Hugh M. Browne was a civil rights activist and educator. Born June 12, 1851, in Washington D.C. to John and Elizabeth (Wormley) Browne, he is known for his work as the principal of the Institute for Colored Youth and his advocacy for vocational education. After … Read MoreHugh Mason Browne (1851-1923)
Mary Magdalena Lewis Tate founded a Pentecostal denomination and became one of the first American women to hold the title of Bishop. Born in Vanleer, Tennessee on January 5, 1871, to Belfield Street and Nancy (Hall) Street, she married her first husband, David Lewis, at … Read MoreMary Magdalena Lewis Tate (1871-1930)
Norman (Norm) Robert Allen Jr. is a writer and secular humanist activist. On August 31, 1989 Allen founded African Americans for Humanism, the first organization focused on the promotion of humanism and humanist ideals among people of African descent. He was the executive director of … Read MoreNorman Robert Allen, Jr. (1957- )
Dorothy Leigh Maynor was an international concert soprano, founder of the Harlem School of the Arts, the first African American to sing at an American president’s inauguration (Harry S. Truman’s, on January 20, 1949), the first African American artist to perform at Constitution Hall, the … Read MoreDorothy Leigh Maynor (1910-1996)
Vernon Earl “Earl the Pearl” Monroe, a retired National Basketball Association (NBA) player, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1944. During his NBA career Monroe was an All-Star guard for the Baltimore Bullets and New York Knicks. Monroe was a student at Philadelphia’s Bertram High … Read MoreVernon Earl “Earl the Pearl” Monroe (1944- )
Beginning in the 1970s, Barbara Smith broke new ground as a black feminist, lesbian, activist, author, and book publisher of women of color. She and her twin sister, Beverly Smith, were born on December 16, 1946 in Cleveland, Ohio. Their mother, Hilda Smith, maternal grandmother, … Read MoreBarbara Smith (1946- )
Alan Gilbert, University of Denver political scientist and anti-racist activist, is the author of Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence, one of the few works that examines the free and enslaved blacks who joined the American Patriots and the … Read MoreFighting for Freedom on Both Sides of the American Revolution
LeRoy Homer Jr., co-pilot of United Airlines Flight #93, was born on August 27, 1965 in Long Island, New York. Homer and his three sisters were raised on Long Island by their German mother, Ilse, and their African-American father who died from a stroke when … Read MoreLeRoy W. Homer Jr. (1965-2001)
Floyd Calvin was a journalist who also launched a newswire service and hosted the first black radio show during the Harlem Renaissance. Calvin was born in 1902 to a school teacher and a farmer in Washington, Arkansas. He graduated from Shover State Teacher Training College … Read MoreFloyd Joseph Calvin (1902-1939)
In 1993 Sister Souljah (born Lisa Williamson), a Bronx-born rapper, earned national notoriety thanks ironically to then Presidential candidate Bill Clinton who denounced her comments about the 1992 Los Angeles Riots as “hate driven and racist.” Sister Souljah responded with her own criticism of the … Read More(1994) Sister Souljah, “We Are At War”
