Henrietta Vinton Davis
Henrietta Vinton Davis (August 25, 1860 – November 23, 1941) was an elocutionist, dramatist, and impersonator. In addition to being “the premier actress of all nineteenth-century black performers on the…
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United…
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Known as the “King of Pop”, he is regarded as one of…
Emmett Louis Till
Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was an African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 at the age of 14,…
Edith S. Sampson
Edith Spurlock Sampson (October 13, 1901 – October 8, 1979) was an American lawyer and judge, and the first Black U.S. delegate appointed to the United Nations on 24 August…
Dr. Huey Percy Newton
Dr. Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989) was an African-American revolutionary and political activist. Newton was most notable for being founder of the Black Panther Party…
First Africans in Virginia
The first Africans in Virginia were a group of “twenty and odd” captive enslaved persons originally from modern-day Angola who landed at Old Point Comfort in Hampton, Virginia in late…
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (15 August 1875 – 1 September 1912) was a British composer and conductor. Of mixed-race birth, Coleridge-Taylor achieved such success that he was referred to by white New…
Springfield race riot of 1908
The Springfield race riot of 1908 consisted of events of mass racial violence committed against African Americans by a mob of about 5,000 white Americans and European immigrants in Springfield,…
Lamar “Ditney” Smith
Lamar “Ditney” Smith (1892 – August 13, 1955) was an American civil rights figure, African-American farmer, World War I veteran and an organizer of voter registration for African-Americans. In 1955,…