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The Second Baptist Church, Bismarck, North Dakota, organized in 1917 to serve the African American residents of the city, including some who had previously attended the predominantly white First Methodist Episcopal Church. The immediate impetus for organization of Second Baptist came from a series of … Read MoreSecond Baptist Church (1917-1930[?])

Dr. Stanford Lee Warren, a co-founder of North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company and the Mechanics and Farmers Bank in Durham, North Carolina, was born in Caswell County, North Carolina in 1863. His mother was Anne Warren, and his father was reputed to be tobacco … Read MoreStanford Lee Warren (1863-1940)

Anne Moody was a writer and civil rights activist best known for her memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968). In the early 1960s, while a student at Tougaloo College, she worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Student … Read MoreAnne Moody (1940-2015)

In the following article, Russian DJ Ivan Tchijevsky describes exclusively for BlackPast.org the long history of black music and black musical performers in Russia. Writing from a musical festival in Odessa, Ukraine in June 2019, he outlines his views below. As I visit festivals of … Read MoreThe Afro-Beat in Russia: The Influence of Black Music on Russian Popular Culture, 1890-2002

Fourth Ward is the oldest established African American neighborhood in Houston, Texas. It was created in 1839 by the city of Houston as one its six political districts. Fourth Ward is located directly west of downtown Houston and in 1866, it was the site of … Read MoreFourth Ward, Houston, Texas (1839- )

Surgeon and oncologist Dr. LaSalle D. Leffall Jr. was born on May 22, 1930 in Tallahassee, Florida to Lula Jordan and LaSalle Leffall Sr. Leffall grew up in Quincy, Florida where his father taught agriculture at Florida A&M College, a historically black college located in … Read MoreLaSalle D. Leffall Jr. (1930-2019)

Empire, Wyoming was an African American community founded in 1908 by Charles and Rosetta Speese along with three of Charles’ brothers—John, Joseph and Radford—and their families. John’s brother-in-law, Baseman Taylor, and relative, Otis Taylor, also joined the settlement. The families migrated from Nebraska. With the … Read MoreEmpire, Wyoming (1908-1930)

Joseph (Joe) Martin, an African American man, was lynched by a mob of three hundred white men in Laramie, Wyoming on August 29, 1904. The Cheyenne Daily Leader headline read, “Joe Martin Taken from Jail After Desperate Battle and Hanged to Telegraph Pole.” Martin was … Read MoreJoseph (Joe) Martin (?- 1904)

Katherine Carper Sawyer is one of the nearly-forgotten plaintiffs in the famous Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954. While most attention was focused on Linda Brown’s central role in the most important school desegregation case in the nation’s history, Carper in … Read MoreKatherine Carper Sawyer (1942- )