People, Locations, Episodes

Pedro Niño, Navagator born

*Pedro Niño’s birth is celebrated on this date in 1455. He was an African-Spanish navigator and explorer. Pedro Alonso Niño was born in Moguer, Spain; he was of mixed heritage of African and Spanish. His father was one of the sailors Captured at Elmina. According to The History of Elmina, it was the first African city […]

Estevanico, 16th century Black Explorer born

*The birth of Estevanico is celebrated on this date in c 1503. Estevanico was a Black North African interpreter with Spain’s exploration of the Americas.  He was a native of Azamor on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. In Spain before 1527, he was baptized as a Catholic and became the slave of Andrés Dorantes de […]

Mathieu da Costa, Explorer born

*Mathieu da Costa was born on this date in 1589. He was a Black Portuguese explorer and translator. There is little documentation about Mathieu da Costa’s childhood. Of at least partial African ancestry, he was a freeman favored by explorers for his multilingual talents. Numerous mixed-race African Portuguese persons of the Atlantic Creole generation often worked as […]

Jean Du Sable, Explorer born

On this date Chicago celebrates DuSable Day, the 1750 birth of Jean-Baptist-Point Du Sable. He was a Black pioneer, trader, and founder of the settlement that later became the city of Chicago.

Du Sable was from St. Marc, Sainte-Domingue [now Haiti]. His French father had moved there and married a Black woman. DuSable is believed to have been a freeborn. Around the 1770s, he went to the Great Lakes area of North America, settling on the shore of Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Chicago River, with his Potawatomi wife, Kittihawa (Catherine).

John Bathan Vashon, Seaman, and Abolitionist born

*The birth of John Bathan Vashon in 1792 is celebrated on this date. He was a Black seaman, businessman and abolitionist.

James P. Beckwourth, Explorer born

James Pierson Beckwourth was born on this date in 1798. He was a Black explorer who played a major role in the early discovery and settlement of the American West.

James Beckwourth was born in 1798 in Frederick County, Virginia to an African American slave mother and English father, Sir Jennings Beckwourth. Beckwourth’s family moved to Missouri in the early 1800’s, and he was apprenticed to a Blacksmith in St. Louis when he was a young man. In the summer of 1824 he signed on with General William Ashley for a trapping expedition to the Rocky Mountains.

Allen Light, Black Mariner born

*The birth of Allen Light in 1805 is celebrated on this date. He was a Black sea mariner.

Born in Philadelphia he arrived in Santa Barbara, CA about 1830. Light hunted sea otters, gained Mexican citizenship and guarded the California coastline against American and Native American poachers. In part because of heavily depleted otter populations, the Mexican government instituted conservation laws in 1830 and prohibited foreigners from both hunting otters and participating in all coastal trade in Alta California.

Tom Bass, Horse Trainer born

*Tom Bass was born on this date in 1859. He was a Black Saddlebred horse trainer and businessman. Tom Bass was born a slave on the Hayden plantation in Boone County, Missouri. His mother, Cornelia Gray, was also a slave, and his father, William Bass, was the son of the plantation owner, Eli Bass. He […]

Emory Malick, Aviator born

*Emory Malick was born on this date in 1881. He was an African American aviator.

Emory Conrad Malick grew up in central Pennsylvania, first in Seven Points, then in nearby Sunbury. There he built his own gliders and flew them across the Susquehanna River to his job as a farmhand and carpenter over on Cattie Weiser’s farm. By 1910, Malick had taken his aviation skills to Philadelphia, where he later transported passengers for the Flying Dutchman Air Service and took aerial photographs for Dallin Aerial Surveys. He also worked as a carpenter and master tile-layer.

Bessie Coleman, Aviator born

*Bessie Coleman was born on this date in 1892. She was an African American woman pilot and the first woman aviator and stunt-flier in the United States.

Dale L. White, Pilot, and Aviation Activist born.

*Dale L. White’s birth is celebrated on this date in 1899. He was a Black pilot and aviation activist. Born in Minden, Louisiana, White moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1930. In 1932, he attended the Curtiss-Wright Aeronautical University. In August 1933, White began his flight training and received his license in June 1936. Along with […]

John C. Robinson, Aviator born

*John Robinson was born on this date in 1905.  He was a Black aviator and activist.  John Charles Robinson was born in Carrabelle, Florida, and spent his early years in Gulfport, Mississippi. His father died when he was a baby, leaving him and his four-year-old sister, Bertha, with their mother, Celeste Robinson, who married Charles Cobb. Robinson was inspired by flight at an […]

Willa Brown, Aviation Pioneer and Teacher born

*On this date, we mark the birth of Willa Brown in 1906. She was an African American aviator, activist, and educator and the first Black officer in the Civil Air Patrol (CAP).

From Glasgow, Kentucky, Willa Mae Brown received her Bachelor of Science degree in business from Indiana State Teachers College in 1927. After graduating, she taught public school in Gary, Indiana, and Chicago, Illinois, where she developed an interest in aviation.

Marie Dickerson Corker, Aviator, and Dancer born

*Marie Dickerson Coker was born on this date in 1906. She was a Black singer, dancer, airplane Stunt Pilot, musician, and showgirl. From Muskogee, Oklahoma, the fifth of seven children to Sarah Ragsdale and a father surnamed Jones. After she was widowed, Marie’s mother left Muskogee for Los Angeles, California, along with Marie and some […]

Chauncey Spencer, Pilot born

Chauncey Spencer was born on this date in 1906. He was an African American pilot and educator.

He was born in Lynchburg, VA, one of three children of Edward Spencer and noted Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer. One of the most respected families in Lynchburg, visitors to the Spencer home included George Washington Carver, Paul Robeson, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, Clarence Muse, Dean Pickens, Adam Clayton Powell, Langston Hughes, Thurgood Marshall, and W.E.B. Dubois.