Looking Black
Alice Dunbar Nelson was a teacher and writer from New Orleans, praised for her activism and poetry. A graduate of Dillard University, she would publish her first book in 1895 called “Violets and Other Tales, a Collection of Short Stories.” She used her Creole background as a topic for many of her stories and became […]
Emilio Navarro is the oldest living former member of Negro League Baseball. At 104 years old, Navarro isn’t just sitting around telling stories about his days in the league; he’s still working and was just voted America’s Outstanding Oldest Male Worker of the year by Experience Works, the country’s largest non-profit training center for older […]
A woman named Abby Fisher, a former slave from South Carolina, is the author of the first published African-American cookbook and the first cookbook published by a former slave. Born in 1832, Fisher worked and came to know cooking in the kitchens of the plantations. Freed after the Civil War, Fisher and her husband, Alexander, […]
Alberta Hunter was a jazz and blues artist who was in high demand all over the world in the 1920’s. Born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1895, Hunter came from a poor family. To pursue her dream of singing, she packed up and moved to Chicago. A teenage Hunter worked as a potato peeler to earn […]
In 1865, a slave and mother named Margaret Garner would become the defendant in one of the longest and most public slave trials in history. Garner and her husband, Robert, worked as slaves all of their lives, so when the Underground Railroad presented an opportunity for escape, they gathered their four children and went to […]
Archeologists at the National Park Service in Frederick County, Maryland have found slave artifacts from an 18th century, 748-acre plantation called L’Hermitage, located on the Monocacy National Battlefield. The experts dug in the area for months with radar, discovering remnants of four cabins that made up the small slave village. The main house still […]
Elder Solomon Lightfoot Michaux, also known as the “Happy Am I Preacher,” was a native of Buckroe Beach, Virginia and a devout Baptist. He was named for his Jewish grandfather and Black/French and Indian mother. He was forced to quit school in the fourth grade to help his family peddle fish to the military […]
There are many men that have made contributions to aeronautics through NASA, but the work of the female scientists is little known – scientists like Katherine G. Johnson. Johnson has made a significant mark in NASA’s history, playing a key role in their use of digital electronic computers. http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/the_black_diaspora_news/21458
Former slave Belinda Royall was born in Ghana, Africa in 1712. She became one of the first slaves to argue for reparations, suggesting that a slave had the right to financial compensation for their work. This was in the early 19th century. http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/the_black_diaspora_news/21423
A slave by the name of York was the only black out of the 40 explorers in the Meriwether Lewis – William Clark expedition. Described as a large man raised on little protein and mostly starch, York was owned by Clark’s family, along with his parents, Old York and Rose, his siblings, then later, […]
Fundraising and restoration efforts are underway for the historic Howard Theater in Washington D.C., which celebrates its centennial anniversary this year. Located on T Street NW in Shaw, the theater was known as the “largest colored theater in the world,” established before the legendary Apollo or the Regal. It was the first full-size theater in […]
Dancer, actress, comedian and author Norma Miller is known to many as the Queen of Swing. Her name is associated with some of the top acts of the past and present. She’s worked closely with Redd Foxx, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Ed Sullivan, Pearl Bailey, Cootie Williams, Cab Calloway and Ethel […]