*Clara Stanton Jones was born on this date in 1913. She was a Black librarian and administrator. Clara Stanton was born to a close-knit Catholic family in St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother, Etta J. Stanton, worked as a schoolteacher. Her father, Ralph Herbert Stanton, was a Standard Life Insurance and the Atlanta Life Insurance Company […]
learn more*On this date in 2021, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story was published. This book is an anthology of essays and poetry published by Random House’s One World imprint. It is a book-length expansion of the essays presented in the 1619 Project issue of The New York Times Magazine in August 2019. The book is by Nikole Hannah-Jones […]
learn more*Nikole Hannah-Jones was born on this date in 1976. She is a Black investigative journalist and editor. Nikole Sheri Hannah-Jones was born in Waterloo, Iowa, to Father Milton Hannah, black, and Mother Cheryl A. Novotny, white. Hannah-Jones is the second of three girls. She was raised Catholic. Hannah-Jones and her sister attended almost all-white schools […]
learn more*On this date in 1990, Days of Rondo was published. The Days of Rondo by Evelyn Fairbanks is an interpretive account of events in the life of her family struggling for survival and meaning in a northern city. In the 1930s and the 1940s, the Rondo community was at the heart of St. Paul, Minnesota’s largest black neighborhood. African […]
learn more*On this date in 1863, the book Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839 was published. This is an account by Fanny Kemble of the time spent on her husband’s plantation in Butler Island, Georgia. The account was not published until 1863 after her marriage had ended and the American Civil War had begun. According to PBS, she […]
learn more*Gloria Wekker was born on this date in 1950. She is an Afro Surinamese Dutch gender activist, emeritus professor, and writer. Gloria Daisy Wekker was born in Paramaribo, Suriname. Her family migrated to the Netherlands when she was a one-year-old infant and lived in a neighborhood in Amsterdam that had formerly been predominantly Jewish before WWI. […]
learn more*José Martí was born on this date in 1853. He was an Afro Cuban nationalist, poet, philosopher, essayist, journalist, translator, professor, and publisher. Born in Havana, Spanish Empire, José Julián Martí Pérez began his political activism at an early age. In 1865, he enrolled in the Escuela de Instruction Primaria Superior Municipal de Varones, headed by Rafael […]
learn more*Eugene Gordon was born on this date in 1891. He was a Black journalist, editor, fiction writer, and social activist. Born in Oviedo, Florida, he was raised in New Orleans and lived through the Robert Charles riots. He attended Howard University and then Boston University, studying English and journalism. In 1916, Gordon married Edythe Mae Chapman, a […]
learn more*The birth of n is celebrated on this date in 1897. She was a Black writer of short stories and poetry during the era of the Harlem Renaissance. Edythe Mae Chapman was born in Washington, D.C. She was raised by members of her mother’s family, surnamed Bicks. She was educated at M Street School and graduated in […]
learn more*The Bell Curve was published on this date in 1994. This book was and remains highly controversial, primarily where the authors discussed purported connections between race and intelligence and suggested policy implications based on these purported connections. Its full title, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, was by psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein […]
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