Little Known Black History Facts
For the first time ever this year, young baseball players from Uganda made it to the Little League World Series. In the Little League’s 66-year history, Africa had never played in the annual tournament. The kids were discouraged from playing last year because of passport and visa issues, and many of them could not afford […]
Controversial black writer Richard Wright had a reputation for writing from the communist black perspective in the late 1930’s. His novels and shorts stories were known for their level of controversy. Wright was a known member of the Communist party but was not truly accepted among white communists of New York or the black communists. […]
Victor Olisa, a police officer of the Bexley Borough in London, is now the first black and first Nigerian Police Chief Commander in the U.K. The father of two lives in Southern England and has followed in his grandfather’s footsteps, who served in Nigeria over twenty years ago. Olisa left Nigeria and began his […]
Captain William Shorey, also known as “The Black Ahab” was a respected entrepreneur and whaling captain in the 19th Century. He was the first African-American captain of a sea vessel on the west coast. A native of Barbados, he was the son of a Scottish sugar planter and a mother who was both African and […]
As the civil rights movement and Brown vs. Board of Education was blatantly being ignored in most of Mississippi, the decision to send a young Chicago boy who needed structure to the South was made by his widowed mother, Mamie Till. Unaware of the depth of racism and Jim Crow in the South, 14-year-old Emmett […]
Claressa Shields just became the first U.S. fighter, and African-American fighter to win an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing. It was America’s first women’s Olympic boxing event. At sixteen years old, Shields held a 19-0 record. Nicknamed the “16-year old sensation,” Shields, who is now 17, has been compared to Muhammad Ali for her […]
In 1893, Charles Douglass, son of the famous Frederick Douglass, was denied entry into a white-only resort in Bay Ridge, Maryland. Upset, Douglass purchased his own plot of beach land from a nearby black farmer. Although the land was as small as two city blocks, it became it’s own getaway for blacks, and gave root […]
On May 12, 1968, over 2,500 activists from Mississippi arrived by bus in Washington, D.C. for a gathering of mass protest that was planned to be long-term at the National Mall. An architect named John Wiebenson secured five acres around the Reflecting pool in Washington in order to build a small independent city with its […]
Jules Lion was a free black photographer from France that entered New Orleans around the late 1830’s. Although he started as a lithographer, he introduced a special type of portrait that was new to the United States called Daguerrean photography. This was the first type of photography in the country before more advanced exposures were […]
In 1781, Elizabeth “Mumbet” Freeman became the first African-American woman to win her freedom from slavery through a court of law. The case was held in Massachusetts, which coincidentally, became the first state in the Union to abolish slavery; many say that Mumbet’s case is the reason. One day, Hannah Ashley, a white woman and […]
Judge Wilhelmina Wright has been appointed Associate Justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court. She is the first black woman to hold this position. Judge Wright has represented the United States in difficult economic fraud cases and violent crime cases of the District Court. The Yale University and Harvard School of Law honor graduate has represented […]
George Hickman was an original member of the Tuskegee Airmen, America’s first black military fighter pilots and ground crew during WWII. The former Cadet Captain from St. Louis was the grandson of slaves. He was banned from flying after talking back to a white superior officer who mistreated a fellow black cadet; Hickman took it […]
