Cardiss Robertson Collins was born September 24, 1931 in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Findley Robertson and Rosa Mae Robertson. At the age of 10 her family relocated to Detroit and she spent the rest of her childhood there, eventually graduating from the Detroit … Read MoreCardiss Collins (1931- )
Coleman Randolph Hawkins was born November 21, 1904, in Saint Joseph, Missouri. He began his musical education early with lessons on both the piano and cello. Despite parental encouragement towards more classic instruments, Hawkins focused on the saxophone after he received a “C melody” tenor … Read MoreColeman Hawkins (1904-1969)
U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters has dedicated over thirty years of her life to local and national politics. Born Maxine Moore Carr in St. Louis, Missouri on August 15, 1938, Waters moved to Los Angeles, California in 1961. While working in a garment factory and for … Read MoreMaxine Waters (1938- )
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
Following the Union Army victory at Antietam, Maryland on September 17, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation. This document gave the states of the Confederacy until January 1, 1863 to lay down their arms and peaceably reenter the Union; if these states … Read MoreEmancipation Proclamation (1863)
Lucy (Lucile) Berkeley Buchanan Jones was the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Colorado. Buchanan was born on June 13, 1884, on the second floor of the family’s mule and horse barn in the town of Barnum, southwest of Denver, Colorado. … Read MoreLucy (Lucile) Berkeley Buchanan Jones (1884-1989)
Born on the campus of Howard University on May 1, 1901, Sterling Allen Brown was the last of six children and the only boy born to the Rev. Sterling Nelson, a former slave and prominent professor in the Howard Divinity School, and Adelaide (Allen) Brown. … Read MoreSterling A. Brown (1901-1989)
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)
Kenneth Howard Norton was born on August 9, 1943 in Jacksonville, Illinois. An all around athlete, Ken excelled in varsity track and football in high school, and earned a football scholarship to Northeast Missouri State University. He left school during his sophomore year after getting … Read MoreKen Norton (1943-2013)
Green Fields, former Seattle City employee, early African American resident of the Queen Anne Neighborhood in Seattle, and soldier with the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War, was born a slave in DeSoto, Mississippi, the son of Fannie Jackson and Richard Fields. In 1864 … Read MoreGreen Fields (1840-1914)
