In the article below, Syracuse University historian Herbert Ruffin explores the rapid rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2013 as the most recent development in the ongoing struggle for racial and social justice in the United States. In the summer of 2013, three … Read MoreBlack Lives Matter: The Growth of a New Social Justice Movement
“Image Ownership: Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times” Leo Antony “Tony” Gleaton was an African American photographer, scholar, and artist who is best known for his photographic images capturing and documenting the African influence in the American West and Central and South America. Gleaton, the youngest son … Read MoreTony Gleaton (1948-2015)
In the following essay independent historian Robert Fikes explores the eclectic experiences of African Americans in the world’s largest nation in the 19th and 20th Centuries It was in May 1824 that Nancy Gardner Prince, rescued from a life of poverty and hardship in Massachusetts … Read MoreIn the Land of Czars and Commissars: African Americans in Russia, the Soviet Union, and Post-Soviet Russia, 1824-2015
Ambassador Charles R. Baquet III was born December 24, 1941 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He attended public schools in the city and in 1963 he earned his B.A. in history from Xavier University in New Orleans. In 1975, he earned his M.A. in public administration … Read MoreCharles R. Baquet, III (1941- )
Of the 167 enlisted black soldiers of the 25th Infantry discharged from the U.S. Army “without honor” by order of President Theodore Roosevelt after the shooting in Brownsville, Texas in 1906, Pvt. Dorsie Willis was the only to live long enough to see justice. According … Read MoreDorsie Willis (1886-1977)
Samuel Clifford Adams, Jr., U.S. Ambassador to Niger was born in Waco, Texas on August 15, 1920, to Samuel Clifford Adams and Sarah Catherine (née Roberts) Adams. He grew up in the Fourth Ward section of Houston, Texas. In 1936 Adams graduated as valedictorian of … Read MoreSamuel Clifford Adams Jr. (1920-2001)
Image Ownership: Public Domain” Cornell William Brooks, currently the President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1961. His family moved to Georgetown, South Carolina, just before he began junior high school. After graduating … Read MoreCornell William Brooks (1961- )
Fifth Ward is one of the six political districts created in Houston, Texas in the mid-nineteenth century. It was established in 1866. Over the years it has produced notable cultural and political figures. Located northeast of downtown, Fifth Ward lies north of the Buffalo Bayou, … Read MoreFifth Ward, Houston, Texas (1866- )
The Second Baptist Church, the oldest black Baptist church in El Paso, Texas, was established in 1884. The brick edifice that is its current home was erected between 1903 and 1907 at Second and Virginia Streets, standing at the intersection of the city’s Mexican American … Read MoreSecond Baptist Church, El Paso, Texas (1884- )
Ambassador Eric Bost is currently the assistant director of External Relations for the Borlaug Institute at Texas A&M University. Bost, a native of Concord, North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill where he earned his Bachelor’s in Psychology in 1974. In 1985, … Read MoreEric M. Bost (1952- )
