Actress Cicely Tyson is born in New York, NY

Reddick, Eunice S. (1951- )

Eunice S. Reddick, an American diplomat and United States Ambassador to the Republic of Niger, was born in 1951 in New York City, New York. Reddick received her Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International Affairs in 1975 and then worked for several

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Source: Black Past

Jacobs, Harriet (c.1815-1897)

Born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina, Harriet Ann Jacobs was the daughter of slaves, Delilah and Daniel Jacobs. Harriet Jacobs is best known for her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, edited by white abolitionist Lydia Maria Child, and published in 1852. Using the

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Source: Black Past

Dred Scott Case

Dred Scott Case | FactMonster

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Source: Fact Monster - Black History

Meeks, Gregory W. (1953- )

U.S. Congressman Gregory W. Meeks was born on September 25, 1953 in East Harlem, New York City. He was raised in a public housing project in East Harlem and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in History with a minor in Political Science from New York’s Adelphi University. He earned his Juris

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Source: Black Past

Sep

25

1953

Nairobi, Kenya (1899- )

Nairobi is the largest city and capital of the modern state of Kenya as well as the former capital of British East Africa. Nairobi was originally a camp for the engineers constructing the Uganda railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria in 1899. Later that year, the railway headquarters was moved there

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Source: Black Past

Annan, Kofi A. (1938-- )

Kofi Atta Annan, born on 8 April 1938 in Kumasi, Ghana, served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) between 1997 and 2007. As a young man, Annan finished his undergraduate studies in economics at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1961. He then completed his

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Source: Black Past

Jan

1

1997

Taylor, George Edwin (1857-1925)

Born in the pre-Civil War South to a mother who was free and a father who was enslaved, George Edwin Taylor would become the first African American selected by a political party to be its candidate for the presidency of the United

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Source: Black Past

Nov

20

1904

James Earl Jones

James Earl Jones is an American actor who is well known for an array of notable characters he has played in his movies. He was born in January 1931 to Robert Earl and Ruth Jones in Arkabutla, Mississippi. His father was an actor, boxer, butler, and chauffeur who left the family shortly after his

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Source: Black History Resources

The Southern Negro Youth Congress: A Participant Recalls Its Past

In the article below historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall recounts her role as a founder of the New Orleans Youth Congress and the early years of the Southern Negro Youth Congress. This account is part of her soon to be published

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Source: Black Past

Nov

15

1974

12 Must See Black History Movies

Decades of struggle and hardship paid off when United States elected a black president. It is still too early to say that discrimination has been completely abolished from U.S as different races are being targeted instead of blacks. The blacks who used to be traded to western countries and kept as

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Source: Famous African Americans

Betty Shabazz

Betty Shabazz was the wife of Malcolm X, a prominent leader of the Nation of Islam. Her exact date of birth is not known, but it is believed to be May 28, 1934. She was born in Georgia to unwed teenage parents named Ollie Mae Sanders and Shelman Sandlin, and raised in Detroit. By some accounts, her

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Source: Black History Resources

Gordone, Charles (1925- )

Charles Gordone was born Charles Edward Fleming on October 12, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio to parents William and Camille Fleming. He took his stepfather’s surname of Gordon when his mother remarried when he was five years old. The family moved to Elkhart, Indiana, his mother’s hometown, when Charles

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Source: Black Past

Nov

13

1995

(1963) Josephine Baker, “Speech at the March on Washington”

Josephine Baker is remembered by most people as the flamboyant African American entertainer who earned fame and fortune in Paris in the 1920s. Yet through much of her later life, Baker became a vocal opponent of segregation and discrimination, often initiating one-woman protests against racial

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Source: Black Past

Kerr, Peter “Black Pete” (1810?-1840?)

Peter Kerr was a freed slave, originally owned by iron worker John Kerr of Fallowfield, Pennsylvania. By the late 1820s Peter Kerr, after gaining his freedom, moved west. He is believed to be the earliest known black person to have joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

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Source: Black Past

Senghor, Léopold Sédar (1906-2001)

Scholar, African traditionalist poet, and Senegal’s first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor was born on October 9, 1906 in Joal, Senegal. His father, Basie Diogoye Senghor, was a Malinké landowner. His mother, Gnilane Bakhoum, came from a Christian Fulani family. They gave Senghor a European name to

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Source: Black Past

Dec

20

2001

Akuetteh, Cynthia Helen (1948- )

In 2014, Cynthia Akuetteh, career Senior Foreign Service officer, was nominated by President Barack Obama to serve as ambassador to Gabon and the island nation of Sao Tomé & Principe. After U.S. Senate confirmation she arrived in Libreville, capital of Gabon, to take up her

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Source: Black Past

Abdel-Nasser, Gamal Hussein (1918–1970)

Gamal Abdel-Nasser was the second president of Egypt, officially appointed on June 23, 1956, and served until his death on September 28, 1970. Before becoming president, Abdel-Nasser was an Egyptian nationalist and prime

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Source: Black Past

Vanessa Williams

Vanessa Lynn Williams is a Grammy nominated singer, former beauty queen and television and film actress. She was born on March 18, 1963 in Bronx, New York but soon moved to a more fashionable neighborhood. Her parents, Milton and Helen Williams, both worked as music teachers and so Williams and her

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Source: Black History Resources

Mar

18

1963

Rickey Henderson

Rickey Nelson Henley Henderson is a retired professional baseball player who played for 9 Major League Baseball teams between 1979 and 2003. He was born on December 25, 1958 in Chicago, Illinois. His father left the family when he was two years old and later died in a car accident. His mother

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Source: Black History Resources

Jun

24

1979

African Baptist Church [Boston] (1805- )

Officially founded on August 8, 1805 by the Reverend Thomas Paul, The African Baptist Church is the oldest black church in Massachusetts. The first meeting of the congregants took place around 1800. Thomas Paul and Scipio Dalton formed the African Baptist Church after a group of black congregants

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Source: Black Past

Aug

8

1805

The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed | An Online Reference Guide to African American History by Professor Quintard Taylor, University of Washington

1603 Mathieu Da Costa, a free black explorer, guides the French through parts of Canada and the Lake Champlain region of what is now New York state. 1603

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Source: Black Past

Big Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Atlanta, Georgia (1847- )

Big Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church is the oldest African American church in Metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia. Like Wheat Street, First Congregational, and the King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, Bethel A.M.E. has been a religious, social, economic, and cultural pillar of the African

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Source: Black Past

Moose, George E. (1944 - )

Ambassador George E. Moose’s career in international diplomacy resulted from his spending a college summer in the 1960s building a three-room schoolhouse in Tanzania. The high point of that career came in 1983 when President Ronald Reagan nominated him to be U.S. Ambassador to Benin and later

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Source: Black Past

32nd and 33rd WAACS Headquarters Companies (World War II)

Organized in the fall of 1942, Iowa, the all-black Thirty-Second and Thirty-third Womens Auxiliary Army Companies would become the first contingent of WAACS assigned to a military installation in the United States during World War II. Composed of nearly 200 auxiliaries and seven officers, company

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Source: Black Past

Dec

4

1942

Harry Belafonte

“The Banana Boat Song” was co-written by actor Alan Arkin… Belafonte studied drama in New York in the same class of young actors as Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger and Walter Matthau… His daughter, Shari Belafonte, is a model and actress (she starred in the 1980s TV series Hotel)… Belafonte

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Source: Fact Monster - Black History

Nascimento, Beatriz (1942-1995)

Brazilian political activist Beatriz Nascimento was born on July 12, 1942, to Rubina Pereira do Nascimento and Francisco Xavier de Nascimento in Aracaju, capital of the Northeast Brazilian state of Sergipe. She migrated with her family, including ten brothers to Rio de Janeiro in the 1950s. At the

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Source: Black Past

Jan

28

1995

Morgan, Michael (1957- )

As a classical music conductor, Michael Morgan has been instrumental in bringing his eclectic orchestral leadership style to a diverse audience. Since becoming musical director of the Oakland East Bay Symphony Orchestra in 1990, Morgan has become well respected, particularly in the African American

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Source: Black Past

W.E.B. DuBois and the Making of the Encyclopedia Africana, 1909-1963

In their introduction to Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, co-editors Henry Louis Gates and Kwame Anthony Appiah describe W.E.B. DuBois’s half century campaign to publish an encyclopedia that would encompass the African diaspora. That introduction appears

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Source: Black Past

Hampton University (1868-- )

Hampton University, located on the shore of Chesapeake Bay in Hampton, Virginia, was founded in 1868 by Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the son of a prominent missionary family that settled in Hawaii in the early 1800s. Armstrong was enrolled at Williams College in Massachusetts when the Civil War

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Source: Black Past

Marian Anderson

Marian Anderson was a highly renowned classical singer who became the first African American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera. She was born on February 27, 1897 to John and Annie Anderson in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her father ran an ice and coal business and his mother was a babysitter. She

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Source: Black History Resources

Feb

27

1897

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Actress Cicely Tyson is born in New York, NY

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