*Otto Huiswoud was born on this date in 1893. He was a black Surinamese political activist and journalist. Otto Eduard Gerardus Majella Huiswoud was born in Paramaribo, a South American coastal city in Suriname. He was the son of Rudolf Huiswoud, a formerly enslaved person who had gained his freedom as a boy and was a […]
learn more*James W. Ford was born on this date in 1893. He was a Black labor activist and a politician. Ford was born in Pratt City, Alabama. His father, a former resident of Gainesville, Georgia, had come to Alabama in the 1890s to work in the coal mines and steel mills. He worked for 35 years […]
learn more*The Colored Women’s League (CWL) of Washington, D.C., was incorporated on this date in 1894. This women’s club’s primary mission was the national union of women of color. Several prominent Black women in Washington, D.C., met to discuss creating a club devoted to improving the conditions of black children, women, and the urban poor. Some of […]
learn moreOn this date, Crystal Bird Fauset was born. She was the first African American woman to be elected to a state house of representatives.
Fauset was born in Princess Anne, Maryland, to Benjamin and Portia Bird, but was raised in Boston by her aunt, Lucy Groves. She attended public schools and graduated from Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1931. As a social worker for the YWCA in New York and Philadelphia, Fauset was named executive secretary of the Institute of Race Relations at Swarthmore College in 1933.
learn more*The Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) was founded on September 10, 1894. UDC is an American neo-Confederate hereditary association for female descendants of Confederate Civil War soldiers. Established in Nashville, Tennessee, the group venerated the Ku Klux Klan during the Jim Crow era. In 1896, the organization established the Children of the Confederacy to impart […]
learn more*Eleanor Roosevelt was born on this date in 1884. She was a White American diplomat, First lady, writer, humanitarian and Civil Rights activist.
learn more*On this date in 1894, we mark the birth of Lovett Fort-Whiteman. He was a Black political activist and Communist International functionary. Lovett Huey Fort-Whiteman was born in Dallas, Texas. His father, Moses Whiteman, was a slave in South Carolina and relocated to Texas in 1887, where he worked as a janitor and a small-scale cattle rancher. At the age of 35, Moses Whiteman married the […]
learn more*Beulah Webb of Sioux City was born on this date in 1895. She was a Black community service leader. In 1927, she organized the Sioux City Association of Colored Women to promote culture, education, literature, and art and to alleviate racial problems. She was selected to attend the National Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs Convention in 1938. […]
learn more*This date in 1895 is celebrated as the birth date of Flossie Bailey. She was a Black anti-lynching and civil rights activist. Katherine Harvey (her birth name), the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Harvey, was born in Kokomo, Indiana, in 1895. Known as “Flossie,” she grew up in Kokomo and attended Kokomo High School. She […]
learn more*On this date in 1895, the First National Conference of the Colored Women of America was held. Representatives of 42 Black women’s clubs from 14 states—including the Colored Women’s League of Washington, the Women’s Loyal Union of New York, and the Ida B. Wells Club of Chicago gathered in Berkeley Hall with Josephine Ruffin presiding. […]
learn moreOn this date in 1895, Benjamin Elijah Mays was born. He was an African American educator, college president, activist, clergyman, and administrator.
Mays was from Ninety Six, South Carolina, the youngest of eight children; his parents were tenant farmers and former slaves. After spending a year at Virginia Union University, he moved north to attend Bates College in Maine, where he obtained his B.A. in 1920. He then entered the University of Chicago as a graduate student, earning an M.A. in 1925 and a Ph.D. in the School of Religion in 1935.
learn more*William Stuart Nelson was born on this date in 1895. He was a Black theologian and human rights activist. William Nelson was born in Paris, Kentucky, and graduated from Lincoln High School in Paducah, KY. He served in World War I and received his BA from Howard University in 1920. After attending schools in France and Germany, […]
learn more*On this date in 1896, the Northeastern Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs (NFCWC) was founded. This umbrella organization represented black women’s clubs in the northeastern United States. The organization was affiliated with the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC). It was one of the first umbrella organizations for Black women’s clubs in the United States, predating […]
learn moreMelnea Cass was born on this date in 1896. She was an African American educator and activist.
She was the oldest of three daughters of Mary Drew Jones and Albert Jones. She grew up in Richmond, Virginia, where her father was a janitor and her mother a domestic worker. They moved to the South End of Boston, MA, when Cass was five years old. Three years later her mother died. Her father and their Aunt Ella raised her and her sisters. After a few years, their aunt moved the girls to Newburyport, MA, and placed them in the care of Amy Smith.
learn moreOn this date in 1896, the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, (NACWC) was organized. The merger of National Federation of Afro-American Women, the Women’s Era Club of Boston, and Colored Women’s League of Washington, DC formed it.
The objectives of the NACWC are as follows:
1. To promote the education of women and children
2. To raise the standards of the home
3. To improve conditions for family living
4. To work for the moral, economic, social, and religious welfare of women and children
5. To protect the rights of women and children
