Little Known Black History Facts
Dr. Roger Arliner Young was the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D in zoology. Dr. Young’s path to her degree and career was unconventional, but with the help of a caring mentor she would find success. Young was born in 1889 and grew up in Clifton Forge, Va. Her mother was ill, so […]
St. Jude Children’s Research Center opened its doors in Memphis, Tenn. on February 4, 1962, but it opened several other doors as well. While the hospital is universally recognized as the first fully-integrated children’s hospital in the South, it was also one of the first facilities to allow African-American and white staff to administer […]
Harlem’s Dunbar Apartments were specifically built as the first cooperative building complex marketed to Blacks. Named after poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, the apartments were home to notable figures like W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, explorer Matthew Henson, writer Countee Cullen and entertainer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, among others. John D. Rockefeller Jr. built the Dunbar between […]
Lt. Commander John W. Lee Jr. was the first Black commissioned Navy officer, achieving the historic feat on this day in 1947. The late Navy man made it his personal mission to aid other qualified Black servicemen in his branch to get the same opportunities he did. Lee was born February 13, 1924 and […]
Valaida Snow was a prodigious musician who became so adept at playing the trumpet that Louis Armstrong called her the second-best trumpet player in the world. Snow found fame in the late ’20’s and 1930s in America and across Europe before her death in the ’50’s. Snow was born June 2, 1904 in Chattanooga, […]
Jason Ikeem Rodgers has emerged as one of the brightest young musical conductors in the world, winning several awards that date back to 2001. Today, Rodgers is the musical director of the Clarkston Civic Orchestra in Georgia and has an assembled an all-Black ensemble he’s named Orchestra Noir. Rodgers is originally a native a […]
Dr. May Edward Chinn is the first Black woman to graduate from Bellevue Hospital Medical College and the first woman to intern at Harlem Hospital. Although Chinn never graduated from high school, she had the good fortune of being exposed to education in a fashion many young Black girls never experienced in her time. […]
Abolitionist and writer William Still served an important role during the Underground Railroad movement. His 1872 book, The Underground Railroad, is reportedly the only first-person account of the tales involving the movement and the shuttling of the enslaved to the North so they could experience freedom. Still was born free in Burlington County, New Jersey […]
Rosa Lee Ingram and her two teenage boys were at the center of one of the most explosive capital punishment cases in United States history. In 1948, Ingram and her sons Wallace and Samuel were sentenced to die in the electric chair after Ingram’s sons killed a white farmer who attacked their mother. Ingram worked […]
Veteran actress Anne-Marie Johnson is a champion for diversity in Hollywood, and has worked behind the scenes to aid African-American performers for years. Over the weekend, Ms. Johnson made history after she became the first Black actor or actress to win the SAG-AFTRA Ralph Morgan Award. Johnson, a native of Los Angeles, began her […]
In February, President Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate Dr. Carla D. Hayden as the next Librarian of Congress. If confirmed, Dr. Hayden will become the first African-American and woman to head one of the oldest federal institutions in the nation. Hayden, a native of Tallahassee, Fla., is a graduate of Chicago’s Roosevelt University. At […]
Merze Tate was a professor, scholar, author and diplomacy expert who achieved a series of notable firsts in her lifetime. Tate is the first African-American to graduate from what is now known as Western Michigan University, and the first African-American woman to attend the University of Oxford. Born February 6, 1905, in Blanchard, Michigan, […]
