The African Civilization Society (ACS) was founded in 1858 by Henry Highland Garnet who sought to encourage blacks Americans to emigrate to Africa. Garnet envisioned educated black Americans moving to the African Continent as cultural missionaries to lead the economic, political, and moral development of … Read MoreThe African Civilization Society (1858-1869)
100 Black Men of American Inc. is a civic organization dedicated to the improvement of quality of life in the African American community through fostering the development of young African American men. In 1963, a group of African American men met in New York to … Read More100 Black Men of America, Inc.
Born on February 24, 1811 to free Black parents London and Martha Payne in Charleston, South Carolina, Daniel Alexander Payne would become a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church, president of Wilberforce University, abolitionist, educator, and historian. When Payne was four his father … Read MoreDaniel Alexander Payne (1811-1893)
Sarah Smith Tompkins Garnet was the first African American female principal in the New York public schools. The eldest of eleven children, she was born Minsarah Smith in Brooklyn in 1831. Her parents, Sylvanus and Ann Smith, were prosperous farmers of African, European, and Native … Read MoreSarah J. Smith Tompkins Garnet (1831-1911)
Michael Gerard Tyson was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 30, 1966. He was raised by a single mother in the slums of Brooklyn in what he described as awful living conditions, in poverty, and surrounded by peer pressure. By the time he was … Read MoreMike Tyson (1966- )
Yvette M. Jarvis has the distinction of being the first African American woman elected to serve on the Athens, Greece City Council from 2002 to 2006. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1957, Jarvis traveled to Greece in 1982 after graduating from Boston University (Massachusetts). … Read MoreYvette M. Jarvis (1957- )
Deval L. Patrick, Governor of Massachusetts, was elected in 2006. He became at that time the second African American elected as a state Governor in the history of the United States. Patrick was born on July 31, 1956 in Chicago to Laurdine “Pat” Patrick and … Read MoreDeval L. Patrick (1956- )
Colonel Stephen Blucke led an all-black Regiment that fought for the British during the American Revolution. He settled in Birchtown, Nova Scotia in 1783 and became a leader in the Black Loyalist community. During the Revolutionary War, the most famous of the Black Loyalist Military … Read MoreStephen Blucke (?-1792)
Actor Oscar Polk began his career in the early 1930s as a stage performer in the musical production of Swingin’ the Dream, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Midsummer Nights Dream. The Arizona native studied dancing at Jack Blue’s Dance Studio and later became a tap … Read MoreOscar Polk (1900-1949)
Vildana Muratovic, a native of Bosnia-Herzegovina and now a citizen of the United States, describes the impact of hip-hop music on the people of the Balkans following her 1997 return to Sarajevo. Her paper was written in 2007. Since its humble beginnings in the 1970s … Read MoreTupac in Sarajevo: The Rise of Rebellion Rap in Eastern Europe
