Reverend Mahlon Van Horne was a community leader in Newport, Rhode Island and a pioneer in African American politics. As U.S. consul to St. Thomas, Danish West Indies, he advocated for the U.S. to purchase the territory in the early 1900s. Born on March 5th, … Read MoreMahlon Van Horne (1840-1910)
Shields Green Image Ownership: Public Domain Known as the “Emperor,” Shields Green was a fugitive slave who was executed in 1859 for his role in John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry. Shields Green was born a slave in South Carolina, with his birth year varying … Read MoreShields Green (c. 1830- 1859)
Ronald Erwin McNair was a physicist and one of the first African American astronauts to go into space. He was also the first black astronaut to die on a space mission. McNair was born to Carl McNair, an auto body repairman, and Pearl McNair, a … Read MoreRonald E. McNair (1950-1986)
On July 8, 1876, the small town of Hamburg, South Carolina erupted in violence as the community’s African American militia clashed with whites from the surrounding area. Hamburg was a small all-black community across the river from Augusta, Georgia. Like many African American communities in … Read MoreThe Hamburg Massacre (1876)
Carnegie Mellon University historian Edda L. Fields Black’s 2008 book, Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora, opened a vast new area of diasporic study by linking the cultivation of rice in Africa to the rise of this crucially important food … Read MoreDeep Roots Across the Atlantic: Rice and Race in Africa and the Americas
U.S. Senator from South Carolina, Timothy Eugene Scott is the first black Republican elected to the Senate from the South since Senator Blanche Kelso Bruce served in that body representing Mississippi from 1876 to 1881. He is also the first black Republican senator elected since … Read MoreTimothy Scott (1965- )
Born into slavery in Charleston, South Carolina on June 29, 1849, William J. Simmons served as the second president of what would later become Simmons College of Kentucky between 1880 and 1890. He was also a prominent historian and biographer of African American men. Simmons’s … Read MoreWilliam J. Simmons (1849-1890)
Born in Antebellum South Carolina, the Rt. Rev. Samuel David Ferguson emigrated to Liberia as a child and became the first African American member of the Episcopal House of Bishops. As is sometimes thought, he was not the first African American Episcopal bishop. That distinction … Read MoreSamuel David Ferguson (1842-1916)
The Underground Railroad which fugitive slaves followed from the antebellum South to Canada is now a well-known story. But what of those who returned? In his ongoing research, University of Texas at El Paso historian Adam Arenson explores this little-known aspect of nineteenth- century African … Read MoreAfter the Underground Railroad: Finding the African North Americans who Returned from Canada
Henry McKee Minton was an African American pharmacist and physician who was one of the six men who founded the first African American fraternity, Sigma Pi Phi, commonly known as The Boulé. The other five founders were Algernon Jackson, Edwin Howard, Richard Warrick, Robert Abele, … Read MoreHenry McKee Minton (1870-1946)
