Larry Everston Brownlee, Jr., one of six children, was born on November 24, 1972 in Youngstown, Ohio. His father, a General Motors plant worker who was also choir director at Phillips Chapel Church of God in Christ, commanded his son to perform so often that … Read MoreLawrence E. Brownlee Jr. (1972- )
Harriet Robinson Scott was an enslaved person who is best remembered for being the second wife of Dred Scott. Harriet was born a slave on a Virginia plantation around 1820. From a young age she was a servant to Lawrence Taliaferro, a US Indian Agent. … Read MoreHarriet Robinson Scott (ca. 1820-1876)
Expatriate novelist, journalist, and memoirist Andrea Lee was raised in a well-to-do African American family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The youngest of three children, her father was a Baptist minister and her mother an elementary school teacher. The product of private school education, she recalls both … Read MoreAndrea Lee (1953- )
Marion Williams, an American gospel singer, was born in Miami, Florida on August 29, 1927. Her father, originally from Nassau, Bahamas, worked as a butcher, a barber, and a music teacher while her mother, born in South Carolina, worked as a laundress. One of 11 … Read MoreMarion Williams (1927-1994)
After the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, open skirmishes took place between Southern slave catchers and Northern abolitionists who despised slavery and what they saw as its encroachments on the liberty and freedom of residents of the free states. Armed altercations and confrontations … Read MoreChristiana Riot of 1851
Samuel R. Delany Jr., “Chip,” is an award-winning African American gay writer, editor, professor, and literary critic. He is the first major African American science fiction writer as well as one of the most influential writers of this genre in the United States. He transformed … Read MoreSamuel Ray Delany Jr. (1942- )
Derrick Bell, legal scholar and teacher, was the first black law professor at Harvard Law School to achieve tenure and one of the first African American deans in a non-historically black law school. Bell was also a founder of an academic model called critical race … Read MoreDerrick Albert Bell Jr. (1930-2011)
Kweisi Mfume, born Frizzel Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, represented that city in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1986 to 1996 and rose to become Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. On February 15, 1996, he stepped down to become President of the National Association … Read More(1997) Kweisi Mfume, “A Shining and Powerful Dream”
In the following article historians Bruce Glasrud and Cary Wintz discuss their new book, The Harlem Renaissance in the American West which argues that the literary and artistic outpouring by African Americans during the third decade of the 20th Century was a national phenomenon which … Read MoreThe Harlem Renaissance in the American West
Walter Edward Williams, economist, educator, political pundit, radio personality, and syndicated columnist, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in March 31, 1936. Williams and his sister were raised by a single mother in the Richard Allen Housing Project in North Philadelphia. Williams was educated in Philadelphia … Read MoreWalter Edward Williams (1936-2020)
