Leroy Robert Paige, one of the few African American baseball athletes to play in both the Negro Baseball Leagues and in Major League Baseball. He was also the first player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame because of his career in the … Read MoreLeroy Robert “Satchel” Paige (1906-1982)
John Jordan “Buck” O’Neil was born November 13, 1911, in Carrabelle, Florida. Working with his father on a Florida celery farm when he was 13, the young O’Neil said to himself, “Damn. There’s got to be something better than this.” After traveling to West Palm … Read MoreJohn Jordan “Buck” O’Neil (1911-2006)
Born into slavery on a plantation in Tennessee, George Washington Woodbey was largely self-educated and as young man supported himself as a miner and factory worker before becoming an ordained minister in 1874, and pastoring churches in Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. By the mid-1880s Woodbey, … Read MoreGeorge Washington Woodbey (1854-?)
On April 12, 1864, some 3,000 rebels under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest overran Fort Pillow, a former Confederate stronghold situated on a bluff on the Tennessee bank of the Mississippi, some 40 miles north of Memphis. The garrison consisted of about 600 Union … Read MoreFort Pillow Massacre (1864)
Painter and illustrator Aaron Douglas was born in Topeka, Kansas on May 26, 1899 to Aaron Douglas Sr., a baker originally from Tennessee and Elizabeth Douglas, a homemaker from Alabama. and became one of the leading visual artists of his time. Inspired by the work … Read MoreAaron Douglas (1898-1979)
Daniel Hale Williams III was a pioneering surgeon best known for performing in 1893 one of the world’s first successful open heart surgeries. Williams was born on January 18, 1856, in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania to Sarah Price Williams and Daniel Hale Williams II. Following the death … Read MoreDaniel Hale Williams (1856-1931)
Born into slavery in Kentucky in 1842, Allen Allensworth gained his freedom in the Civil War when the Forty-fourth Illinois Volunteer Infantry was camped in Louisville, Kentucky. Young Allensworth dressed in an old uniform, plastered mud over his face and marched boldly up Main street … Read MoreAllen Allensworth (1842-1914)
