Eartha Mae Kitt was born on January 26, 1928, in the city of North in South Carolina. Her sharecropper parents abandoned Kitt and her half-sister as young children, forcing them to live with a foster family until they moved to New York City, New York … Read MoreEartha Mae Kitt (1928-2008)
Pianist Cecil Young’s quartet exploded onto the Seattle jazz scene in 1950, introducing the rhythmic fire of bebop to an eager new audience. His quartet’s debut record was immediately successful, and Young, known for his devilish sense of humor as well as his immense musical … Read MoreCecil Young (ca. 1920-ca. 1975)
Anita Hill is a professor of law, social policy and management and women’s studies at Brandeis University. She was born in Lone Tree, Oklahoma on July 30, 1956. A bright student, she graduated as the valedictorian of her high school class and then earned a … Read MoreAnita Faye Hill (1956- )
Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward was the first African American woman to earn a medical doctorate (M.D.) in New York State and the third in the United States. Susan Smith was born to elite Brooklyn parents, Ann Springstead and Sylvanus Smith. She was of mixed … Read MoreSusan Smith McKinney Steward (1847-1918)
John Wesley Blassingame was one of the preeminent scholars in the study of enslaved African Americans. His early monographs The Slave Community (1972) and Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (1973) shattered racist and stereotypical portrayals of African American life by using testimony and evidence left by … Read MoreJohn W. Blassingame (1940-2000)
Kurt L. Schmoke, born in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 1, 1949, came from a middle class background. His father, Murray, a civilian chemist for the U.S. Army, was a graduate of Morehouse College, and his mother, Irene was a social worker. Schmoke attended the city’s … Read MoreKurt L. Schmoke (1949- )
When Gary Franks was elected to Congress in 1990, he was the first black representative from Connecticut and the first black Republican in Congress in nearly 50 years. Son of a brass factory worker and a dietary specialist, education was a high priority in Franks’s … Read MoreGary Franks (1953- )
In July of 1909, 750 10th Cavalry “Buffalo Soldiers” marched into Vermont for their assignment at Fort Ethan Allen, Colchester, Vermont. Prior to their arrival, they had been stationed in various other locations such as Cuba, Kansas, and the Philippines, all warmer climates. During their … Read MoreBuffalo Soldiers in Vermont (1909-1913)
Andre Watts is the subject of one of the more memorable stories in American music. In 1963, the 16 year old high school student won a piano competition to play in the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concert at Lincoln Center, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. … Read MoreAndre Watts (1946- )
From the late seventeenth century onwards, a few American colonists, mostly Quakers, had expressed their moral opposition to the spread of black slavery throughout British America. It was not until the coming of the Revolution, however, that the first concerted protests arose, first against the … Read MoreFirst Emancipation
