Little Known Black History Facts
The city of Sanford, Florida will forever go down in history as the place where Trayvon Martin was shot and killed. But the city is also haunted by racist memories of the past, dating back to the early days of Baseball Hall of Famer, Jackie Robinson. After Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, he was sent […]
On April 17th, Cecile Kyenge was named Italy’s first black government Minister. Kyenge is Italy’s new Minister for Integration. She was born in the Congo and moved to Rome in the 1980’s to study medicine. While working at a hospital in Modena, Kyenge met her Italian husband, who was a surgery patient in the hospital. […]
This week, South African horse jockey S’manga Khumalo became the first black jockey to win the Durban July, which is South Africa’s richest horse race. Khumalo, a.k.a. “Bling” crossed the finish line with his horse, Heavy Metal, as 50,000 spectators watched. Khumalo was nicknamed “Bling” because of the large diamond earring he wears and his […]
Bessie Head of South Africa was a proclaimed teacher and writer in the country of Botswana. Born as the result of a forbidden relationship between an African man and white Scottish woman, Bessie’s mother, Toby Emery, was forced to move into a mental asylum. This is where she gave birth to Bessie Head and where […]
In its 103-year history, the Carolina Country Club in Raleigh, NC had never had one black member. The club has now accepted its first two black members, a married couple: Hilda Pinnix-Ragland and husband Alvin Ragland. Pinnix-Ragland from Hillsborough, NC is vice president of corporate public affairs for Duke Energy. Her husband Alvin is a […]
Mrs. Earnestine Rodgers Robinson is an African American award-winning musical composer whose oratorios have graced Carnegie Hall. A child of segregation, Robinson fought her way past oppression and poverty to compose pieces like “The Crucifixion”, which is now in the U.S. Library of Congress. The piece, which was produced by her son Tony Robinson, MD, […]
In 1980, Waymon and Thessia Dunn started the first black-owned and operated radio station in Central Arkansas, KWTD-FM. The trailblazers owned the station from 1980 to 1990. Waymon Dunn was a WWII Army veteran who served his country and worked the fields of Arkansas as a cotton planter. He later served as a Director of […]
African slaves pre- and post-slavery held gardening traditions with spiritual roots that some blacks in America carry forward today. Traditions like upside-down glass bottles hanging from tree limbs are meant to capture evil spirits that might get into the yard. The bottles were typically blue, the color that repels evil spirits. The appearance of vertical […]
A British-Nigerian woman named “Mo” Abudu, who has been called the African Oprah Winfrey, will be launching the first black-owned entertainment network in Africa. Ebonylife TV will be broadcast in all countries of Africa and its predominant audience is women. The 48-year-old entrepreneur wants the world to see the diversity of class and beauty of […]
On February 9, 1995, Dr. Bernard Harris became the first African American to perform a spacewalk during the second of his two Space Shuttle flights. The Temple, Tx. native was the first black man to go into space as one of NASA’s research teams and he was involved in the construction of the space rovers. […]
EDITOR’S NOTE: Special thanks to Crystal Nickens Freeman of Atlanta, Ga., daughter of Barbara Pace Hunt for this submission. Barbara Pace Hunt was the lead plaintiff in a 1959 landmark case against the state of Georgia to fight school segregation. Though it was illegal after the 1954 ruling in Brown Vs. Board of Education, many […]
Today, attorney Eugene K. Pettis will be sworn-in as the first black president of the Florida Bar Association. He will lead America’s second-largest state bar with over 95,000 lawyers. Pettis was born to a family of seven children. He was educated in Fort Lauderdale during the end of the Civil Rights Movement. Pettis was faced […]
