The numbers of African-American players in Major League Baseball have been declining since the seventies, with just under 70 players total. However, those dozens of players all owe a great debt to Jackie Robinson, who broke another race barrier on July 23, 1962 after becoming the first Black player immortalized in Cooperstown. Robinson took up […]
Frank Snowden Jr. was a Classics professor and scholar who studied the lives of Black people during the Classical Antiquity period in Ancient Greece and Rome. During his study, Snowden suggested that Black people didn’t suffer rampant racism and slavery as they did in the United States. Snowden was born July 17, 1911 in York […]
Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California is one of the best-known members of the U.S. House of Representatives, earning notoriety as the first woman to represent the state’s 9th district. Rep. Lee was born on July 16, 1946 in El Paso, Texas. Lee moved with her military family to California where she became a cheerleader at […]
Frederic Morrow made history on July 9, 1955 after he was appointed as the first Black executive to serve in the White House. Under President Dwight Eisenhower, the New Jersey native was the Administrative Officer for Special Projects from 1955 to 1961. Morrow was born in 1909 in Hackensack, attending high school in the Bergen […]
Samuel J. Battle became the NYPD’s first Black police officer on June 28, 1911 in a swearing-in ceremony, going on to break other barriers as well. After nearly derailing his life as a teenager, Battle was determined to prove his doubters wrong. Battle was born January 16, 1833 in New Bern, N.C. As a teenager, […]
Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of the most important poets of his era. The Ohio native was born on June 27th, 1872 to freed slave parents from Kentucky. At a young age, Dunbar took to reading and writing, penning his first poem at six years old and continuing the craft under the guidance of his […]
Henry O. Tanner was the first Black artist to gain international acclaim, and is also notable for being the first Black artist to have their work purchased by the White House as part of its permanent collection. Tanner was born June 21, 1859 in Pittsburgh to an A.M.E. minister father and a mother who escaped […]
Vernon D. Jarrett was a pioneering Chicago journalist and education advocate who for over five decades stood as a pillar for excellence in Black journalism. Jarrett was born on June 19, 1918 in Salisbury, Tenn. Jarrett attended Knoxville College on a football scholarship, graduating in 1941. In 1946, he began his journalism career in Chicago […]
James Weldon Johnson achieved many high marks in his life, including becoming chosen as the first Black Executive Secretary of the NAACP. The co-author of the “Negro National Anthem” was born June 17, 1871, in Jacksonville, Florida. Their musician mother exposed Johnson, and his brother, composer John Rosamond Johnson, to music and literature at an […]
John Edgar Wideman is an award-winning author and just the second African-American to be named a Rhodes Scholar to the University of Oxford. The Pittsburgh native was born in Washington, D.C. on June 14, 1941 in Washington, D.C. Wideman grew up in the middle-class Black neighborhood of Homewood and later moved to Shadyside, a mostly […]
Straight University was a former HBCU established on June 12, 1868 by the American Missionary Association of the Congregational Church. The school was put in place to address the educational needs of newly freed slaves in and around New Orleans. The name Straight comes from an Ohio benefactor, Seymour Straight, a cheese manufacturer and Republican […]
Harry Hosier, also shown spelled as Hoosier, was a popular Methodist preacher who found fame in the early 19th Century. A Fisk University history professor has attempted to connect Hosier’s last name to the state nickname of Indiana residents, Hoosiers. Born into slavery in 1750 near Fayetteville, N.C., little is known about Hosier’s early life. […]
