Born enslaved on January 6, 1828, on the Jordan Flake Plantation in Anson County, North Carolina, Green Flake was given to his owner’s son, James Madison Flake, when he married Agnes Love in 1838. Later, the couple moved to Mississippi with their three-year-old son, Green, … Read MoreGreen Flake (1828-1903)
George Jordan, buffalo soldier and Medal of Honor recipient, hailed from rural Williamson County in central Tennessee. Enlisting in the 38th Infantry Regiment on 25 December 1866, the short and illiterate Jordan proved a good soldier. In January 1870, he transferred to the 9th Cavalry’s … Read MoreGeorge Jordan (ca. 1849-1904)
Ernest William Chambers, Africana intellectual, has lived in the semi-segregated community of North Omaha, Nebraska for his entire life. A community activist in the 1960s, Chambers rode into office in the Nebraska State Legislature on the crest of new-black electoral power in 1970. As a … Read MoreErnest William Chambers (1937- )
Emanuel Stance, the first African American to receive the Medal of Honor following the Civil War, was born in East Carroll Parish, Louisiana, in 1847. Prior to joining the Ninth Cavalry in 1866, Stance was a “farmer,” often a euphemism in Army records for former … Read MoreEmanuel Stance (1847?-1887)
Bernard Squires was the president of the Omaha, Nebraska chapter of the Urban League from 1935 to 1939 and the Seattle chapter of the Urban League from 1939 to 1943. Squires was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1904. He graduated from high school in Toledo, … Read MoreBernard Squires (1904-1947)
Born into slavery on a plantation in Tennessee, George Washington Woodbey was largely self-educated and as young man supported himself as a miner and factory worker before becoming an ordained minister in 1874, and pastoring churches in Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. By the mid-1880s Woodbey, … Read MoreGeorge Washington Woodbey (1854-?)
Painter and illustrator Aaron Douglas was born in Topeka, Kansas on May 26, 1899 to Aaron Douglas Sr., a baker originally from Tennessee and Elizabeth Douglas, a homemaker from Alabama. and became one of the leading visual artists of his time. Inspired by the work … Read MoreAaron Douglas (1898-1979)
Born in 1912, Ava Speese (Day) traveled with her family in 1915 to homestead in Cherry County, Nebraska. Taking advantage of the Kincaid Homestead Act of 1904, the Speese family, Charles and Rosetta Meehan Speese and their nine children, were among forty African American families … Read MoreAva Speese Day (1912-1988)
