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Caldwell, Elvin R., Sr. (1919-2004)
Politician Elvin R. Caldwell Sr. was born on April 11, 1919 in Denver, Colorado. Raised in Five Points, Denver’s predominantly black community, Caldwell was one of 12 children in his family. After graduating from Eastside High School in 1937, Caldwell earned a track scholarship to the University of
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Source: Black Past
Hotel Robinson (1897-1921)
The Hotel Robinson, built in 1897, was one of the first businesses in San Diego County, California to be owned and operated by an African American, and the oldest continuously operated hotel in Southern California. The hotel is now a part of the National Register of Historic Places and is a Point
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Source: Black Past
Jun
10
1915
(2008) President-Elect Barack Obama's Election Night Victory Speech, Nov. 4th, 2008
On November 4, 2008, Illinois Senator Barack Obama defeated Arizona Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.  On the night of his historic victory, Senator Obama addressed an audience of 250,000 at Grant Park in Chicago.  The text of his speech appears
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Source: Black Past
Nov
4
2008
Ray, Charles Aaron (1945- )
Ambassador Charles Aaron Ray was born in Center, Texas in 1945. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in 1972 from Benedictine College in Atchinson, Kansas, and his Master’s of Science from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and a Master’s of Science in National Security Strategy from
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by Prospanica Boston Professional Chapter
The San Fernando Valley’s Multiethnic Past: Unexpected Communities of Color in “America’s Suburb”
In the article below historian Jean-Paul R. deGuzman briefly introduces the multiethnic history of Southern California’s San Fernando Valley, a popular region that one local chronicler calls nothing less than “America’s Suburb.”  The narrative that follows, part of deGuzman doctoral
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by National Black MBA Association (NBMBAA) Boston Professional Chapter
Michael Jordan
Michael Jeffery Jordan is an American basketball legend who played for the Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards for 15 seasons. Jordan was born on February 17, 1963 in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina. In high school he played baseball, football, and basketball. When he
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Source: Black History Resources
Sponsored by Concerned Black Men of Massachusetts
Feb
17
1963
Johnson, Francis Hall (1888-1970)
Composer and musician Hall Johnson was born in Athens, Georgia in 1888 to Alice Virginia Sanson Johnson and William Decker Johnson, a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. His musical talent was apparent from childhood when he studied piano with his older sister, Mary, and taught
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Source: Black Past
(1898) Alexander Crummell, “The Attitude of the American Mind Toward the Negro Intellect,”
? Alexander Crummells remarkable career spanned much of the 19th Century.  Before the Civil War Crummell had established his credentials as an abolitionist, educator and lecturer in England as well as the United States.  In the 1850s he was a member of the faculty of Liberia College.  After the war
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Source: Black Past
Dec
28
1897
King, Betty Eileen (1957– )
Betty Eileen King is a public servant, philanthropist, and diplomat who has spent her career working to improve the lives of people around the world. Born in 1957 on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, King attended Grenadine Girls High School in Kingstown, the island nation’s capital, before
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Source: Black Past
Port-au-Spain, Trinidad (1650- )
Port-au-Spain is the capital and third largest city of the island nation Trinidad and Tobago in the southwestern West Indies and north of the South American nation of Venezuela. The city, which is only about 5 square miles, had a population of 37,074 people in 2011 but its surrounding metropolitan
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by Association of Latino Professionals For America (ALPFA) Boston Professional Chapter
Romar, Lorenzo (1958- )
Longtime University of Washington head basketball coach Lorenzo Romar was born November 13, 1958, and grew up in Compton, California, where he went on to play at Cerritos Community College after high school. After playing two years for Cerritos, he transferred and played for the University of
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) Boston Metropolitan Chapter
McDaniel, Hattie (1895-1952)
Hattie McDaniel is best known as the first black Oscar winner.  She won the award on February 29, 1940, for Best Supporting Actress for her role as “Mammy” in Gone With the Wind. McDaniels career began three decades earlier.  She gave her first public performances as a grade school
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Source: Black Past
Feb
29
1940
Foxy Brown
Foxy Brown is an African American rap musician, model and actress. Her birth name is Inga DeCarlo Fung Marchand. She was born on September 6, 1978 in Brooklyn, New York. As a teenager, she won a talent contest, where she was discovered by the rapper LL Cool J’s production team. They were so
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Source: Black History Resources
Sponsored by Christo Rey New York High School
Sep
6
1978
Clarence's Hollywood
Katherine Stockett’s excellent novel, The Help, is about the African American maids who worked in white households in Jackson, Mississippi during the 1960s. Stockett reflects the brutal realties of 20th Century slavery being carried out in pretentious southern white households that continued from
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Source: Black Past
Jan
12
2010
Satcher, David (1941- )
David Satcher, physician, educator, and administrator, was born in Anniston, Alabama, on March 2, 1941 to Wilmer and Anne Satcher.   In 1963 Satcher graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta.  He earned a M.D. and Ph.D. in cytogenetics from Case Western Reserve University in
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Source: Black Past
Mar
2
1941
George Brown was elected Lt Governor of Colorado, becoming one of the first two
George Brown was elected Lt Governor of Colorado, becoming one of the first two Black Lt Governors in the USA, 1974
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Nov
5
1974
Ntozke Shange is born
Born Paulette Williams, she graduated from Barnard College in 1970, and later earned an MA from the University of Southern California. It was there she changed her name to the Zulu “Ntozke” meaning “she who comes with her own things” and “Shange” meaning
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sponsored by Illinois Math and Science Academy
Oct
18
1948
A Marxist Scholar Analyzes the American Legal System
In the following article Professor Malik Simba, an historian at California State University, Fresno describes his professional and personal odyssey that led to the writing of his book, Black Marxism and American Constitutionalism: From the Colonial Background through the Ascendancy of Barack
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Source: Black Past
Leslie, Lisa Deshaun (1972- )
Lisa Deshaun Leslie is an American former professional basketball player who played for the Los Angeles Sparks in the Women’s Basketball Association (WNBA) for her twelve-year career from 1997 to 2009. She is a two-time WNBA champion, three-time WNBA MVP, and a four-time Olympic gold medal
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by Pride Academy
The 1928 Bunion Derby: America’s Brush with Integrated Sports
In the following account sports historian Charles Kastner describes the Bunion Derby, the 1928 cross country footrace that captured the nation’s attention in the spring of 1928 and the remarkable group of black runners who participated in that event. For a detailed discussion of the race, see
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Source: Black Past
May
26
1928
What Can I Do with A Black Studies Major? Five Hundred Answers Provided by Robert Fikes, Jr.
In the 1971 Woody Allen film, “Bananas,” a fellow employee asks Allen’s character, “What would you have been if you finished school?”  Allen’s character answers, “I was in the black studies program. By now I could have been black.”  Allen’s attempted humorous jab
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by NSBE Boston
Research Guides and Websites: African American History in the West
Regarding
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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
(1995) Louis Farrakhan, “A Million Men Marching On"
In 1995 Minister Louis Farrakhan was the leader of the Nation of Islam.  That year his organization became the driving force in the Million Man March, a call for African American men to come to Washington D.C. on October 17, 1995, in what was billed as “a day of atonement.”  Although
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Source: Black Past
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
Jamie Foxx
Name at birth: Eric Bishop
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Source: Fact Monster - Black History
Sponsored by Museum of African American History in Massachusetts
Paul Quinn College (1872- )
Paul Quinn College, founded by members of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Austin, Texas in 1872, is the oldest African-American liberal arts college in the state and one of the oldest west of the Mississippi River.  The institution was named for Bishop Paul Quinn who presided over
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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
Bath, Patricia (1942- )
Patricia Era Bath, a prominent ophthalmologist and innovative research and laser scientist, was the first African American woman physician to receive a patent for a medical invention.  Bath was born on November 4, 1942 in Harlem, New York to Rupert Bath, a Trinidadian immigrant and the first black
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Source: Black Past
May
17
1988
Subban, Pernell-Karl Sylvester “P.K.” (1989- )
Pernell-Karl Sylvester “P.K.” Subban is a Canadian-born professional ice hockey defenceman for the Nashville (Tennessee) Predators of the National Hockey League (NHL). Subban was born on May 13, 1989, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada to Karl and Maria Subban. Subban also has four other
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Source: Black Past
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