The 92nd Infantry Division, a military unit of approximately fifteen thousand officers and men, was one of only two all-black divisions to fight in the United States Army in World War I and World War II. The 92nd Division was organized in October 1917 at … Read More92nd Infantry Division (1917–1919, 1942–1945)
The Second Italo-Abyssinian War was Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia, a process it began after the 1885 Partition of Africa. Italy was defeated in its first attempt at conquest at the battle of Adwa in 1896, allowing Ethiopia to become the only African nation to remain … Read MoreThe Second Italo-Abyssinian War (1935–1936)
Poster for Seattle Steelheads at Borchert Field, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, August 12, 1946 “Image Ownership: David Eskenazi Collection” The Seattle Steelheads were the all-black minor league baseball team formed in the spring of 1946 as part of the West Coast Negro Baseball League organized by Abe … Read MoreSeattle Steelheads (1946)
“Image Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library” Dentist and civil rights leader Christopher L. Taylor was born in Wilson, North Carolina, to Russell Buxton Taylor and Viola Gaither on December 21, 1923. Taylor served in the United States Army in World War II. In … Read MoreChristopher L. Taylor (1923–1995)
Anti-fascist Afro-Italian partisan Giorgio Marincola lived a brief but heroic life. Born September 23, 1923, in the south central coastal town of Mahaday in what was then called Italian Somaliland, he was the son of Italian military officer Joseph Marincola and a Somali woman, Aschiro … Read MoreGiorgio Marincola (1923-1945)
On July 14, 1946, four African American sharecroppers were lynched at Moore’s Ford in northeast Georgia in an event now described as the “last mass lynching in America.” Yet the killers of George Dorsey, Mae Murray Dorsey, Roger Malcolm, and Dorothy Malcolm were never brought … Read MoreThe Moore’s Ford Lynching (July 1946)
Newspaper columnist and poet Ora Mae Lewis was born March 29, 1918, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her father, Nathan Leopold Lewis, was a native of Jamaica and a decorated soldier in the British Colonial Army, and her mother Cecelia Della Atkinson, a New Orleans Creole, … Read MoreOra Mae Lewis Martin (1918–2005)
Robert Browning Flippin was an important community leader and racial activist in San Francisco beginning in the 1930s through the 1950s. He was also the first African American parole officer at the California State Prison at San Quentin. The son of the black physician George … Read MoreRobert Browning Flippin (1903-1963)
On August 6, 1945, Private First Class Malvin L. Brown was killed after falling 140 feet during a “let-down” from a tree while fighting a forest fire in the Umpqua National Forest in southern Oregon. Brown was the first smokejumper to die while fighting a … Read More555th Parachute Infantry Battalion [Triple Nickles] (1944-1947)
In 1930 Bessie Stringfield became the first African American woman to ride her motorcycle across the United States solo. Her feat was credited with breaking down barriers for both women and African-American motorcyclists. Born Betsy Leonora Ellis on February 9, 1911, in Kingston, Jamaica, she … Read MoreBessie Stringfield (1911-1993)
