*John C. Calhoun was born on this date in 1782. He was a white-American statesman from the Democratic party. John Caldwell Calhoun was born in Abbeville District, South Carolina, the fourth child of Patrick Calhoun and Martha Caldwell. Patrick’s father, also named Patrick Calhoun, had joined the Scotch-Irish immigration movement from County Donegal to southwestern Pennsylvania. After the death of his grandfather in 1741, the family moved to […]
learn more*The birth of Susan McKinney Steward in 1847, is celebrated on this date. A physician, she was one of the first Black women to earn a medical degree, and the first in New York State.
learn more*On this date in 1895, 200 former African slaves left Savannah, Georgia for Liberia. Much of the aid for this came through the American Colonization Society (ACS).
The society also committed itself to fostering a public-school system in Liberia, promoting more frequent ships between the U.S. and Liberia, collecting and circulating more reliable information about Liberia, and enabling Liberia to depend more on itself. Future colonists were to be selected with a view to the needs of Liberia and not to their own situations.
learn more*On this date we remember the birth of William H. Johnson in 1901. He was a Black artist who worked primarily as a painter.
learn more*Isaac Woodard Jr. was born on this date in 1919. He was a decorated Black World War II veteran and hate crime victim. Woodard was born in Fairfield County, South Carolina, and grew up in Goldsboro, North Carolina. He attended local segregated schools, often underfunded for Blacks during the Jim Crow years. On October 14, 1942, the 23-year-old Woodard enlisted in the U.S. Army at Fort Jackson in Columbia, […]
learn more*Fred Shuttlesworth was born on this date in1922. He was a Black civil rights activist and minister.
Born Freddie Lee Robinson in Mount Meigs, Alabama, Shuttlesworth became pastor of the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1953 and was Membership Chairman of the Alabama state chapter of the NAACP in 1956, when the State of Alabama formally outlawed it from operating within the state. In 1956 Shuttlesworth and Ed Gardner established the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) to take up the work formerly done by the NAACP.
learn more*William F. Reid was born on this date in 1925. He is a Black physician, politician, and activist. William Ferguson “Fergie” Reid was born in Richmond, VA., the son of dentist Leon Reid and his wife. He grew up in a house next door to the banker and activist Maggie L. Walker at 110 Leigh […]
learn more*Jürgen Schadeberg was born on this date in 1931. He was a white German-born South African photographer and artist. Jürgen Schadeberg was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1931, where he grew up during the Nazi regime and World War II. In the aftermath of the war, his mother began a relationship with a British officer in the […]
learn more*On this date in 1932, we remember the Pittsburgh Crawfords. They were one of the many Negro League Baseball teams in America. Known as the Craws, they were based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The team, previously known as the Crawford Colored Giants, was named after the Crawford Bath House, a recreation center in the Crawford neighborhood […]
learn more*Unita Blackwell was born, on this date, in 1933. She is a Black politician and activist.
learn more*Charley Pride was born on this date in 1934. He was a Black country music singer, musician, and business owner. Charley Frank Pride was born in Sledge, Mississippi, one of 11 children of poor sharecroppers, eight boys, and three girls were in the family. When Pride was 14, his mother purchased him his first guitar, […]
learn more*Frances Cress Welsing was born on this date in 1935. She was a Black psychiatrist. Frances Luella Cress Welsing was born Frances Luella Cress in Chicago, Illinois. Her father, Henry N. Cress, was a physician, and her mother, Ida Mae Griffen, was a teacher. In 1957, she earned a B.S. degree at Antioch College, and […]
learn more*The birth of Michael S. Harper in 1938 is celebrated on this date. He was a Black poet and educator.
learn more*On this date in 1938, Provident Hospital opened in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Located at 1409 Sixth Avenue, it was founded by two African American physicians, Von D. Mizell and James Sistrunk. During Jim Crow in the south, none of the existing hospitals in Fort Lauderdale would accept Black patients. In 1937, a young Black […]
learn more*Wilson Pickett was born on this date in 1941. He was a Black singer.
Pickett was born in Prattville, Alabama, the youngest of 11 children. He once called his mother “the baddest woman in my book, she used to hit me with anything, skillets, stove wood, one time I ran away and cried for a week.” Pickett grew up singing in Baptist church choirs and eventually left to live with his father in Detroit. He began his musical career with The Falcons in the early 1959. Five years later he signed as a solo artist with Atlantic Records and recorded “In the Midnight Hour” (1965).
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