People, Locations, Episodes

Marion Thompson Wright, Educator born

*Marion Thompson Wright was born on September 12, 1902. She was a Black scholar, educator, and activist. Marion Manola Thompson was born in East Orange, New Jersey, to Minnie Thompson and Moses R. Thompson. Wright was the youngest of four children and had two older twin sisters and a brother. She attended Barringer High School […]

Martha Louise Morrow Foxx, Educator born

*Martha Louise Morrow Foxx was born on this date in 1902.  She was a pioneering Black educator of the blind in Mississippi.   Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, an eye disease left Foxx partially blind as a child. She entered the Raleigh School for the Blind as a child until her family moved to Philadelphia, […]

William A. Davis, Anthropologist, and Educator born

William Allison Davis was born on this date in 1902. He was an African American cultural anthropologist and educator.

He was born in Washington, DC, and attended Williams College in Williamstown, MA. He received a Masters Degree in anthropology from Harvard University in 1942 and a Ph.D. in education in 1942 at the University of Chicago. He was awarded the John Dewey Distinguished Professor honor. Davis taught at Dillard University and later at the University of Chicago. In 1948, he became one of the first African Americans to receive tenure at a non-historical Black institution.

Thelma D. Brown, Playwright, and Teacher born

*Thelma Duncan Brown was born on this date in 1902.  She was a Black writer, teacher, and stage producer.   A St. Louis, Missouri-born writer, she received her college education at Howard University, Washington, DC, and Columbia University, New York. At Howard, during the 1920s, she discovered her writing talents under the tutelage of Thomas […]

Friendship Armstrong Academy Opens

*Friendship Armstrong Academy was dedicated on this date in 1902. This public charter school is in the Truxton Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. With the passage of an act of the 55th Congress, approved March 3, 1899, the school first bore the name Manual Training School No. 2, later changed to Armstrong Manual Training School. […]

James Lesesne Wells, Artist, and Teacher born

*James Lesesne Wells was born on this date in 1902. He was an African American educator, artist and photographer.

Black History and The Rhodes Scholarship, a story

*The Rhodes scholarship is celebrated on this date in 1902. It is one of the most prestigious and oldest international fellowship programs for graduates and prolific intellectuals in the world. Created and named after South African mining magnate Cecil John Rhodes, the program brings together more than 80 scholars each year from South Africa, Australia, Canada, Botswana, India, Kenya, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Germany, Jamaica, and the United States, from which 32 scholars are chosen. Scholars are awarded scholarships worth $50,000 each for two years of study at Oxford University.

The Palmer Memorial Institute is Founded

*On this date in 1902, we celebrate the Alice Freeman Palmer Memorial Institute. Also known as Palmer Memorial Institute, it was an American school for upper-class Blacks. Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown founded it in Sedalia, North Carolina, near Greensboro. Palmer Memorial Institute was named after Alice Freeman Palmer, former president of Wellesley College and benefactor of Dr. Brown, who died on this date. More than […]

Mercer Cook, Educator, and Ambassador born

*On this date in 1903, Mercer Cook was born. He was an African American educator and ambassador.

Marvel Cooke, Writer, Teacher, and Activist born

*On this date in 1903, Marvel Cooke was born. She was an African American journalist, writer, and civil rights activist.

Viktor Lowenfeld, Art Professor born

*Viktor Lowenfeld’s birth is celebrated on this date in 1903. He was a white-Jewish Austrian professor of art education. Born in Linz, Austria, Viktor Lowenfeld was always drawn to the arts. Through his narration, Lowenfeld mentioned that he was pulling toward music at four or five. He started to play the violin at the age […]

Louis Leakey, Anthropologist born

*Louis Leakey was born on this date in 1903. He was a white-African anthropologist and historian.  Born at Kabete Mission, near Nairobi, Kenya, Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey’s parents, Harry and Mary Leakey, were English missionaries to the Kikuyu tribe.   Despite brief stays in England during childhood, Louis grew up more African than English. He played with […]

The ‘Talented Tenth,’ a definition

*On this date in 1903, The Talented Tenth is briefly defined.  This term designated a leadership class of Blacks in the early 20th century. Northern white philanthropists created the term, then publicized by W. E. B. Du Bois wrote an influential essay of the same name, published in 1903.  It appeared in The Negro Problem, a collection of essays written by Booker T. […]

Grace Lorch, Teacher and Activist born

*Grace Lorch was born on this date in 1903. She was a teacher and activist. Grace Lonergan was born to William and Delia Lonergan in Boston, Massachusetts. She and her brother, Thomas, grew up in a working-class household, where her father worked on the railroad and her mother was a homemaker. Lonergan became a public […]

Florence Powell, Librarian and Teacher born.

Florence Powell was born on this date in 1897. She was an African American educator and the first Black woman to receive professional training in library science in the United States.