*Bonifacio Byrne was born on this date in 1861. He was an Afro Cuban poet. He was born in Pueblo Nuevo, in Matanzas. He did his studies in Matanzas. Since adolescence, he had a fondness for literature. In 1890, he founded the newspapers La Mañana y La Juventud Liberal. He published his first verse book […]
learn more*Josephine Shaw Lowell was born on this date in 1843. She was a white-American Progressive Reform leader in the United States in the Nineteenth century. Josephine Shaw was born in the West Roxbury section of Roxbury, Massachusetts, into a wealthy New England family. Her parents, Francis George and Sarah Blake (Sturgis) Shaw, were Unitarian philanthropists […]
learn more*The birth of Samori Ture is celebrated on this date in 1828. Also known as Almamy Samore Lafiya Toure, he was a Malinke and a Soninke Muslim cleric, slave owner, and military strategist. Samori Ture was born in Manyambaladugu, Guinea, the son of Kemo Lanfia Ture, a Dyula weaver and merchant, and Sokhona Camara. The […]
learn more*The Ethiopian Art Theatre presented its first play on this date in 1923. They were a Black theatre company based in Chicago, Illinois. The company was a short-lived (1922/1923–1925) group founded during the Harlem Renaissance. There are differing views over the precise year that the company was founded, 1922 or 1923. The founder and principal […]
learn more*Isaac Theophilus Akunna Wallace-Johnson was born on this date in 1894. He was a Black African workers’ leader, journalist, soldier, activist, and politician. He was born to poor Creole parents in Wilberforce, British Sierra Leone, a village adjoining the capital city, Freetown. His father was a farmer, and his mother was a fish trader. Educated […]
learn more*The birth of Ladipo Solanke is celebrated on this date in 1886. He was a Black African political activist. Ladipo Solanke was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, as Oladipo Felix Solanke. He studied at the Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone before moving to study law at University College, London, in 1922. In Britain, Solanke joined […]
learn more*The Freedman’s Savings Bank opened on this date in 1865. It was the first federal bank in America. Also known as the Freedman’s Saving and Trust Company, it was a private savings bank chartered by the U.S. Congress to collect deposits from newly emancipated slaves. At the end of the American Civil War, the poor […]
learn more*The birth of Peter Williams Jr. is celebrated on this date in 1786. He was a Black Episcopal priest and abolitionist. Williams was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the son of Peter Williams Sr., a Revolutionary War veteran, and his wife, Mary “Molly” Durham, an indentured servant from St. Kitts. After his family moved […]
learn more*David Lee Child was born on July 8, 1794. He was a white-American soldier, lawyer, abolitionist, and journalist. David Lee Child was born in West Boylston, Massachusetts, and graduated from Harvard in 1817. Child was the submaster of the Boston Latin School, followed as secretary of the legation in Lisbon about 1820, and enlisted and […]
learn more*The first issue of the National Anti-Slavery Standard was published on June 11, 1840. The Standard was a weekly newspaper published concurrently in New York City and Philadelphia. This was the official weekly newspaper of the American Anti-Slavery Society; its editors were Lydia Maria Child and David Lee Child. It published essays, debates, speeches, events, […]
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