Leon Bridges is recorded as the founder of the second African American-owned firm in Seattle. He was born on August 18, 1932 in Los Angeles, California. In high school he was told by a counselor that he couldn’t become an architect because he was black, … Read MoreLeon Bridges (1932- )
ON CERTIFICATE OF DIVISION FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE DISTRICT OF KANSAS Argued: — Decided: October 16th, 1883 1. The 1st and 2d sections of the Civil Rights Act passed March 1st, 1876, are unconstitutional enactments as applied to the … Read More(1883) The Civil Rights Cases
Joseph Sylvester Jackson became the first executive secretary of the newly founded Seattle Urban League when it received its charter from the national headquarters in New York in 1930. Little is known about Jackson before 1928. That year he graduated from Livingston College in Salisbury, … Read MoreJoseph Sylvester Jackson (?–?)
John A. Coleman was born a slave in 1852 in Talladega County, Alabama. After he received his freedom at the end of the Civil War, Coleman attended the newly established Talladega College for three years. He worked on a Mississippi River steamboat and then migrated … Read MoreJohn A. Coleman (1852-?)
James Andrew “Jimmy” Rushing—affectionately known as “Mister Five-By-Five” for being “five feet tall and five feet wide”—was a blues shouter born in Oklahoma City to a musical family on August 26, 1902 (give or take a year according to different sources). His father played trumpet … Read MoreJames Andrew “Jimmy”Rushing (1902-1972)
Jacob Lawrence, born in 1917 in Atlantic City, N.J., moved to New York City at age thirteen. Gwendolyn Knight, born in 1913, in Barbados, West Indies, arrived in the U.S. at age seven, and spent her first years in St. Louis. She arrived in New … Read MoreJacob Lawrence & Gwendolyn Knight
Born on March 1, 1913 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Ralph Waldo Ellison entered the world with a name that almost presumed for him a literary career. But his road to and in literature would be torturous. Many of the initial comforts enjoyed by Ellison vanished … Read MoreRalph Ellison (1913-1994)
Peter Salem was a Patriot of the American Revolutionary War who participated in the first major engagement of that conflict, the Battle of Breed’s Hill, erroneously called the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775. Salem was already a veteran soldier, having spent two … Read MorePeter Salem (ca.1750 -1816)
Pauli Murray was born on November 20, 1910 in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of Agnes and William Murray. Her father, a Howard University graduate, taught in the Baltimore public schools. Both of Murray’s parents died when she was a child. Her mother suffered from a … Read MorePauli Murray (1910-1985)
Paul Robeson is best known as a world famous athlete, singer, actor, and advocate for the human rights of people throughout the world. Over the course of his career, Robeson combined all of these activities into a lifelong quest for racial justice. He used his … Read MorePaul Robeson (1898-1976)
