Alice Walker’s soul-stirring novel “The Color Purple” depicted the lives of African-American women living in the Deep South In the early 1900s. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction on April 18, 1983, making Walker the first Black woman to win the award. The book focuses primarily on the life of Celie, a young […]
Richard “Dick” Parsons is considered one of the top business executives of his era. One of his many prominent posts includes being the first Black CEO of a major non-minority owned lending institution. The Brooklyn native was born April 4, 1948. Parsons grew up in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood and was a stellar student who graduated […]
John Mercer Langston’s list of historic firsts is certainly noble, but accomplishment one stands above them all. On April 2, 1855, he was elected to public office in Ohio and, by some accounts, became the first African-American to do so. The attorney, abolitionist, educator, activist, and politician was also the first dean of Howard University’s […]
Allan Rohan Crite was a notable artist who sought to depict Black people as ordinary American citizens instead of sharecroppers or entertainers. Today is Crite’s birthday. Crite was born in 1910 in Plainfield, N.J. and raised in Boston’s South End. He developed an interest in art early on by way of his mother, and his […]
Many in the entertainment industry are joined in mourning after news that veteran stage and operations manager Reggie Rutherford has died. Included in his long list of credits and accomplishments, Rutherford also served as the operations manager of Soul Train. Rutherford was born June 15, 1952 in Carson, Calif. He owned a private security firm […]
We’re at the end of our 40 over 40 series but last doesn’t meant least. We’ve highlighted some names you know and some you don’t this Black History Month and for the first time in these kind of roundups we’ve acknowledged the accomplishments of those who’s been doing the work for decades. Yes, we want […]
While Charlotte E. Ray’s legal career was brief, the trail she blazed as America’s first Black woman lawyer is still inspirational. On February 27, 1872, she left Howard University with a law degree and embarked on her journey before entering into other ventures. Ray was born January 13, 1850 in New York City. Her father […]
Samuel “Sambo” Anderson was a slave owned by George Washington who remained loyal to the end. On February 20, 1845, Anderson died at the approximate age of 100. Anderson’s birth date, like many enslaved Africans, is not known. According to accounts and other lore, Anderson, who hailed from the region now known as Guinea, claimed […]
Horace G. Dawson was the U.S. Ambassador to Botswana under President Jimmy Carter who became the founding director of the Ralph J. Bunche International Affairs Center at Howard University. Today is Dawson’s birthday. Dawson was born in 1926 in Augustus, Ga. While studying at Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University, Dawson was drafted into the U.S. Army but […]
Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, also known as Arthur Schomburg, was a meticulous historian and important Harlem Renaissance figure. During his career, he was referred to as the “Sherlock Holmes of Black History” due to his exhaustive research on Africa and the diaspora. Schomburg was born Jan. 24. 1874 to a Black mother from the Virgin Islands […]
Eric Holder made history by being appointed as the first African-American U.S. Attorney General under President Barack Obama, and today is his birthday. Eric Himpton Holder Jr. was born in 1951 in the New York borough of the Bronx to parents of Bajan descent. He graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. In American History. […]
As the world mourns the loss of veteran stage and screen actress Carol Channing, several facts about her life are coming to the surface. Chief among those facts is that Channing’s father was half-Black, something that the late star was quite proud of. Channing was born January 31, 1921 in Seattle to a white mother […]
