*Wendell Gunn was born on this date in 1942. He is a retired African American corporate executive and Administrator. Wendell Wilkie Gunn was born on Decatur Street in Tuscumbia, Alabama. His birth was reported two days late by the midwife, a fact he only discovered when he met his future wife and discovered they shared the same birthday. One of four […]
learn more*On this date in 1917, Robbins, Illinois was founded. Robbins, Illinois is a village and a south suburb of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. Robbins is one of the oldest incorporated African American communities in the United States and the oldest Black suburb in the Chicagoland area. Robbins was named for Eugene S. Robbins, a real estate developer who laid out the village’s early subdivisions. The village’s founder […]
learn more*On this date in 1837, The Colored American magazine began circulation. They were a Black newspaper published in New York City from 1837 to 1842 by Samuel Cornish, Phillip Alexander Bell. Initially published under the name The Weekly Advocate, New York’s Colored American was a weekly newspaper of four to six pages. It circulated in free Black communities in the Northeastern United States. The Colored American focused on the moral, […]
learn more*On this date in1865, The Nation was published. They are the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States, covering progressive political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper that closed in 1865, after ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. An important collaborator of the new magazine was […]
learn moreOn this date in 1969, Soul City was established. It was a planned community first proposed in North Carolina by Floyd McKissick, civil rights leader and director of the Congress of Racial Equality. Funded by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, (HUD) as one of thirteen model city projects under the Urban Growth and New Community Development Act, it was located […]
learn more*William Pickens was born on this date in 1881. He was an African American author, educator, journalist, and essayist. William Pickens was born near Pendleton in Anderson County, South Carolina. He was the sixth of ten children born to former slaves Jacob and Fannie Pickens. His father was a tenant farmer, and his mother worked as a […]
learn more*November 3rd is National Journalism Day, so on this date we celebrate the first publication of the California Eagle from 1879, it was one of the oldest Black owned newspapers in America. John James Neimore founded the newspaper as The Owl that year to serve new arrivals to Los Angeles during the Great Migration, when millions of African Americans left the Deep […]
learn more*On this date in 1905, the Moon Illustrated published its first issue. The Moon Illustrated Weekly magazine was founded and edited by W.E.B. Du Bois. The magazine was the first nationally illustrated weekly produced by and for African Americans. The experience was short lived, however, with only thirty-four issues produced in total from the end of 1905 through July […]
learn more*George T. Downing was born on this date in 1819. He was a black abolitionist and businessman. George Thomas Downing was born in New York City to Thomas Downing and Rebecca (West). His father Thomas was born in Chincoteague, Virginia, to parents who had been freed from slavery when their master, John Downing, a prominent planter, converted to […]
learn more*On this date in 1951, Jet Magazine was published. This is a weekly magazine marketed to African American readers. It was founded by John H. Johnson of the Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago, Illinois. Johnson called his magazine Jet because, as he said in the first issue, “In the world today everything is moving along at a faster clip. There is more news and far less time to read it.” (The […]
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