Canadian boxer Sam Langford developed a reputation of being one of the most hard-hitting and punishing boxers in history, though he never placed as a an American champion. In his first two years of professional boxing, Langford would defeat the great lightweight boxer, Joe Gans. http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/the_black_diaspora_news/23262
Lola Shirley Graham DuBois was not only the second wife of W.E.B. DuBois, but she was an activist, musicologist and playwright. In the early years of 1909, when she was only 13, Graham wrote to the local Indianapolis newspaper that she had been denied the right to swim in a local YWCA pool because of […]
Jarm Logue was a runaway slave from Tennessee who became a lead and well-known conductor of the Underground Railroad. Born to his white owner, David Logue, and his enslaved mother named Cherry, he stole his master’s horse at age 21 and escaped to Canada, where he would change his name. http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/the_black_diaspora_news/23204
James Winkfield was a black thoroughbred jockey and horse trainer who was the last known African-American to ride a winner in the Kentucky Derby. The youngest child with 17 siblings, Winkfield’s chores including tending the farm and assisting in the downtown thoroughbred races. In 1898, he would ride his first race. http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/the_black_diaspora_news/23175
George Monroe, the son of a black gold miner, was called one of the fastest and best stagecoach drivers in the West around the mid-19th century. He was also one of two first black reignsmen for the 1860 Pony Express. http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/the_black_diaspora_news/23133
Benjamin Holmes was a slave and a tailor’s apprentice born around 1846. Throughout his life, he would serve many different owners. The South Carolina native was purchased by a hotel owner and moved to Tennessee. Through illegal curiosity, Holmes would teach himself to read and write by reading the signs and words on the doors […]
Piran, a small city in the country of Slovenia, formerly associated with Yugoslavia, has elected its first black mayor, 54-year-old Peter Bossman. http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/the_black_diaspora_news/23065
Before the National Basketball Association was the NBA, there was the Black Five Era, or the period of The Black Fives. Any basketball team back in the late 19th century up to 1947 was referred to as the Fives. But the term Black Fives came from the five starting players that would make up the […]
*Spike Lee and Chris Rock join actor/director Mario Van Peebles in a ground-breaking film about the plight of the Black man. Entitled “Bring You’re a Game,” the film “sheds light on the resilience and influence of Black males,” in the worlds of Van Peebles himself. http://www.eurweb.com/?p=59707
Blues Hall of Fame inductee Sonny Terry was a blind blues legend of the harmonica who played with other greats of the blues, including Brownie McGhee and Woody Guthrie. Born Saunders Terrell, the Greensboro, North Carolina native was known for his use of whoopin’, hollering and imitating sounds of fox hunts in his music. http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/the_black_diaspora_news/22998
In contemporary art history, 30-something-year-old black artist Kara Walker has pushed the boundaries of expression in her life-sized black silhouettes that bring an artistic vision to civil rights history, racial and gender oppression. http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/the_black_diaspora_news/22956
The African Grove Theater was founded in lower Manhattan in 1821. Other black theaters were attempted, but the African Grove would become the most mainstream black theater in its time. http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/the_black_diaspora_news/22918
