In 1944 Sara Dunlap Jackson became one of the first African American professionals hired by the National Archives in Washington, D.C. where she specialized in western, military, social and African American topics. She continued at the Archives until her retirement in 1990. In the following … Read MoreRemembering Sara Dunlap Jackson (1919-1991)
H. Claude Hudson was an important civil rights and business leader in two different cities: Shreveport, Louisiana, and Los Angeles. Hudson was born in Louisiana in 1886. He studied at Wiley College, in Marshall, Texas, and earned a degree from the dentistry school at Howard … Read MoreH. Claude Hudson (1886-1989)
E. Burton Ceruti was a prominent attorney and one of the founders of the Los Angeles branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Ceruti was born on August 14, 1875, in Nassau, the Bahamas. He moved to the United States when … Read MoreE. Burton Ceruti (1875-1927)
Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1884, Saint Elmo Brady became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in the field of chemistry when he completed his graduate studies at the University of Illinois in 1916. The eldest child of Thomas and Celesta Brady, Saint … Read MoreSaint Elmo Brady (1884-1966)
Born on the campus of Howard University on May 1, 1901, Sterling Allen Brown was the last of six children and the only boy born to the Rev. Sterling Nelson, a former slave and prominent professor in the Howard Divinity School, and Adelaide (Allen) Brown. … Read MoreSterling A. Brown (1901-1989)
A clubwoman, teacher, society leader, and race activist, Josephine Beall Willson Bruce was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 29, 1853, to Dr. Joseph Willson, a prominent dentist, and Elizabeth Harnett Willson, a singer and musician. In 1854 the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio where … Read MoreJosephine Beall Willson Bruce (1853-1923)
In their introduction to Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, co-editors Henry Louis Gates and Kwame Anthony Appiah describe W.E.B. Du Bois’s half century campaign to publish an encyclopedia that would encompass the African diaspora. That introduction appears below. Between 1909 … Read MoreW.E.B. Du Bois and the Making of the Encyclopedia Africana, 1909-1963
Long before he became a minister, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Operation Breadbasket, Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), and founder of the Rainbow Coalition, Jesse Louis Jackson impressed his family and close friends as a person destined for greatness. Born Jesse … Read MoreJesse Louis Jackson Sr. (1941- )
Recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, attorney Oliver White Hill spent more than 60 years in a practice devoted to civil rights causes. He was in the forefront of the legal effort to desegregate public schools, participating in the … Read MoreOliver W. Hill (1907-2007)
William Lineas Maples, a physician and musician, was born in Sevierville, Tennessee, on March 31, 1869. The son of Edward Maples and Martha Jane Runions, William graduated in the first class of the segregated high school in Knoxville in 1888. Showing a talent for science, … Read MoreWilliam Lineas Maples (1869-1943)
