Category: African American History After Slave Trade

Juan Garrido was an African conquistador, born in the Kingdom of Kongo. He joined a Spanish expedition and arrived in Santo Domingo (Hispaniola) about 1502. He participated in the invasion of present-day Puerto Rico and Cuba…

DeFord Bailey (December 14, 1899 – July 2, 1982) was an American country music and blues star from the 1920s until 1941. He was the first performer to be introduced…

Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood (1828–1867) was a 19th-century African American educator and activist in California. Scott Flood was a “colored school” teacher in Sacramento, California and later fought for equal…

Susie Revels Cayton (1870 – 1943) was a writer, editor, activist, and leader in the Black community in Seattle at the start of the 20th century. Susie Sumner Revels was…

Biddy Mason (August 15, 1818 – January 15, 1891) was an African-American nurse and a Californian real estate entrepreneur and philanthropist. She was one of the founders of the First…

The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, nicknamed the “Six Triple Eight”, was an all-black battalion of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). The 6888th had 855 black women, both enlisted and…

Mayme Agnew Clayton (August 4, 1923 – October 13, 2006) was a librarian, and the founder, president, and leader of the Western States Black Research and Education Center (WSBREC), the…

Jane Matilda Bolin, LL.B. (April 11, 1908 – January 8, 2007) was the first black woman to graduate from Yale Law School, the first to join the New York City…

Cyril Valentine Briggs (May 28, 1888, Nevis – October 18, 1966, Los Angeles, California) was an African-Caribbean American writer and communist political activist. Briggs is best remembered as founder and…

Author Lee W. Formwalt, Organization of American Historians The Camilla Massacre, which took place on September 19, 1868, was one of the more violent episodes in Reconstruction Georgia. Two months…