People, Locations, Episodes

Betty Reid Soskin, Community Activist, and Park Ranger born

*Betty Reid Soskin was born on this date in 1921. She is a community activist, lyricist, and retired park ranger. Betty Charbonnet was born in Detroit, Michigan, the daughter of Dorson Louis Charbonnet and Lottie Breaux Allen of Louisiana. Her father was Creole, and her mother was Cajun. Her great-grandmother was born into slavery in […]

Joseph Lowery, Minister, and Activist born

*Joseph Lowery was born on this date in 1921. He is an African American minister in the United Methodist Church and civil rights activist.

From Huntsville, Ala. Joseph E. Lowery is the son of LeRoy and Dora Lowery. He attended middle school in Chicago while staying with relatives, returning to Huntsville to complete high school. He then attended Knoxville College and Payne College and Theological Seminary, earning his doctorate of divinity at Chicago Ecumenical Institute.

Mamá Tingó, Afro Dominican Activist born

*Mamá Tingó was born on this date in 1921.  She was an Afro Dominican activist leader of the rural farming community.  Mamá Tingó was born Florinda Muñoz Soriano in Villa Mella, Dominican Republic. She was the daughter of Eusebia Soriano and was baptized in the Parroquia Esprit Santo, the Holy Spirit Church, in 1922. At the […]

Mamie Till-Mobley, Hate-Crime Activist born

*Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley was born on this date in 1921. She was a Black teacher and the mother of Emmett Till. Born Mamie Elizabeth Carthan in Webb, Mississippi, She and her family left the South when millions of black Southerners migrated to the industrial North in the Great Migration to escape racial violence and Jim Crow laws. In 1922, […]

Floyd McKissick, Activist born

*On this date in 1922, Floyd McKissick was born. He was an African American civil rights activist and a former National Director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

From Asheville, North Carolina he did his undergraduate education at that state’s colleges and Morehouse College. His attempt to apply for Law School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was denied because the school was not integrated. With the help of NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall, he sued the school and became the first African American to earn a LL. B degree at the University of North Carolina.

Fred Shuttlesworth, Activist, and Minister born

*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.

Willie S. Glanton, Politician born

*Willie S. Glanton was born on this date in 1922. She was a Black lawyer and politician. Willie Stevenson was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and was the daughter of Ervin S. Stevenson and Willie Ever Parker. She graduated from Tennessee State University and Robert Terrell Law School in Washington, D.C., and was admitted to the Iowa […]

Gloria St. Clair Hayes Richardson, Activist born

*Gloria St. Clair Hayes Richardson was born on this date in 1922. She was a Black administrator, politician, and activist. Gloria St. Clair Hayes, the only child of John Edwards Hayes and Madel Pauline (St. Clair) Hayes, was from Baltimore, Maryland. Her grandfather, H. Maynadier St. Clair, was a city council member in Cambridge from […]

Aaron Henry, NAACP Activist born

Aaron Henry was born on this date in 1922. He was an African American civil rights leader, politician, and head of the NAACP.

Nathaniel Stewart Sr., Soldier and Activist born

*Nathaniel Stewart was born on this date in 1922. He was a Black soldier and activist. Stewart was from Ft. Motte, S.C., the son of Willie and Emily Stewart. As a young man, he served his country in World War II as a Tuskegee Airman, ranked Second Lieutenant in the 99th Pursuit Squadron. He served as […]

Margaret Collins, Entomologist and Activist born.

*Margaret Collins was born on this date in 1922. She was a Black entomologist (zoologist) and a civil rights advocate. Margaret James was born in Institute, West Virginia. Collins was the fourth child of Rollins James and Luella Bolling James. Institute was an all-Black town and a college town. Collins’s father earned his bachelor’s degree […]

Charles Evers, Activist born

 *Charles Evers was born on this date in 1922. He was a Black activist, businessman, disc jockey, and politician. James Charles Evers was born in Decatur, Mississippi, to James Evers, a laborer, and Jesse Wright Evers, a maid. He was the eldest of four children; Medgar Evers was his younger brother. He attended segregated public schools, which […]

Harry V. Burns, Activist born

*Harry Burns was born on this date in 1922.  He was a Black civil rights leader.   From San Antonio, Texas, Harry Victory Burns was named by his mother for Victory Day. Burns served in the U.S. Army during WW2. After his discharge in the 1940s and 1950s, He was the San Antonio NAACP Branch president. He was associated with […]

Hattie Williams, Humanitarian born

*Hattie Williams was born on this date in 1922. She was an African American humanitarian and educational activist.

Daisy Kadibil, Aboriginal Activist born

*Australia Day has been celebrated on this date since 1788 as Australia’s official National Day. Because of this, we are celebrating the birth of Daisy Craig Kadibil in 1923. She was an Aboriginal woman housekeeper, cook, and Aboriginal activist. She was born in Jigalong, an Indigenous community in the Pilbara region in northwestern Australia. When […]