Captain Hezekiah Ford Douglas was born in Virginia in 1831 to a white man named William Douglas, and an enslaved mother named Mary. He escaped from slavery sometime after his fifteenth birthday, and moved to Cleveland, Ohio. Working as a barber, the self-educated Douglas was … Read MoreH. Ford Douglas (1831-1865)
In response to the mass exodus from the south in 1879 and 1880, Kansas Governor and Quaker John St. John established the Kansas Freedman’s Relief Association (KFRA). The Association was created in 1879 to “aid destitute freedmen, refugees and immigrants” who were migrating to Kansas. … Read MoreKansas Freedman’s Relief Association (1879-1881)
Born on December 7, 1948 in Springfield, Massachusetts to well known black nationalist minister Albert Buford Cleage (later Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman) and school teacher Doris Graham Cleage, Pearl Cleage grew up in Detroit, Michigan and entered Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1966 to study … Read MorePearl Cleage (1948- )
The Langston City Herald was a black newspaper based in the Oklahoma Territory but with circulation throughout the South. The paper was founded and edited by Edwin and Sarah McCabe in 1890 soon after they relocated from Kansas to the Oklahoma Territory. Because its readership … Read MoreLangston City Herald
Also called Edythe Turnham and her Knights of Syncopation, the Edythe Turnham Orchestra was a prominent fixture in the Seattle music scene during its “Jazz Age” (1920-1933). It was led by the husband and wife team of Edythe and Floyd Turnham and was one of … Read MoreEdythe Turnham Orchestra
Born the son of slaves in Davidson County Tennessee in 1854, Nat Love grew up during the turbulent Civil War and Reconstruction era. Rare for African Americans born enslaved in that era, Love learned to read and write as a child. In 1869 he left … Read MoreNat Love (1854-1921)
A pioneer playwright and moralistic philosopher of constructive thinking, Garland Anderson was the first African American known to have a serious full-length drama produced on Broadway in New York. Active in the theatre for over 10 years during the 1920s and 1930s, he achieved national … Read MoreGarland Anderson (1886-1939)
Frank Marshall Davis rose to prominence as a poet and journalist during the Depression and the Second World War. Prior to his departure for the Territory of Hawaii in 1948, he found himself the subject of adulation by many readers but also the target of … Read MoreFrank Marshall Davis (1905-1987)
Samuel L. Robinson was born in Kansas in 1896. He arrived in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in his teens, where he attended the city’s integrated high school. He joined the school’s football team and became a close friend of the team captain and the future … Read MoreSamuel L. Robinson (1896-1964?)
Blanche Kelso Bruce was born a slave in 1841 in Prince Edward County, Virginia but was raised in Missouri. Shortly after the beginning of the Civil War, Bruce fled to Kansas, becoming a free man before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. After the Civil War he returned … Read MoreBlanche Kelso Bruce (1841-1898)
