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
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
Clara Brown was a slave from Virginia, who spent her entire life looking for her 10-year-old daughter, Eliza Jane.
In 1781, Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman became the first African-American slave to win her freedom through a court of law. The case was held in Massachusetts, which, coincidentally became the first state in the Union to abolish slavery. Many attribute the decision to the Freeman case and two others in the state. http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/the_black_diaspora_news/22826
Harlem native Tee Collins was the first African-American animator to establish his own studio in New York. He was best known for his creation of the character Wanda the Witch on “Sesame Street.” It was the story of a witch with a pet weasel who washed her wirey wig on Wednesday. His new animation would […]
Writer Harriet Jacobs told her story of captivity and escape in her 1861 novel called “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” The North Carolina slave girl was handed down through generations of the Horniblow family until she became the property of Dr. James Norcom. Norcom would not allow Jacobs to marry and forced […]
In 1933 a number of African Americans banded together to form an organization that would fight against civil injustice in the workplace and local establishments in Washington D.C. They were called the New Negro Alliance and they became known for a string of successful court cases and protests, beginning with a number of boycotts to […]
In the early 1960s, two Chicago men by the names of Jeff Fort and Eugene Hairston, also known as Angel and The Black Prince respectively, began an organization called the Blackstone Rangers. They were originated at the St. Charles Institution for Troubled Youth in the Woodlawn area of south Chicago, with a group of kids […]
