In the article below, Carlton McLellan, PhD, a senior fellow at the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST), briefly describes the history of the more than one hundred and forty black women and men who have led diplomatic delegations as U.S. Ambassadors in ninety-five … Read MoreAmerica’s Black Ambassadors: A Historical Snapshot
Louisa “Lulu” Matilda Jacobs, teacher, equal rights activist, and entrepreneur, was born a slave in Edenton, North Carolina, on October 19, 1833. She was the daughter of congressman and newspaper editor Samuel Tredwell Sawyer and his mixed-race enslaved mistress Harriet Jacobs. Louisa Jacobs was educated … Read MoreLouisa Matilda Jacobs (1833-1917)
On August 6, 1945, Private First Class Malvin L. Brown was killed after falling 140 feet during a “let-down” from a tree while fighting a forest fire in the Umpqua National Forest in southern Oregon. Brown was the first smokejumper to die while fighting a … Read More555th Parachute Infantry Battalion [Triple Nickles] (1944-1947)
In the article below, Syracuse University historian Herbert Ruffin explores the rapid rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2013 as the most recent development in the ongoing struggle for racial and social justice in the United States. In the summer of 2013, three … Read MoreBlack Lives Matter: The Growth of a New Social Justice Movement
Camille J. Billops, artist, filmmaker, archivist, and professor, was born on August 12, 1933, in Los Angeles. Her parents were Alma Gilmore and Lucius Billops, and she has one sister, Billie. She married James V. Hatch, a professor of theater at the University of California, … Read MoreCamille Billops (1933-2019)
In 1951 Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, then President of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, was, was already one of the most prominent African American educators in the United States. He influenced hundreds of young African Americans who came under his tutelage including undergraduate students at … Read More(1951) Dr. Benjamin E. Mays Addresses the NAACP National Convention
“Image Ownership: WSU Athletic Communications” Elson S. Floyd was the first African American president of three universities, a visionary leader, and a skilled statesman. Elson Sylvester Floyd was born on February 29, 1956, in Henderson, North Carolina. He was raised in this racially segregated town … Read MoreElson S. Floyd (1956–2015)
At the time of her retirement from the United States Foreign Service in 2009, Ambassador Ruth A. Davis was the longest serving Career Ambassador and at the rank of Director General of the Foreign Service, had achieved the highest ranking position in the Foreign Service. … Read MoreRuth A. Davis (1943- )
Ambassador Theodore Roosevelt Britton, Jr. was born on October 17, 1925 in North Augusta, South Carolina. In 1936, he and his family migrated to New York City, New York. Britton was drafted into the U.S. Marine Corps out of high school soon after the attack … Read MoreTheodore R. Britton Jr. (1925- )
Calvin Peete at the 1986 Western Open in Oak Brook, Illinois “Image Ownership: Ted Van Pelt” Professional golfer Calvin Peete was born in Detroit, Michigan on July 18, 1943. Toward the end of the 20th Century Peete had become the most successful African American golfer … Read MoreCalvin Peete (1943–2015)
