*Oliver Nelson was born on this date in 1932. He was a Black jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, arranger, composer, and bandleader. Oliver Edward Nelson was born into a musical family in St. Louis, Missouri. His brother was a saxophonist who played with Cootie Williams in the 1940s, and his sister sang and played piano. Nelson began […]
learn more*Ida Shepley was born on this date in 1908. She was a Black British actress and singer. She was born Ida Mary Humphrey in Nantwich, U.K. Her father was Clement Humphrey, a Caribbean-born herbalist; her mother was Gladys May, born Worthington; she had a younger brother born in 1912. In 1919, her mother remarried John […]
learn more*Earl Cameron was born on this date in 1917. He was an Afro Caribbean Black British actor. Earlston Jewett Cameron was born in Pembroke, Bermuda, and grew up on Princess Street, Hamilton, UK. His father was a stonemason who died in 1922, after which Cameron’s mother took on various jobs to support the family. As […]
learn more*Lawrence Brown was born on this date in 1893. He was a Black Gay vocalist (tenor), composer and pianist. Lawrence Benjamin Brown was born in Jacksonville, Florida, and raised by his father, Clark Benjamin Brown, and his stepmother, Cenia Brown. Lawrence’s birth mother died when he was three years old. Clark and his father were […]
learn more*Hobart Armstrong was born on this date in 1851. He was a Black Miner, businessman, and small-town administrator. Born in Tennessee as a young man, Hobart A. Armstrong migrated to Iowa in the mid-1870s. After developing close business ties with the Iowa Central Coal Company, he set up his own business, purchasing mules for the […]
learn more*Rachel Dolezal was born on this date in 1977. She is a former white-American college instructor, author, artist, and administrative activist known for presenting herself as a Black woman despite being born to white parents. Rachel Anne Dolezal, now Nkechi Amare Diallo, was born in Lincoln County, Montana, to Ruthanne (Schertel) and Lawrence Dolezal, who […]
learn more*The Fort of Arguin is celebrated on this date in 1443. This was a slave fort island off the western coast of Mauritania in the Bay of Arguin. The first European to visit the island was the Portuguese explorer Nuno Tristão. In 1445, Prince Henry the Navigator set up a trading post on the island, which acquired […]
learn more*The birth of Nuno Tristão is affirmed on this date in 1390. He was a 15th-century Portuguese explorer and slave trader. He was born in the Portuguese city of Porto and was the son of a wealthy merchant. Tristão was educated in the arts and sciences and was an avid sailor from a young age. […]
learn more*Norman Lear was born on this date in 1922. He was a white Jewish-American screenwriter, producer, and progressive activist. Norman Milton Lear was from New Haven, Connecticut; his parents were Jeanette (née Seicol) and Hyman “Herman” Lear, a traveling salesman. He had a younger sister, Claire Lear Brown. Both parents were of Russian-Jewish descent. When Lear […]
learn more*Andre Braugher was born on this date in 1962. He was a Black actor. Andre Keith Braugher was born in Chicago, the youngest of four children born to Sally, a postal worker, and Floyd Braugher, a heavy equipment operator. He lived in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago’s West Side. He attended St. Ignatius College Prep […]
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