Newspaper publisher and civil rights activist Daisy Lee Gatson Bates was influential in the integration of the Little Rock Nine into Little Rock, Arkansas’s Central High School in 1957. She was born Daisy Lee Gatson on November 11, 1914, in Huttih, Arkansas. Her mother, Millie … Read MoreDaisy Lee Gatson Bates (1914-1999)
Sarah Blair was born into slavery on Christmas Day, 1855, on the Blair Plantation near Greensboro, North Carolina. After the Civil War Sarah lived with an aunt in Knoxville, Tennessee and changed her name to Gammon, the aunt’s name. In 1870, Knoxville Judge John L. … Read MoreSarah Gammon Bickford (1855-1931)
Dr. Rosalie Reddick Miller was the first African American woman dentist to practice in the state of Washington. She was born on December 29, 1925 in Waycross, Georgia. She attended the all-black public schools in Columbus, Georgia, and in 1946 received a B.A. from Fisk … Read MoreRosalie Reddick Miller (1925-2005)
Described as the “most untalked about, unappreciated, unknown giant in the African American community,” by Dr. Levi Watkins, Jr., Vivien Thomas received an honorary doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1976, and while this was undoubtedly memorable, the decades which preceded this moment were equally … Read MoreVivien Thomas (1910-1985)
The son of former slaves, Roland W. Hayes, born June 3, 1887 in Curryville, Georgia, became the first African American male to become an internationally acclaimed concert vocalist. As a youth, he sang in his Baptist church and on street corners for tips before attending … Read MoreRoland Hayes (1887-1976)
Best-selling author, social critic and influential literary figure Richard Wright was born on September 4, 1908, to Nathan Wright and Ella Wilson, both children of slaves, on a plantation near Roxie, Mississippi. His father was an illiterate sharecropper and his mother was a schoolteacher. Finding … Read MoreRichard Wright (1908-1960)
Born enslaved in Tennessee, this girl came west with Ursuline nuns after being freed. Not known for her quiet temperament, she left the convent in her teens and became, in time, a restaurant owner in several towns in Montana, Wyoming and Alberta and Saskatachewan, Canada, … Read MoreMary Fields (1832-1914)
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
In the late 1920s, Ophelia Settle Egypt conducted some of the first and finest interviews with former slaves, setting the stage for the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) massive project ten years later. Born Ophelia Settle in 1903, she was a graduate of the University of … Read MoreOphelia Settle Egypt (1903-1984)
Nella Larsen, nurse, librarian, and, writer, was born Nella Marie Larsen in Chicago, Illinois in 1891 to a Danish mother and a black West Indian father. Knowing little about her father after his death when she was two years old, she was reared in the … Read MoreNella Larsen (1891-1963)
