham’s Destination Freedom radio program, which aired on WMAQ in Chicago, Illinois from June 27, 1948 until its cancellation in August of 1950, was unlike anything else being broadcast over the airwaves. For over two years audiences tuned in every Sunday morning and were … Read MoreRichard Durham (1917-1984)
