*Josephine Shaw Lowell was born on this date in 1843. She was a white-American Progressive Reform leader in the United States in the Nineteenth century. Josephine Shaw was born in the West Roxbury section of Roxbury, Massachusetts, into a wealthy New England family. Her parents, Francis George and Sarah Blake (Sturgis) Shaw, were Unitarian philanthropists […]
learn more*Isaac Theophilus Akunna Wallace-Johnson was born on this date in 1894. He was a Black African workers’ leader, journalist, soldier, activist, and politician. He was born to poor Creole parents in Wilberforce, British Sierra Leone, a village adjoining the capital city, Freetown. His father was a farmer, and his mother was a fish trader. Educated […]
learn more*The birth of Ladipo Solanke is celebrated on this date in 1886. He was a Black African political activist. Ladipo Solanke was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, as Oladipo Felix Solanke. He studied at the Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone before moving to study law at University College, London, in 1922. In Britain, Solanke joined […]
learn more*Marc Lamont Hill was born on this date in 1978. He is a Black academic, author, activist, and television personality. Hill was born and raised in Philadelphia. After graduating from Carver High School, Hill attended Morehouse College, but finished his undergraduate studies at Temple University, where he received his B.S. degree in education and Spanish […]
learn more*Melvin Giles was born on this date in 1958. He was a poet, educator, and community activist. From Mississippi, he was the son of a traveling Baptist preacher who worked on the railroad. Giles’s early southern childhood exposed him to the harsh reality of the Jim Crow South. When he was about 4 years old, […]
learn more*Black history and Palestinian solidarity are affirmed on this date in 1917. The date of this article was chosen to coincide with the Balfour Declaration, an announcement in a letter from the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community. There is a decades-long history of political solidarity […]
learn more*Ethel Minor was born on this date in 1938. She was a Black journalist, teacher, human rights activist, and civil rights activist. She was born into a large and accomplished Episcopalian Family in Chicago. She converted to Catholicism later in life and remained extremely religious. Lorne Cress Love, Francis Cress Welsing, and Barbara Cress Lawrence […]
learn moreEdelso Moret is an Afro Cuban, educator, administrator, activist, and interpreter guide. In this segment, he shares three Americans who inspired his community activism.
learn more*Elizabeth Waring was born on this date in 1895. She was a white-American philanthropist and activist. Elizabeth Amy Avery was born in Detroit, Michigan. Married twice, she was the wife of Wilson Mills (1915) and Henry Hoffman (1934), both wealthy businessmen. In those years, she and her first husband would often spend winters in South […]
learn more*Zilphia Horton was born on this date in 1910. She was a white-American musician, community organizer, educator, activist, and folklorist. Zilphia was born Zilphia Mae Johnson in the coal mining town of Spadra, Arkansas. She was the second child of Robert Guy Johnson and Ora Ermon Howard Johnson. Her father was superintendent of the local […]
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