Maria W. Stewart, best known as one of the earliest female public speakers, was born Maria Miller in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1803. Her parents’ first names and occupations are not known. Stewart was orphaned by age five and became an indentured servant, serving a clergyman … Read MoreMaria W. Miller Stewart (1803-1879)
The youngest daughter of Baptist minister Rev. Thomas Paul and Catherine Waterhouse Paul, Susan Paul was a primary school teacher and an active member of the bi-racial Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. The Pauls were a highly regarded family in the free black abolitionist community in … Read MoreSusan Paul (1809-1841)
Hampton University, located on the shore of Chesapeake Bay in Hampton, Virginia, was founded in 1868 by Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the son of a prominent missionary family that settled in Hawaii in the early 1800s. Armstrong was enrolled at Williams College in Massachusetts when the … Read MoreHampton University (1868- )
Archibald Grimke was born enslaved in Charleston, South Carolina in 1849. After the Civil War, Archibald and his younger brother Francis, enrolled at Lincoln University. Archibald graduated in 1872 and then entered Harvard Law School. After graduation he practiced in Boston. By the 1880s Grimke … Read More(1920) Archibald Grimke, “The Shame of America, or the Negro’s Case Against the Republic”
Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm, an advocate for the rights of people of color and for women’s rights, became the first black woman elected to the United States Congress in November 1968. Four years later, she became the first black person to seek a major … Read MoreShirley Chisholm (1924-2005)
Mary Ellen Pleasant was born on Aug. 19, 1814 in Virginia and spent her early years in Nantucket, Massachusetts. She worked as a bond servant to the Hussey family, an abolitionist family. She later married James Smith, a wealthy former plantation owner and an abolitionist. … Read MoreMary Ellen Pleasant (1814-1904)
Internationally regarded as a thoughtful and compassionate voice for social justice, Randall C. Robinson, the son of Richmond, Virginia school teachers, was born July 6, 1941. He spent three years at Norfolk State College on a basketball scholarship and after service in the military earned … Read MoreRandall Robinson (1941- )
A native of Guayama, Puerto Rico, Pedro Barbosa III is a distinguished entomologist (a scientist who studies insects) who has taught at the University of Maryland since 1979. Born on September 6, 1944, he acquired his bachelor’s degree at the City College of New York … Read MorePedro Barbosa, III (1966- )
