Category: African American History

Bessie Coleman became the first black woman to obtain an international pilot’s license in 1921. After studying French, she enrolled in the prestigious Ecole d’Aviation des Frères Caudron in Northern France. No school in America would educate a black student. Her brother John, who served in France during World War I, inspired her to fly […]

Charles Brooks, a resident of Newark, New Jersey, is credited with inventing the street sweeping trucks on March 17, 1896. He also designed and patented a chad collection system for use with ticket punches. Aside from the fact that he was a Black man, we know very little about his life. In Brooks’ era, sweeping […]

He was a former slave turned coal magnate, churchman turned philanthropist, and wealthy Ohioan. In fact, at the time of his death, Robert Gordon was described as Ohio’s wealthiest Black man, having left a $200,000 estate (equivalent to nearly $5.7 million today). A Cincinnati Black businessman, he amassed his fortune during slavery by dealing in […]

If you have a manual push mower today, it most likely incorporates design elements from black American inventor John Albert Burr’s patented rotary blade lawnmower from the nineteenth century. John Albert Burr patented an improved rotary blade lawnmower on May 9, 1899. Burr created a lawnmower with traction wheels and a rotary blade that was […]

His device is widely used at home to improve the viewing experience of television, and while many people may not be familiar with Dr. Joseph N. Jackson, he is a big deal. Prior to the invention of the TV remote, viewers had to manually turn a knob to change channels that required movement. However, viewers […]

Slave rebellions and protests were not assisting enslaved Africans in America in gaining their freedom, so they devised more forceful methods of obtaining their freedom. It didn’t take long after several attempts and ideas for the Underground Railroad System to be established between the mid-18th and early 19th centuries. Secret escape routes were developed with […]

In 1796, Ona Judge, a 22-year-old slave woman, fled President George Washington’s household for a life of liberty in New Hampshire. George Washington inherited 10 slaves from his father’s estate when he was only 11 years old. He would acquire many more over the years, whether through the deaths of other family members or through […]

The African Insurance Company was founded in 1810, with headquarters at 159 Lombard Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was the country’s first African American-owned insurance company. Joseph Randolph was the first president, with Cyrus Porter as treasurer and William Coleman as secretary. African Americans founded an insurance firm as a natural progression from the beneficent […]

The first significant black landowner in the English colonies was Anthony Johnson. Johnson landed on board the a ship named ‘James’ in Virginia in 1621. Early records refer to Johnson as “Antonio, a Negro,” but it is unclear if they refer to him as a slave or an indentured servant. Johnson was forced to work as […]

Frederick Douglass, a well-known abolitionist, and preacher known for his command of language and prose, remains a towering figure in the annals of history for his long-standing fight against the practice of slavery in America. Douglass was in bondage prior to his anti-slavery campaign and fight for African American equality. Before gaining his freedom in 1838, […]

Jim Crow laws in the South barred Blacks from participating in overall integration activities, including college athletics, at the time Robert “Bobby” Grier Sr. made history in the Sugar Bowl. Despite the fact that integrated teams had previously been invited to the bowl game, no Black player had participated in the event since it began […]

Sundown towns existed across the United States in the years following Jim Crow. They were all-white communities or counties that purposefully excluded Black people and other minorities through discriminatory legislation, intimidation, harassment, or violence. Sundown towns were named for the fact that Black people were permitted to enter these all-white neighborhoods during the day to […]

After Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, 11 southern states seceded from the Union. During his campaign, he stated that he would not abolish slavery where it already existed, but would work to prevent it from spreading. To address secession difficulties and prevent civil war between the North and South, Kentucky Senator John J. […]

Southern University, located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is the country’s biggest historically Black college. Over 10,000 Black students attended the university in 1970. Despite the fact that the school president and the majority of the administration were Black, the university was controlled by the Louisiana State Legislature. The state of Louisiana spent half as much […]

Alligator bait, also called gator bait, was the evil practice of using infant African children as bait to lure alligators. This practice was popular in Louisiana and Florida, and other parts of America’s south. During that era, there was high demand for alligator skin, which was used in the production of leather shoes, jackets, belts, […]

The first Black settlers arrived in British Columbia in April 1858, 24 years after the Abolition of Slavery Act, according to history; however, Black Canadian history dates back to the 1600s. Many immigrants would come from all over the world to prosper in British Columbia, Canada. One of them was Mifflin Wistar Gibbs. After aiding […]

Ennis Cosby, Bill Cosby’s only son, was killed on Interstate 405 in the Bel-Air section of Los Angeles, California, twenty-five years ago. Interstate 405 is believed to be one of the busiest highways. In 1997, Ennis Cosby flew to Los Angeles to meet friends. Ennis Cosby, 27, a dyslexic graduate student in special education at […]

Thelma “Butterfly” McQueen had planned to become a nurse, but a teacher encouraged her to try dancing instead, which she finally accomplished. McQueen was born on January 8, 1911, in Tampa, Florida, and relocated to Harlem, New York, where she joined a Harlem theater group after studying nursing in the Bronx. She appeared in the […]

In the town of Amite, Louisiana, a family-owned funeral parlor has serviced the Black community for generations, preserving decades of information in funeral program records. “One day I got down and started looking at them, and I said, ‘Oh, look at the history I didn’t know about the Amite colored school,’” she said. “The Black […]

It’s been widely accepted that lynching was a systematic method of social and racial weapon intended to instil terror and fear into the psyche of the average black American, forcing them into submission and helping to cement their place in the lower rung of the inglorious racial caste system. The ignoble practice became widely predominant […]

Due to its importance in portraying the plight of African Americans during the American slavery era, Frederick Douglas’ 1852 speech with the title “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” has gained notoriety in recent years. Therefore, it is impossible to debate the speech’s historical importance. The Man: Frederick Douglas Frederick Douglass, born […]

On February 28, 1964, 37-year-old Clifton Walker worked a late shift at International Paper in Natchez and was on his way home to his wife and five kids in southwest Mississippi when he decided to take the shortcut that others had cautioned him against. It was dark and near midnight. According to a PBS story, […]

A group of Black and White abolitionists in Syracuse, New York, broke into a public building and released William “Jerry” Henry around 171 years ago, with the help of townspeople. Jerry, 40, had escaped slavery in Mississippi 17 years before and was working as a barrel maker in Syracuse when he was caught at work […]

One of the most dramatic protests in Boston’s history, according to local media. Anthony Burns, who had fled slavery in Virginia and resettled in Boston, was apprehended for being a fugitive slave and deported back to Virginia approximately 170 years ago. Burns’ arrest infuriated abolitionists in Boston, who staged street protests to demand his release. […]

According to history, approximately 179,000 Black men served as soldiers in the Union Army by the end of the Civil War in 1865, accounting for 10% of the Union Army, while another 19,000 served in the Navy. During the war, nearly 40,000 black soldiers died. All non-combat support functions were performed by black soldiers in […]

In 1931, an all-white jury found Black boy Alexander McClay Williams guilty of stabbing to death a white house matron at the Glen Mills School for Boys in Delaware County in barely four hours. Williams, who was 16 at the time, was hanged five months later, making him the youngest person executed in Pennsylvania history. […]

The Tuskegee Experiment was a 40-year study experiment that looked at the consequences of untreated syphilis. Black rural farm workers were the focus of government-sponsored research in the United States, and they were kept in the dark while they suffered. After going to the press in 1972, a whistleblower revealed the study’s unethical and morally […]

The Datcher’s Harpersville farm has a long history dating back to before the Civil War. Throughout American history, it portrays the story of family and Black ownership. The farm’s trees have been there for three centuries. The Datcher family farm museum is a tiny white farmhouse with portraits of family photos adorning the walls, giving […]

Butler R. Wilson, a Boston civil rights attorney, called him “one of the most skilled and well-known dentists among the younger members of the profession.” Dr. George Franklin Grant, a black dentist, was not just a successful dentist, but also an inventor. He invented and patented the oblate palate, a prosthetic device that allows people […]

Vanilla is a widely used spice around the world. The pricey ingredient is the main flavoring in ice creams and cola drinks, and it’s also found in some of the world’s finest perfumes and delicacies. In the mid-nineteenth century, before the vanilla revolution, the world, and Mexico in particular, were generating only a few thousand […]

Toussaint Jackson Oliver When he created Dearfield in the high plains of Colorado, had a dream: to build a self-sustaining village free of racism for Black people and their children. Jackson was able to persuade Black families in Denver, where the majority of the state’s Black population lived, to migrate to Dearfield in the 1910s, at a […]

Angela Davis, an American political activist, was arrested in October 1970 after a warrant was issued for her arrest on allegations of aggravated kidnapping and first-degree murder in connection with the death of Judge Harold Haley. On June 4, 1972, an all-white jury acquitted her of all charges after 16 months in prison and four […]

He was a brave man who, in the face of racial prejudice and bigotry, utilized the law to alter the path of American history. Charles Hamilton Houston is remembered for his courtroom prowess, as well as his contributions to the development of policies and regulations that have benefited citizens to this day. Houston, in particular, […]

Brazilians are outraged at the death of a mentally ill Black man, who was bundled in the trunk of a squad car before a gas grenade was fired into the vehicle, according to a video. According to The Guardian, the event occurred on May 25 after federal highway police in the South American country pulled […]

On December 10, 1918, at the Union Pacific Railroad yard in Green River, Wyoming, a mob lynched Joel Woodson of Omaha, Nebraska. He’d moved to Green River three months before for employment, leaving his wife and family behind in Omaha.  Woodson, an African American janitor at the Union Pacific Social Hall, had ordered breakfast at […]

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American aviators in America, serving during a time when the American Army was segregated. Despite encountering discrimination both inside and outside the service, the 332nd Fighter Group and the 99th Pursuit Squadron were regarded as highly successful during World War II. During World War II, they flew over 15,000 […]

The amazing story of Sarah Rector is that of a girl that was born to freed slaves in 1902 and climbed the financial ladder to become the wealthiest Black girl in America when she was only 11. She lived with her family in Taft, a Black town in Oklahoma. Her family were members of the […]

Four African American sharecroppers were killed near Moore’s Ford, Georgia, on July 14, 1946, in what is now known as the “last mass lynching in America.” The murderers of George Dorsey, Mae Murray Dorsey, Roger Malcolm, and Dorothy Malcolm, however, were never apprehended. The event’s violence and public uproar mirrored growing African American resistance to […]

Ben Carson’s inspirational life story of how he rose from obscurity to graduate first in his class is a best-seller among African Americans and millions of Africans worldwide. He achieved cult status in the African-American community by becoming the first Black neurosurgeon to successfully separate a pair of Siamese twins who were conjoined at the […]

Dana Albert Dorsey began his career with a single lot on which he constructed homes, rented them, and re-invested his profits, repeating the process over and over. Dorsey, a carpenter by trade, built a real estate empire in a handful of years. Thanks to his various business activities, including banking, he would become Miami’s first […]

In 1619, a ship carrying 20 slaves docked at Point Comfort, Virginia, kicking off the American slave trade. The arrival of 102 people on the Mayflower in 1620 is many Americans’ first introduction to American history. However, 20 enslaved Africans had been taken to the British colonies against their will a year before. A Dutch […]

As a leader of the Nation of Islam and afterward the New Black Panther Party, Khalid Abdul Muhammad rose to notoriety. Harold Moore Jr. was born in Houston, Texas, on January 12, 1948, to Harold Moore Sr. and Lottie B. Moore. Muhammad attended Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana after graduating from high school. In […]

New York City native Sylvia Vanderpool Robinson was born in 1936. Robinson would go on to work as a singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer, and executive for a record company. Robinson is well known for establishing Sugar Hill Records and serving as its CEO. She is recognized for producing two landmark hip-hop albums: the Sugar Hill […]

Women had been caring for the deceased for many years, cleaning and dressing bodies for home burials. Burials became a man’s work in the 1800s when the funeral home industry arose with the rise of embalming. Henrietta Bowers Duterte became America’s first female undertaker in 1858, defying gender standards at the period. In other words, […]

Because African-Americans were a convenient target in the 1950s and 1960s, the Ku Klux Klan — a white supremacist organization – had free rein, frightening and even murdering civil rights activists. Many civil rights workers armed themselves for self-defense as a result of the constant attacks. During the 1950s, even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s […]

The Georgia Infirmary was the United States’ first hospital for African Americans. The hospital was founded by the Georgia General Assembly and supported by a $10,000 donation from the estate of Thomas F. Williams, a local merchant, and pastor, and opened on December 24, 1832 “for the relief and protection of aged and ailing Africans.” […]

James Still became a doctor at a time when many Black people in the United States were still enslaved and were forbidden from attending school, let alone medical school, due to prejudice. Despite having only three months of formal schooling, he became a self-taught doctor who used homeopathic medications to heal his patients. He became […]

“Nelson Hackett was an enslaved man whose escape to Canada and subsequent extradition sparked off an international debate that ensured Canada remained a safe haven for individuals fleeing bondage from the United States,” his proposed marker test states. Hackett battled for the right to be free. And, while he didn’t achieve it for himself, he […]

In July 1951, a mob of 4,000 Whites attacked an apartment building that a Black family had just moved into in Cicero, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, resulting in one of America’s most damaging riots. Harvey Clark Jr., a World War II veteran who moved to Chicago from Mississippi, was working as a bus driver when […]

On February 12, 1946, while on his way to visit his wife, Army veteran Isaac Woodard was detained and assaulted to the point of being bound by police chief Linwood Shull. Woodward, who had been honorably dismissed from the army, was traveling by bus to Winnsboro, South Carolina, while still in uniform. While on his […]

Louis Allen, a World War II soldier with a seventh-grade education who always spoke up for his rights, lived in Liberty, Mississippi. He was one of the few Black landowners in Liberty, and he owned a small wood company. Allen was noted for constantly wearing a hat, which he used to show that he was […]

Much of Junius G. Groves’ success can be traced to his commitment to agriculture. He was born into slavery and rose through the ranks to become one of the wealthiest African-Americans of the early twentieth century. Groves made a name for himself as a potato farmer, earning the title of “Potato King of the World” […]

Five African-American men made history on September 1, 1944, when they were sworn in as the first Black police officers in the Miami Police Department. However, unlike their White counterparts, Ralph White, Moody Hall, Clyde Lee, Edward Kimball, and John Milledge were referred to as “patrolmen” rather than “officers.” They were sent to the “Central […]

Willie Edwards Jr. was assassinated by members of the Ku Klux Klan in Montgomery, Alabama on January 23, 1957. Edwards, 24, was taken from his delivery truck and forced to jump from a bridge to his death. It all began when Edwards received a call from his Winn-Dixie manager asking if he could cover a […]

The events of June 18th, 1964, were a pivotal but little-remembered day in American history, particularly in the civil rights struggle. A white hotel manager was photographed pouring acid into a pool where white and black protestors had joined forces to protest segregation on this day. This event at the pool in St. Augustine, Florida, […]

On the night of May 25, 1971, Jo Etha Collier was walking home after graduating from the newly integrated Drew High School in the small Mississippi Delta town of Drew when a pickup truck came by and opened fire. Around 9.45 p.m., 18-year-old Collier, who had been recognized for her school spirit and attitude and […]

James Hanover Thompson and David Simpson, two African-American children, were accused of kissing a white girl in 1958. Both children were taken to jail, and prosecutors demanded a harsh punishment, including incarceration in a reform school until they were 21 years old. The “Kissing Case” drew national media attention to Monroe, North Carolina at the […]

Eunice Hunton Carter was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to William Alphaeus Sr. and Addie Waite Hunton on July 16, 1899. The family would flee to Brooklyn, New York when Eunice was five in response to the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906. Eunice Hunton Carter graduated from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, with a B.A. and an M.A. […]

In the course of my research, oftentimes, there are stories I would stumble upon, and immediately wish I hadn’t seen them. This is one of those stories in history. And then just to make sure it’s not a made-up story, I dig deeper, only to discover renowned scholarly platforms narrating the same heartwrenching tale. Below […]

Recy Taylor was coming home from a church revival in Abbeville, Ala., when he was approached by a green Chevrolet full of white males. She attempted to flee, but one of the men grabbed her and dragged her into the sedan. According to state records, she was driven into a grove of pine trees, where […]

On November 5, 1992, when Malice Green, an unarmed Black man, was beaten to death by police, many people wondered if justice could ever be served. Malice Green was 35 years old when he was killed by police in Detroit. Plainclothes officers approached the unemployed steelworker after he had just driven his friend home and […]

At least 200 Black towns and communities had been formed across the United States by 1888. According to a Washington Post article, several of these towns were modeled after Black communities founded during the American Revolution and during the antebellum period, which lasted from the late 1700s until 1860. Some settlements vanished completely as time […]

George and Willie Muse (The Muse Brothers), two African-American albino brothers born in Roanoke, Virginia, in the 1890s, were the grandson of former slaves and sons of tobacco sharecroppers. Their mother, Harriett, raised them in poverty. Bounty hunters kidnapped the two brothers as boys in Truevine, Virginia, in 1899 and forced them into the circus. […]

Between 1865 and 1928, African American orphaned children and “supposed” juvenile criminals made up a major percentage of white plantation laborers in the South. Slavery continued after the Civil War in the form of convict leasing. Prisoners would be leased by southern states to private railways and big plantations. Many states benefited, but the inmates […]

In Brevard County, Florida, Harry Tyson Moore and his wife Harriette established the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The couple’s home in rural Mims, Florida, was bombed on Christmas Day 1951, and the two were murdered. Harriette Moore died nine days after Harry Moore died on his way to the hospital. […]

Marie Scott was a 17-year-old black girl from Wagoner County, Oklahoma, in 1914. After being violently raped by four white males who stormed into her home while she was undressing, she was lynched by a white mob. On March 31, 1914, four drunken white men drove to a black neighborhood in Wagoner County, Oklahoma, with […]

Robert Charles was a Black freedom warrior during a period when newly empowered white racists believed they could treat Black people any way they pleased, and had to learn the hard way that it took some ass to get some ass. Charles, who was born in 1865 in Copiah County, Mississippi, most likely witnessed his […]

When Sherry Johnson was nine years old, she was raped by the deacon of her local church. Her stepfather was the assistant pastor at an Apostolic Christian church in Tampa, Florida, and she was the daughter of the assistant “church mother.” She was sexually abused by a deacon who was 18 years old at the […]

Samuel (“Sammy”) Leamon Younge Jr. was 21 years old when he was fatally shot on January 3, 1966, at a gas station in Macon County, Alabama, while attempting to use a whites-only toilet. Younge was a navy veteran who attended Tuskegee Institute to study political science. On November 17, 1944, in Tuskegee, Alabama, the civil […]

Around 200 African American youths gathered in downtown Americus, Georgia, in July 1963 to peacefully oppose local segregation. Police rushed in to arrest the teenage protestors after sanctioning violent attacks by a white crowd.  While some protestors were quickly released, 35 young African American girls were imprisoned for nearly two months in an abandoned Civil […]

Emmett Till’s grisly lynching by two white men on the pretext that he flirted with one of their wives while the 14-year-old African American was just going to her shop to purchase candy is well-known.  Less known is the fact that his father, an African American soldier, was lynched in Italy alongside another black man. […]

Eliza Ann Grier, born enslaved in North Carolina, got her M.D. and became Georgia’s first Black woman physician in 1898. Her bachelor’s degree in education from Fisk University took her eight years to complete because she took every other year off to pick cotton and do other chores to pay for her tuition to continue […]

Sabina Chebichi was a member of the Elgeyo ethnic group from Kenya’s western highlands. She was born in Trans Nzoia, the second oldest of nine children, and grew up in a mud hut, tending to the family’s cattle and doing other household chores. Chebichi would come from humble beginnings to achieve fame in the athletics […]

Rosa Lee Ingram and her two boys were sentenced to death for the murder of a white landowner, and sexual offender in rural Georgia in 1948. The case was a superb illustration of Cold War racial protest politics, and it helped to overturn Jim Crow legislation in Georgia’s southwest corner. Civil rights advocates from across the […]

Juliet Miles was enslaved in Kentucky in the 1800s and was eventually released, but she died in prison after being recaptured while attempting to rescue her children from slavery. This is the tale of her heroism and life. While Miles was enslaved, Reverend John Gregg Fee, one of Kentucky’s most notable abolitionists, purchased her from […]

Was it a case of extreme negligence that resulted in the boys’ deaths, or were they deliberately burned alive? Considering circumstances before, during, and after the 1959 fatal episode at the Arkansas reform school in Wrightsville, some believe it’s the latter. Jim Crow restrictions prevented blacks from fully integrating into society in the 1950s. During […]

After the Civil War, White Southerners wrote short stories, memoirs, and novels that seek to justify slavery. Slave Christmases have been made to sound beautiful in some of these novels, which describe how enslaved men and women sang, danced, and sat eating lavish meals throughout the holidays, just as their masters did. According to some […]

15th of July, 1895 Isadore Banks enlisted in the Army at the age of 22 in the latter months of World War I, but it is unclear whether he was sent overseas. On August 2, 1919, Banks received an honorable discharge.  According to CNN, after returning from the army in the 1920s, he assisted in […]

Former President Bill Clinton was formerly regarded as the first Black president by the African-American community when the thought of electing a black president was still a pipe dream. During his 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, Clinton had a solid relationship with the African-American community.  Clinton won the support of the Black community, particularly southern […]