James Meredith is best known as the first African American student to enroll at the University of Mississippi (Old Miss). He was born on June 25, 1933 in Kosciusko, Mississippi, served in the Air Force between 1951 and 1960 and then attended Jackson State University … Read MoreJames Meredith (1933- )
Ambrose Caliver was born in 1894 in Saltsville, Virginia and graduated from Knoxville College in Tennessee, earning his B.A. in 1915. One year later he married Everly Rosalie Rucker. After serving as a high school teacher and a principal, he was hired in 1917 by … Read MoreAmbrose Caliver (1894-1962)
Fisk University Franklin Library’s Special Collections A[lrutheus] A[mbush] Taylor, historian, was born in Washington D.C. where he also went through the public school system. He earned a B.A. degree from the University of Michigan in 1916 and taught at the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) … Read MoreAlrutheus Ambush Taylor (1893-1955)
During the first twenty-five years following the American Civil War and the emancipation, many African American men in the South were elected to state legislatures and local government posts. Among those in Tennessee was Samuel Allen McElwee from Haywood County, one of the two western … Read MoreSamuel Allen McElwee (1857-1914)
Repeatedly on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world, Oprah Winfrey is a television host, media mogul – in television, radio, film, and print – and philanthropist. Forbes magazine included her in its 2003 list of America’s billionaires, the first … Read MoreOprah Winfrey (1954- )
Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, an African American educator, clergyman, administrator, and public speaker, was born on January 4, 1891, in Paris, Tennessee, the son of Reverend Wyatt J. Johnson, a former slave. His father, a minister and laborer, was a stern man who worked at a … Read MoreMordecai Wyatt Johnson (1890-1976)
Five months after Booker T. Washington had announced his policy of accommodation at the Atlanta Exposition, John Hope, then a member of the faculty at Atlanta Baptist College, delivered his rebuttal in a speech before a black debating society in Nashville on George Washington’s birthday, … Read More(1896) John Hope, “We Are Struggling For Equality”
Born in Memphis in 1863 and an activist until her death in 1954, Mary Eliza Church Terrell has been called a living link between the era of the Emancipation Proclamation and the modern civil rights movement. Terrell was particularly active in the Washington, D.C. area. … Read More(1897) Mary Church Terrell, “In Union There is Strength”
The widely revered African American publisher Carlton Benjamin Goodlett was born in Chipley, Florida on July 23, 1914. He finished his bachelor’s degree in 1935 at Howard University where he was president of the student body and editor of the student newspaper. Goodlett earned a … Read MoreCarlton B. Goodlett (1914-1997)
Today Ferdinand L. Barnett is best known as the husband of anti-lynching crusader, Ida Wells Barnett. However by 1879, Barnett, a graduate of Chicago’s College of Law and editor the Chicago Conservator, the city’s first black newspaper, which he founded in 1878, was one of … Read More(1879) Ferdinand L. Barnett, “Race Unity”
