Author, scholar and activist bell hooks has emerged as one of the leading feminist figures of her era, and her writing and scholarly work has been studied by many budding feminists and activists for decades. Today is hooks’ birthday. Born Gloria Jean Watkins in Hopskinsville, Ky. in 1952 she graduated from Stanford University and the University […]
Born into slavery, Anna Julia Cooper had the odds stacked against her but rose above her circumstances. Today, 54 years after her passing, is the 160th birthday of the Black feminist icon, activist, and scholar. Anna Julia Haywood was born to a slave mother and their owner in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1858. She attended […]
The namesake of Baltimore, Maryland’s Coppin State University, Fanny Jackson Coppin, was a woman of exceptional fortitude and ambition. Born into slavery, Coppin was the first Black woman to become a school principal and was driven by a need to spread education to newly freed slaves. Fanny Marion Jackson was born in October 1837 in […]
Carter G. Woodson is referred to as the “Father of Black History,” a fitting title considering his life’s work. The historian and author’s impact still resonates in modern times, so its worth taking a look back at his influential life on the last day of Black History Month. Woodson was born December 19, 1875 in […]
NEW YORK (AP) — Ta-Nehisi Coates has had enough. The influential author and journalist has deleted his widely followed Twitter account, writing “peace, y’all. I’m out.” Coates had had a contentious exchange with Cornel West, author of “Race Matters.” West had recently called Coates’ views on race simplistic and defeatist. He contended that Coates was […]
John Chavis is considered the first Black college student in America. Born free, he studied under with the president of what would later become Princeton University and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Chavis was born in either 1762 or 1763 to free parents in heavily debated places of origins that include North Carolina, […]
Roger Wilkins, a longtime civil rights attorney and educator, made headlines in 1973 when he and a group of Washington Post reporters won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing the Watergate scandal. Wilkins, who passed away earlier this year, was honored by George Mason University last week, where he taught for nearly two decades. Wilkins was […]
Edward Franklin Frazier was one of the premier Black academics of his era, blazing several trails in the course of his career. Dr. Frazier was a sociologist who examined the endurance of African-American families from slavery to the 20th Century. Frazier was born September 24, 1894 in Baltimore, Maryland. He attended Howard University on a […]
Cora Mae Brown was a notable social worker and politician who made history as the first Black woman elected to the Michigan State Senate. The Fisk University graduate went on to become general counsel with the U.S. Post Office after her political career ended. Brown was born April 19, 1914 in Alabama but was raised […]
It has been just under a month since the passing of noted linguist and educator, Dr. Keith Baird. He is best known for spurring a movement in the ’60’s to advocate for the use of the term Afro-American to describe and categorize Black people across the diaspora. Baird was born in Barbados on January 20, […]
Professor Joseph Roye Applegate is best known as the first Black faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A master speaker of 13 languages, Professor Applegate is also responsible for creating the first Ph.D. Program for African Studies in the U.S. Applegate was born July 25, 1925 in Wildwood, New Jersey, His family relocated […]
