Benjamin Mays, Christian minister, scholar, advocate for justice, and an educator, was born in Ninety-Six, South Carolina on August 1, 1894, the youngest of eight children. His parents, Louvenia Carter and Hezekiah Mays, were tenant farmers and former slaves. Mays attended Virginia Union University before … Read MoreBenjamin Mays (1895-1984)
Hoping for a much better life outside the racially oppressive South and Alexandria, Louisiana where Arnaud Wendell Bontemps was born on October 13, 1902, the middle class Bontemps family moved to the Watts community just south of Los Angeles. They soon abandoned Catholicism and became … Read MoreArna Bontemps (1902-1973)
E. June Smith, a prominent leader in Seattle’s civil rights movement, was born in Cairo, Illinois in 1900 and worked as a secretary in St. Louis. Smith came to Seattle with her husband Roscoe O. Smith, a railroad porter, in 1941. Soon after her arrival, … Read MoreE. June Smith (1900-1982)
Edward P. McCabe was an African American politician and businessman most notable for his promotion of black settlement in Oklahoma and Kansas. Born in 1850 in Troy, New York, McCabe would attend school until his father’s death when he left school to support his family … Read MoreEdward P. McCabe (1850-1920)
Civil rights activist, ambassador of interracial goodwill, editor and publisher of the (Portland) Advocate, Oregon’s first African American female to practice law — Beatrice Morrow Cannady spent nearly 25 years working for equal rights for Oregon’s two thousand black citizens. Born in 1889 in Littig, … Read MoreBeatrice Hulon Morrow Cannady (1889-1974)
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)
The son of a sailor, Richard Theodore Greener, a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania became the first African American to graduate from Harvard College. He later was assigned to serve the United States in diplomatic posts in India and Russia. Greener lived in Boston, Massachusetts and … Read MoreRichard T. Greener (1844-1922)
Embodying the Communist Party‘s turn from Third Period sectarianism to Popular Front coalition building, the National Negro Congress (NNC) was the culmination of the Party’s Depression-era effort to unite black and white workers and intellectuals in the fight for racial justice, and marked the apex … Read MoreNational Negro Congress (1935-1940s)
Radical abolitionist Moses Dickson was born free in Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 5, 1824. Orphaned by the age of 13, he became a barber to support himself, finding work on steamboats moving through the South and Midwest. Dickson helped organize two secret abolitionist organizations with … Read MoreMoses Dickson (1824-1901)
John Jordan “Buck” O’Neil was born November 13, 1911, in Carrabelle, Florida. Working with his father on a Florida celery farm when he was 13, the young O’Neil said to himself, “Damn. There’s got to be something better than this.” After traveling to West Palm … Read MoreJohn Jordan “Buck” O’Neil (1911-2006)
