Little Known Black History Facts
Nicodemus, Kansas is a small community in north central Kansas, named after an escaped slave who bought his way to freedom. On April 18, 1877, six freed slaves and one white man, W.R. Hill, formed the town council. They would recruit over 350 ex-slaves who came by train and foot to start the town. With […]
Willis Edwards was the former head of the NAACP Beverly Hills whose legacy included building national honors for civil rights activist Rosa Parks and helping to make the NAACP Image Awards a televised national success. Rosa Parks specifically sought Edwards’s help for the civil rights institute. Later on, he fought for her to receive a […]
Ninety-year old former athlete, Herb Douglas, is the oldest living African-American olympic medalist. Douglas was part of the 1948 London Olympic Games during the Truman Administration. As a student. Douglas took on major triumphs at the high school level. A city champ in tumbling, sprinting and basketball, he found a major voice in track and […]
The 1968 Olympics in Mexico City were made famous by African-American track and field gold medalist, Tommie Smith, bronze medalist John Carlos and Australian silver medalist Peter Norman. The two black men who had earned top honors in the race wore black gloves and held up tight fists in honor of the black power movement […]
The Evening and the Morning Star was the name given to an early publication of the Latter Day Saints religion in 1832. The first editions of the paper, which was founded in Independence, Missouri by William W. Phelps, ran for one year before moving to Kirtland, Ohio. On July 20, 1833, the printing press for […]
When you think of the civil rights movement, names like Martin Luther King, Jr., the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and events like Bloody Sunday come to mind. But for years, only the community of Birmingham knew the name James Armstrong. Called “The Barber of Birmingham,” Armstrong was the local barber whose clients included Reverend King and […]
Yvonne B. Miller was the first black woman elected to the Virginia Senate. Miller, who shared a birthday synonymous with Independence Day, was the longest serving woman in the history of the Virginia Senate. In 1987, Miller became the first woman member of the Virginia Senate. The state of Virginia’s resistance to desegregation in the […]
Emory University has just acquired the Robert Langmuir African-American Collection. The Langmuir collection is a 12,000-image record of black culture from the mid-1800’s to the early 1960’s. The remarkable note about this collection is that black photographers took most of the photographs featuring racist scenes with blatant threats. Among the photos in the Langmuir collection […]
Alfred Hair a.k.a “Freddie” of Fort Pierce, Florida was a black artist and student of a well-known white art teacher named A.E. Backus. Hair was born pre-civil rights and used painting as a release from the segregated south. His style of painting bright scenes of Florida, with no two paintings just alike, came to be […]
The Daughters of the American Revolution is a historically white organization for woman descendants of rebel patriots that served in the American Revolution. For centuries, black women were discouraged from joining the group. But now there is a newly organized Jamaica Queens chapter of the D.A.R. It is among the first chapters in the groups’ […]
The word barbecue and the open-fire cooking technique came from the Caribbean amongst the Taino people around the late 17th century. The word barbecue itself means “sacred fire pit.” The unique way to cook meat spread into Spanish, French and American cultures when slaves were brought from the Caribbean. In the Southern United States, barbecue […]
Maritza Correia was the first African-American (with Puerto Rican heritage) swimmer from the United States to set an American and world swimming record in the Olympics. Nicknamed the “Ritz,” Correia was diagnosed with scoliosis in 1988. At the suggestion of her physician, she began swimming at age 8 and never left the pool. In high […]
