Floyd Calvin was a journalist who also launched a newswire service and hosted the first black radio show during the Harlem Renaissance. Calvin was born in 1902 to a school teacher and a farmer in Washington, Arkansas. He graduated from Shover State Teacher Training College … Read MoreFloyd Joseph Calvin (1902-1939)
In the account below Central Washington University anthropologist Mark Auslander describes why he wrote The Accidental Slaveholder, which describes the curious ways in which the legacy of slavery extend into the contemporary era. I grew up in Washington D.C. in a secular Jewish family in … Read MoreRemembrance in the Cemetery: In Search of “The Accidental Slaveowner”
Cornelius R. Coffey was the first African American to establish an aeronautical school in the United States. His school was also the only non-university affiliated aviation program to become part of the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP). His pioneering efforts led to the integration of … Read MoreCornelius R. Coffey (1903-1994)
Born on July 3, 1919 in North Little Rock, Arkansas, Samuel Proctor Massie was as one of the few African American scientists to work on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He later became a distinguished professor of chemistry. Massie graduated from Dunbar High … Read MoreSamuel P. Massie (1919-2005)
Civil rights attorney Wiley Austin Branton Sr. was born on December 13, 1923 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. His father, Leo Andrew Branton, ran a family-owned taxi cab business while his mother, Pauline Wiley, was a school teacher. Branton attended a segregated elementary, junior high, and … Read MoreWiley Austin Branton (1923-1988)
Mahlon Martin, the first African American president of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1945. He received a degree in business administration at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, and took graduate courses at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School … Read MoreMahlon Martin (1945-1995)
Renowned surgeon and pioneer in organ transplants, Samuel Lee Kountz was born on August 20, 1930 to Samuel Kountz, Sr. and Emma Montague in Lexa, Arkansas. He was raised in the town of Lexa, one of the most impoverished areas of Arkansas. Without a doctor … Read MoreSamuel Lee Kountz Jr. (1930-1981)
The First Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment was established through the efforts of James H. Lane, the U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1861 to 1866. As Kansas joined the Union on the eve of the Civil War in 1861, Lane recruited African-Americans to fight against the … Read MoreFirst Kansas Colored Infantry (1862-1865)
Arkansas Baptist College (ABC) is a private four-year institution in Little Rock, Arkansas. The college was founded as the “Minister’s Institute” in August 1884 at the Annual Convention of the Colored Baptists of the State of Arkansas. It opened three months later at the Mount … Read MoreArkansas Baptist College, Little Rock, Arkansas (1884- )
