Clarence Wesley Wigington, architect, was born April 21, 1883 in Lawrence, Kansas to Wesley Wigington and Jennie Mary Roberts. He was the fourth of twelve children. Between 1884 and 1908 the family moved seven times finally settling in Omaha, Nebraska where young Wigington was raised … Read MoreClarence Wesley Wigington (1883-1967)
(Image Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley) Nathaniel Sextus Colley, the first African American attorney in Sacramento, California, was born on November 21, 1918 in Carlowsville, Alabama. The youngest of six brothers, Colley grew up in Snow Hill, Alabama, and graduated from … Read MoreNathaniel Sextus Colley (1918-1992)
Don Thompson, president and Corporate Executive Officer of McDonald’s Corporation, was born near the Cabrini-Green Housing Project on Chicago, Illinois’s Near North Side. Little is known about his childhood except that he was raised by his grandmother. Thompson was a bright student who entered the … Read MoreDon Thompson (1963- )
Computer game innovator Gerald “Jerry” Anderson Lawson was born in Brooklyn, New York on Dec. 1, 1940, and grew up in Queens. His parents, both blue collar workers, encouraged his intellectual pursuits. Lawson’s father was a longshoreman by profession and a voracious reader of science … Read MoreGerald “Jerry” Anderson Lawson (1940-2011)
Gail Fisher was already a popular model in African American newspapers and magazines, as well as a theater actress when, in the late 1950s, she starred in The New Girl in the Office, a film about integrating a hitherto all-white office staff of a white-owned … Read MoreGail Fisher (1935-2000)
Ira Babington (I.B.) Bryant, Jr., Ed.D., was an educator, author, researcher, and administrator from the Houston, Texas area. Bryant was born October 18, 1904, in Crockett, Texas, to Ira B. Bryant, Sr., and Ellen Starks Bryant, both educators. In 1905, the family relocated to Caldwell, … Read MoreIra B. Bryant, Jr. (1904-1989)
The Black Arts Movement was the name given to a group of politically motivated black poets, artists, dramatists, musicians, and writers who emerged in the wake of the Black Power Movement. The poet Imamu Amiri Baraka is widely considered to be the father of the … Read MoreThe Black Arts Movement (1965-1975)
Joe Louis at Murray’s Dude Ranch, 1937 “Image Ownership: Public Domain” Murray’s Ranch, a guest ranch in Apple Valley, California, was unique in that it was owned by and catered primarily to African Americans, and because it served as the set for several “all-Black cast” … Read MoreMurray’s Dude Ranch, Apple Valley, California (1922–1960)
“Image Ownership: Public Domain” Vanoye Aikens was a star dancer and choreographer for the famous Katherine Dunham Dance Company. The Dunham Company popularized African American dance and pioneered the Dunham Technique, which combined Caribbean and African dance with European ballet. A native of Georgia, Aikens … Read MoreVanoye Aikens (1917-2013)
Legendary dancer, choreographer, and actor Carmen de Lavallade came to prominence in the early 1950s when black artists came into their own in the world of American dance on Broadway, in film, and on television. De Lavallade was born on March 6, 1931, in Los … Read MoreCarmen Paula de Lavallade (1931- )
