Ron O’Neal was a charismatic and gifted actor who never fulfilled the early promise he had shown on the New York Off-Broadway stage following his appearance as a flashy drug dealer in the hit blaxploitation film Super Fly (1972), the role that made him a … Read MoreRon O’Neal (1937-2004)
The Honorable Nathaniel Raphael Jones was an African American attorney, judge, and law professor. His indelible contributions and steadfast commitment to equality for all under the law’s eyes have since resulted in tremendous progress for persons of color in the United States and abroad. Nathaniel … Read MoreNathaniel R. Jones (1926-2020)
As a child, concert violinist and professor Elwyn A. Adams was a musical prodigy of some notoriety in the African American community of Cleveland, Ohio, where he was born on August 3, 1933. At age five he gave his first violin recital at East Mt. … Read MoreElwyn Albert Adams (1933-1995)
Nigerian-born Njideka Akunyili Crosby is a leading contemporary artist. In early 2018 a typically large-scale painting by Crosby sold for $3 million, just a few months after she had won a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award worth $624,000. Born in 1983 in Enugu, Nigeria, she is … Read MoreNjideka Akunyili Crosby (1983- )
The influential 19th century spiritualist and author Paschal Beverly Randolph was born October 8, 1825 in New York City. According to contemporary researchers he was likely the illegitimate son of William Randon, a white man, and Flora Clark, an African American woman. Soon abandoned by … Read MorePaschal Beverly Randolph (1825-1875)
The only person of African descent known to have had a face-to-face conversation with the infamous Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler was the economist Milton Samuel J. Wright. Born in Savannah, Georgia, on June 28, 1903, the son of William Wright and Edith Burnside Wright, he … Read MoreMilton S. J. Wright (1903-1972)
Having achieved considerable success after switching careers, Thomas “Detour” Evans has been in big demand as a muralist and portrait artist. Born December 12, 1984 in Dayton, Ohio, the son of Leroy M. Evan, an Army lieutenant colonel, Evans lived on military base on two … Read MoreThomas Neil-Abraham Evans (1984- )
Jesse Leroy Brown, the Navy’s first aircraft pilot, was also the first African American pilot killed in the Korean War. Born October 13, 1926 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, he was one of the five children of John Brown, a sharecropper, and schoolteacher Alice Brown. An all-around … Read MoreJesse Leroy Brown (1926-1950)
Kevin Darnell Hart is a comedian, actor, and producer. Hart was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 6, 1979, to Nancy Hart and Henry Witherspoon. He graduated from George Washington High School and briefly attended The Community College of Philadelphia. Hart lived in New York … Read MoreKevin Darnell Hart (1979- )
Eliza Lee was one of the most esteemed cooks in antebellum Charleston who ran not only a prestigious catering business but, with her husband, owned and operated five restaurant/ hotels throughout the city. Lee’s mother was Sally Seymour, a former slave manumitted by her enslaver … Read MoreEliza Seymour Lee (1800-c. 1874)
