*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 […]
learn more*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 […]
learn more*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 […]
learn moreOn 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).
learn more*The birth of John Bathan Vashon in 1792 is celebrated on this date. He was a Black seaman, businessman and abolitionist.
learn moreJames 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.
learn more*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.
learn moreMary Fields was born a slave on this date in 1832. She was a Black entrepreneur and stagecoach driver.
Fields was born a slave in Tennessee; she grew up an orphan, never married, and had no children. Fields lived by her wits and her strength. She traveled north to Ohio, settled in Toledo, and worked for the Catholic convent where she formed a strong bond with Mother Amadeus. The nuns of her early life were her family. When the nuns moved to Montana and Mary learned of Mother Amadeus’ failing health, she went west to help out.
learn more*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 […]
learn more*Matthew Henson was born on this date in 1866. He was an African American explorer and member of the 1909 expedition with American explorer Robert Peary that is credited with discovering the North Pole.
learn more*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.
learn more*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.
learn moreThe birth of William J. Powell in 1897 is celebrated on this date. He was an African American aviator and businessman.
From Henderson, KY, he moved with his family to Chicago when he was eight. After graduating from Wendell Phillips High School at age 16, he applied to the University of Illinois School of engineering. He was a top student and musically talented to boot. He interrupted his studies at the University of Illinois to serve in World War I as an infantry lieutenant.
learn more*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 […]
learn more*John Atkinson was born on this date in 1901. He was a Black plasterer, Jeweler, watch repairer, Small Appliance repairer, and the owner of the Dew Drop Inn in Atlanta, Georgia. John Lloyd Atkinson, from Crawfordville, Georgia, was the son of George William Atkinson and Emma Louise Edwards Atkinson. He received his first schooling from […]
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