Hattie McDaniel is best known as the first Black Oscar winner. She won the award on February 29, 1940, for Best Supporting Actress for her role as “Mammy” in Gone With the Wind. McDaniel’s career began three decades earlier. She gave her first public performances as a grade school … Read MoreHattie McDaniel (1895-1952)
George Morrison dreamed of playing violin with a major orchestra. As things stood for black musicians in the early twentieth century, that dream would remain unrealized. Born in Fayette, Missouri, on September 9, 1891, Morrison came from a musical family and at an early age … Read MoreGeorge Morrison (1891-1974)
Frederick Madison Roberts was born in Chillicothe, Ohio. He arrived in Los Angeles at age six and was the first black to graduate from Los Angeles High School. He attended the University of Southern California, majored in pre-law and graduated from Colorado College, and finished … Read MoreFrederick M. Roberts (1879-1952)
Political activist Earl Mann was born on June 8, 1886 in Lyons, Iowa. He joined the army and fought in World War I in France and Germany. He was promoted to First Lieutenant of the Infantry, which was a rare accomplishment for an African American … Read MoreEarl Mann (1886-1969)
Denver, Colorado’s Five Points community originated in the 1880s as an upper middle-class neighborhood for professional and business men. The city built one of its first cable streetcar lines into the area and numerous neighborhood businesses emerged along its tracks. White residents initially occupied the … Read MoreFive Points, Denver, Colorado (ca. 1885- )
Denver women sponsored the formation of a Phillis Wheatley branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association in 1916, and in 1920 began sponsoring summer camps for the girls. Shortly after the turn of the century urbanites began sending their children to summer camps as a … Read MoreCamp Nizhoni (1924-1945)
Paul W. Stewart, founder of the Black American West Museum, grew up in Iowa playing cowboys and Indians with his friends who always made him play an Indian. They assured him that there were no black cowboys and thus he had to play the role … Read MoreBlack American West Museum (1971- )
Born in 1822 to a Virginia slave and a white plantation owner, Barney L. Ford grew up in South Carolina where he learned to read and write from another servant. Ford escaped slavery at age twenty-six when his master hired him out to work on … Read MoreBarney L. Ford (1822-1902)
