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Bessie Coleman
The U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp honoring Bessie Coleman in 1995… Bessie Coleman’s family line included some American Indian blood: her father George was part African-American and part Cherokee.
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Source: Fact Monster - Black History
Sponsored by Prospanica Boston Professional Chapter
Johnson, James Weldon (1871-1938)
James Weldon Johnson, composer, diplomat, social critic, and civil rights activist, was born of Bahamian immigrant parents in Jacksonville, Florida on June 17, 1871.   Instilled with the value of education by his father, James, a waiter, and teacher-mother, Helen, Johnson excelled at the Stanton
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) Boston Professional Chapter
Jun
17
1871
Aretha Franklin the "Queen of Soul", singer born
Aretha Franklin
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Mar
25
1942
Documentary Films on Blackpast.org - Global African History - Director
Films - By Director | Films - By Title | Films - Year | Films - By Subject | Entire Site Bibliography
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Source: Black Past
Juanita Jewel Shanks Craft (1902-1985) and the Long Civil Rights Movement in Texas
A small but growing number of black women are slowly being recognized for their contributions to the “long” civil rights movement, the nearly century-long struggle by African Americans against all forms of racial discrimination.  In the account below University of Texas-El Paso
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Source: Black Past
Oct
4
2013
Price, Mary Violet Leontyne (1927- )
Born to James and Kate Price on February 10, 1927, in Laurel, Mississippi, Leontyne Price became one of the world’s leading opera sopranos and among the first African Americans to gain prominence in major performance halls in that musical genre. Her parents were amateur musicians and instilled in
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association (MBLA)
Feb
10
1927
The Gambia
U.S. Department of State Background Note
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Source: Fact Monster - Black History
Sharpton, Alfred Charles “Al” (1954- )
Born in Brooklyn, New York on October 3, 1954, Alfred Charles Sharpton, Jr., is an American Baptist minister and political, social, and human rights advocate.  Known as “the Wonder Boy” as a youth, he was licensed and ordained as a Pentecostal minister and toured with the gospel singer
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies
Oct
3
1954
Arthur Allen Fletcher, “The Father of Affirmative Action”
Arthur Allen Fletcher is known to many as the father of affirmative action.  In the following account historian David Hamilton Golland describes the career of Fletcher, a Republican civil rights activist during the last half of the 20th
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by Concerned Black Men of Massachusetts
Weekly Advocate changed its name
Weekly Advocate changed its name to the Colored American, the second major Black newspaper. Some forty Black newspapers were published before the Civil War.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sponsored by National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) Boston Metropolitan Chapter
Mar
4
1837
African American History Bibliography Authors & Editors
Abajian, James de T. Blacks in Selected Newspapers, Censuses and Other Sources: An Index to Names and Subjects Yes
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by NSBE Boston
Movement
Students protest at Yale University in support of the Black panthers.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sponsored by Association of Latino Professionals For America (ALPFA) Boston Professional Chapter
Apr
22
1970
Juanita Millender-McDonald (1938-2007)
Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1938, Juanita Millender McDonald was an educator and member of the United States House of Representatives.  She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Redlands and a master’s degree from California State University at Los
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Source: Black Past
Apr
21
2007
Elijah Muhammad, born
Elijah Muhummad was born Elijah Poole in
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Oct
10
1897
Waters, Muddy
Waters, Muddy, 1915–83, African-American blues singer and guitarist, b. Rolling Fork, Miss., as McKinley Morganfield. As a teenager he began singing and playing traditional country blues on harmonica and guitar, and in 1941 he was recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. Two years
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Source: Fact Monster - Black History
Bessie Coleman
Bessie Coleman was the first female African American pilot. She was born on January 26, 1892 and was the tenth of thirteen children born to George and Susan Coleman in Atlanta, Texas. Her father was of Native and African American descent. She attended a small school which was four miles from her
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Source: Black History Resources
Jun
15
1921
Daniel Hale Williams
Daniel Hale Williams was born on January 18, 1856 in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. He was the fifth of seven children born to Daniel and Sarah Williams. Daniel’s father was a barber and moved the family to Annapolis, Maryland but died shortly thereafter of tuberculosis. Daniel’s mother realized she
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Source: Black History Resources
Sponsored by Diversity In Action
Dixon, Charles Dean (1915-1976)
Charles Dean Dixon, conductor, was born January 10, 1915 in New York, New York to West Indian parents Henry Charles Dixon and McClara Rolston Dixon. Dixon’s parents exposed him to classical music at an early age and his mother taught him to play the violin, along with a number of other
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by BARBinc
Nov
4
1976
Kissi, Emmanuel Abu (1938– )
Emmanuel Abu Kissi, a prominent convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), was born in 1938 in Abomosu, Ghana. He married Benedicta Elizabeth Bamfo in June 1970, and they are the parents of seven children. Kissi attended medical school in London, England, and there came into
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Source: Black Past
(1851) Sojourner Truth “Ar'nt I a Woman?”
Sojourner Truth (c. 1797-1883) was arguably the most famous of the 19th Century black women orators. Born into slavery in New York and freed in 1827 under the state’s gradual emancipation law, she dedicated her life to abolition and equal rights for women and men. Two versions of her most noted
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by New York University
African-American Firsts in Film and Theatre
In 1916, Noble and George Johnson established The Lincoln Motion Picture Company.  Founded in Omaha, Nebraska, the Johnson Brothers made Lincoln Motion Picture Company the first African-American film production company. The companys debut film was entitled The Realization of the Negros
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Source: ThoughtCo
Lorraine Hansberry
The granddaughter of a freed slave, Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930, to a successful real estate broker and a school teacher who resided in Chicago, Illinois. In 1938, the family moved to a white neighborhood and was violently attacked by its inhabitants but the former refused to
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Source: Black History Resources
May
19
1930
Ethiopia Invaded by Italy
Ethiopia, one of the only two independent African nations at the time, was invaded on October 3,1935 by Facist Italy under Benito Mussolini. The Italians, seeking revenge for their prior
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sponsored by APEX Museum
Oct
3
1935
Wharton Sr., Clifton Reginald (1899-1990)
Clifton R. Wharton, one of the first African-Americans to hold a professional position in the U.S. State Department, was born in 1899 in Baltimore, Maryland. Described as a “scholastic marvel,” Wharton attended English High School in Boston, Massachusetts, skipped college and was
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by Greater Boston Veterans Collaborative
May
30
2006
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes, or just Langston Hughes, was an American writer, poet and social activist, born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. Most popularly recognized and appreciated for his work in literary art form of jazz poetry and the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, Hughes worked
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Source: Black History Resources
May
22
1967
Holly, James Theodore (1829-1911)
James Theodore Holly emigrationist, missionary, and bishop, was born in Washington, D.C on October 3, 1829. At age fourteen his family relocated to Brooklyn, New York. His father taught him the shoemaking trade. Then in 1848 he began working as an abolitionist with Lewis Tappan, one of the
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Source: Black Past
Oct
3
1829
Nina Simone
The story of her stage name is that she chose Nina because it means “small,” and Simone after French actress Simone Signoret… In 1989 she worked with Pete Townshend on his musical The Iron Horse… Simone held two honorary doctorate degrees (in music and humanities) and preferred to be
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Source: Fact Monster - Black History
The Wyoming Black Fourteen (1969)
The Wyoming Black Fourteen were African American members of the 1969 University of Wyoming (UW) football team who protested playing a game with Brigham Young University (BYU) because of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’s ban on black males holding the priesthood in the church and
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Source: Black Past
Oct
15
1969
Alexander, Sadie Tanner Mossell (1898-1989)
Born two decades before American women won the right to vote, Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander overcame obstacles as a female and also as an African American in the elite profession of law. In 1927 she became the first black woman to gain admission to the Pennsylvania Bar, beginning a long career
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Source: Black Past
Jan
2
1898
Mo Farah
Born: 3/23/1983 Mogadishu, SomaliaBritish double Olympic champion middle distance runner. In the London 2012 Olympics, Farah won gold at 5000m and 10,000m – making him one of Britain’s most successful distance runners of all time. He also won the 5000m world title in 2011. He currently holds the
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Source: Blackfacts.com
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