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)
Edward Rose, also known by the names Five Scalps, Nez Coupe and “Cut Nose,” was the son of a white trader father and a Cherokee and African American mother. Little else is known about his early life including where he was born. He may have … Read MoreEdward Rose (c. 1780- c. 1833)
Dr. Earl V. Miller was the first African American board certified urologist in the State of Washington and the first west of the Mississippi. He was born in Natchez, Mississippi, and received his B.A. degree from Dillard University in New Orleans in 1943. He joined the … Read MoreDr. Earl V. Miller (1923-2005)
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- )
Dr. Blanche Sellers Lavizzo was the first African American woman pediatrician in the state of Washington. She arrived in Seattle in 1956, with her husband Dr. Philip Lavizzo, a general surgeon. They had left medical practices in New Orleans, Louisiana to pursue a better future … Read MoreBlanche Sellers Lavizzo (1925-1984)
Prince Hall was an important social leader in Boston following the Revolutionary War and introduced freemasonry to elite Black society. His birth and childhood are unclear; although, it is assumed that he was enslaved to a Boston leather worker and gained freedom from bondage in … Read MorePrince Hall (ca. 1735-1807)
Mound Bayou was an all-black town in the Yazoo Delta in Northwest Mississippi. It was founded during the spring of 1887 by twelve pioneers from Davis Bend, a fledgling black colony impacted by falling agricultural prices, natural disasters, and hostile race relations. This migration movement … Read MoreMound Bayou (1887- )
Radical abolitionist Moses Dickson was born free in Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 5, 1824. Orphaned by the age of 13, he became a barber to support himself, finding work on steamboats moving through the South and Midwest. Dickson helped organize two secret abolitionist organizations with … Read MoreMoses Dickson (1824-1901)
Adolphus D. Griffin used his self-attained literacy to emerge as a newspaper editor/publisher in the West at the turn of the twentieth century. Born near Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1868, A.D. Griffin moved to Spokane, Washington where he edited one of his first newspapers, The Northwest … Read MoreAdolphus D. Griffin (1868-1916)
Black Nationalist, repatriationist, and minister, Henry M. Turner was 31 years old at the time of the Emancipation. Turner was born in 1834 in Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina to free black parents Sarah Greer and Hardy Turner. The self-taught Turner by the age of fifteen … Read MoreHenry McNeal Turner (1834-1915)
