Born on February 24, 1811 to free Black parents London and Martha Payne in Charleston, South Carolina, Daniel Alexander Payne would become a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church, president of Wilberforce University, abolitionist, educator, and historian. When Payne was four his father … Read MoreDaniel Alexander Payne (1811-1893)
Colonel Stephen Blucke led an all-black Regiment that fought for the British during the American Revolution. He settled in Birchtown, Nova Scotia in 1783 and became a leader in the Black Loyalist community. During the Revolutionary War, the most famous of the Black Loyalist Military … Read MoreStephen Blucke (?-1792)
On January 16, 1865, Union General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15 which confiscated as Federal property a strip of coastal land extending about 30 miles inland from the Atlantic and stretching from Charleston, South Carolina 245 miles south to Jacksonville, Florida. … Read More(1865) General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15
Nina Mae McKinney, one of the first African American leading actresses in Hollywood, was born Nannie Mayme McKinney in 1913. The Lancaster, South Carolina native was reared by her great-aunt, Carrie Sanders on the Estate of Colonel LeRoy Sanders, where her family had worked for … Read MoreNina Mae McKinney (1913-1967)
Nineteenth Century writer Frances Anne Rollin is noted as the author of Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delany which upon appearing in 1868 became the first full-length biography written by an African American. Rollin also kept a diary in 1868, making it the … Read MoreFrances Anne Rollin (1845-1901)
Leigh Whipper, the first black member of the Actors’ Equity Association (1913), was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1876. His father, William James Whipper, was a Civil War Veteran from Connecticut who settled in South Carolina during the Reconstruction period and became an attorney … Read MoreLeigh Whipper (1876-1975)
Johnson Chesnutt Whittaker was the second black cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York. He was born in South Carolina to an enslaved mother, Maria J. Whitaker, and her free husband, James Whitaker, in 1858. (Later in life, he … Read MoreJohnson C. Whittaker (1858-1931)
South Carolina Congressman George Washington Murray was born near Rembert, Sumter County, South Carolina, on September 22, 1853 to enslaved parents. He attended public schools, the University of South Carolina, and the State Normal Institute at Columbia, where he graduated in 1876. After graduating, Murray … Read MoreGeorge Washington Murray (1853-1926)
Rose McClendon was an African American actress born in South Carolina in 1884. McClendon’s original name was Rosalie Virginia Scott. Her parents were Sandy and Tena Scott. In 1890 McClendon’s parents worked for a well established family as a housekeeper and coachman in New York … Read MoreRose McClendon (1884-1936)
Henry Adams was a prominent black Baptist minister and advocate for African American education who worked in Georgia and later in Louisville, Kentucky. Adams was born in Franklin County, Georgia in 1802. He obtained a license to preach at the age of 18 and was … Read MoreHenry Adams [Kentucky] (1802-1872)
