*Cecilia Suyat Marshall, of Filipino descent, was born on this date in 1928. She was an Asian-American activist and historian. Cecilia “Cissy” Suyat was born in Pu’unene, Maui, in Hawaii. Her parents emigrated from the Philippines in 1910. Her father owned a printing company; her mother died when she was young. She was raised […]
learn more*Anne McCarty Braden was born on this date in 1924. She was a white-American civil rights activist, journalist, and educator. Anne McCarty was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Gambrell N. McCarty & Anita D. (Crabbe) McCarty and raised in rigidly segregated Anniston, Alabama; Braden grew up in a white, middle-class family that accepted southern racism wholeheartedly. A devout Episcopalian, […]
learn more*On this date in 1928, The International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW) was formed. ITUCNW was a section of the Profintern that existed during the late 1920s and 1930s, serving as a radical transnational platform for Black workers in Africa and the Atlantic World. It was launched at the “International Conference of Negro […]
learn more*Fatima Meer was born on this date in 1928. She was a South African Coloured writer, academic, screenwriter, and activist. Fatima Meer was born in the Grey Streets of Durban, South Africa, into a middle-class family of nine. Her father was Moosa Ismail Meer, a newspaper editor of The Indian Views. Her mother, Rachel Farrell, was orphaned […]
learn more*Joan Maynard was born on this date in 1928. She was a Black commercial artist, art administrator, and community preservation activist. Joan Cooper Bacchus Maynard was born in Brooklyn, NY, and was the daughter of John W. Cooper, a ventriloquist, and Juliana St. Bernard Cooper of Grenada. She graduated from Bishop McDonnell Memorial High School and […]
learn more*James Lawson, Jr. was born on this date in 1928. He is a Black activist and university professor. James Morris Lawson, Jr. was born to Philane May Cover and James Morris Lawson, Sr. in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. He was the sixth of nine children. He grew up in Massillon, Ohio. Both Lawson’s father and grandfather were Methodist ministers. Lawson […]
learn moreOn this date in 1928, James Forman was born. He was an African American civil rights activist who is credited with giving the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) its organizational base.
learn moreThis date marks the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1929. He was an African American minister and activist.
learn more*Robert Hicks was born on this date in 1929. He was a Black laborer and activist in Bogalusa, Louisiana. Robert ‘Bob’ Hicks was born in Pachuta, Mississippi, the youngest child of Quitman and Maybell Crawford Hicks. He moved to Bogalusa, Louisiana, with his family as a child. In 1947, Hicks graduated from the segregated Central Memorial […]
learn more*Israel Seymour Dresner, a white Jewish-American Reform rabbi and global activist, was born on this date in 1929 on the Lower East Side of New York City. He was raised in Brooklyn, attending an Orthodox yeshiva (day school). At the age of 13, he joined Habonim Dror, a Labor Zionist youth movement, and in his […]
learn more*On this date in 1929, Autherine Lucy was born. She is a Black activist and educator. Autherine Juanita Lucy was born in Shiloh, Alabama. Her father, Milton Cornelius Lucy, and mother, Minnie Maud Hosea, were sharecroppers; she was the youngest child in a family of five sons and four daughters. The family-owned and farmed 110 acres, and Lucy’s […]
learn more*Dorothy Cotton was born on this date in 1930. She was a Black activist. She was born Dorothy Foreman in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Her mother died when she was three years old, leaving her and her three sisters to be raised by their father, Claude Foreman, a tobacco factory worker with only a third-grade education. […]
learn more*Robert Benford Sr. was born on this date in 1930. He was a Black activist and community administrator. From Kansas City, MO., Robert Benford grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood in north Minneapolis. He was one of seven children of parents of African, Native American, and Irish ancestry. In 1969, he was appointed Minneapolis […]
learn more*Alfred King was born on this date in 1930. He was a Black Baptist minister and civil rights activist. Alfred Daniel King was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the son of Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King. He was the youngest of their three children (the other two being Willie Christine […]
learn more*Xernona Clayton was born on this date in 1930. She is an AfricanAmerican journalist and businesswoman.
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