Stephen Bonga was part of a prosperous Minnesota fur trading family, the first African American residents of that state. Fluent in Native American languages, Stephen and his brothers traveled as translators and voyageurs throughout the upper Great Lakes region of the Midwest. Bonga was born … Read MoreStephen Bonga (1799-1884)
John Matthew Shippen, Jr. was the first African American professional golfer and known as one of America’s golf pioneers. Shippen achieved this distinction when he competed in the US Open in 1896. John Shippen was born on December 5, 1879 in Long Island, New York … Read MoreJohn Matthew Shippen, Jr. (1879-1968)
Poet and essayist Jupiter Hammon published his writing while living and working as a slave in Revolutionary-era New England. He is believed to be the first published male African American poet. His essays were directed to slave readers and featured themes of morality and Christian … Read MoreJupiter Hammon (c. 1711-c. 1806)
Ina Ray Hutton led the Melodears, one of the first all-female swing bands to be recorded and filmed. She passed as white throughout her musical career, as the leader of several bands from the 1930s through the 1960s. But when Hutton was a child, United … Read MoreIna Ray, née Odessa Cowan Hutton (1916-1984)
Angela Davis, activist, educator, and scholar, was born on January 26, 1944, in the “Dynamite Hill” area of Birmingham, Alabama. The area received that name because so many African American homes in this middle class neighborhood had been bombed over the years by the Ku … Read MoreAngela Davis (1944-)
Henry Johnson was a World War I hero because of his remarkable performance in France. Johnson, born in 1897 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, moved to Albany, New York with his family when he was still a child. At the age of 20, he worked as … Read MoreHenry Johnson (1897-1929)
Born Robert Todd Duncan in Danville, Kentucky in 1903, Todd Duncan was the first African American to perform in an otherwise all-white cast in the New York City Opera’s production of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. He began his professional stage career in 1933 in Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria … Read MoreTodd Duncan (1903-1998)
Born in Antebellum South Carolina, the Rt. Rev. Samuel David Ferguson emigrated to Liberia as a child and became the first African American member of the Episcopal House of Bishops. As is sometimes thought, he was not the first African American Episcopal bishop. That distinction … Read MoreSamuel David Ferguson (1842-1916)
In 1808, the New York African Society for Mutual Relief was formally organized to assist widows and orphans, pay burial expenses for its members, and to serve as a brokerage house to buy real estate. The Society was the most successful 19th Century attempt by … Read MoreThe New York African Society for Mutual Relief (1808-1860)
Actress and performing artist Mamie Smith made music history in 1920 when she stepped into a studio to lay down “Crazy Blues,” considered by industry scholars to be the very first blues recording. Smith was a glamorous and multi-talented entertainer, performing on stage and in … Read MoreMamie Smith (1883-1946)
