*David Bing was born on this date in 1943. He is a Black former professional basketball player, businessman, and politician. Bing was born in Washington, D.C., to Mother Juanita, a housekeeper, and Father Hasker, a bricklayer and deacon for the local Baptist church. He was the second child of four living in a two-bedroom, one-story […]
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*Cyril Ramaphosa was born on this date in 1952. He is a Black South African businessman and politician. Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa was born in Soweto, Johannesburg, to Venda parents. He is the second of the three children of Erdmuth and retired policeman Samuel Ramaphosa. He attended Tshilidzi Primary School and Sekano Ntoane High School in […]
learn more*Félix Houphouët-Boigny was born on this date in 1905. He was a Black African politician and physician. Houphouët-Boigny was born in Yamoussoukro, the Ivory Coast, to a family of hereditary chiefs of the Baoulé people. His first name, Dia, means “prophet” or “magician.” His father was N’Doli Houphouët. When N’Go was murdered in 1910, Dia […]
learn more*William Bustamante was born on February 24, 1884. He was a Creole Jamaican politician and leader of the Labor Party. William Alexander Clarke Bustamante was born in Jamaica to Mary Clarke (née Wilson), a woman of mixed race, and her husband, Robert Constantine Clarke, a White Irish Catholic. His grandmother, Elsie Clarke-Shearer, was also the […]
learn more*On this date in 1828, the American Democratic Party was founded. Sometimes called the Democratic Farmer Labor Party (DFL), they are a center-left political party in the United States. One of the major parties of the U.S., it is the world’s oldest active political party. Its main adversary since the 1850s has been the right-wing […]
learn more*Herbert Bright was born on this date in 1883. He was a Black African doctor and political activist. Herbert Christian Bankole-Bright was born in Okrika, Sierra Leone, the son of Jacob Galba Bright and his wife Letitia (née Williams), Creole descendants of Sierra Leone Liberated Africans. Bright’s paternal grandfather, John Bright, was an ex-slave who […]
learn more*François Duvalier was born on this date in 1907. Also known as Papa Doc, he was a Haitian politician and Vodouisant. Duvalier was born in Port-au-Prince, the son of Duval Duvalier, justice of the peace, teacher, and journalist, whose family came from Martinique, and Ulyssia Abraham, a baker. His aunt, Madame Florestal, raised him as […]
learn more*Jean-Claude Duvalier was born on this date in 1951. Nicknamed ‘Baby Doc,’ he was a Black Haitian president. The son of Simone Ovide, a Mulatto-Haitian woman, and François Duvalier, a Black Nationalist anti-mulatto leader who became dictator of Haiti, Duvalier was born in Port-au-Prince and was brought up in an isolated environment. He attended Nouveau […]
learn more*On this date in 1881, the United Links Party held its first convention. In 1880, Benjamin Singleton was called to testify at Congressional hearings on the migration of Blacks from the South. By 1881, however, Singleton had begun a new phase in his campaign to aid his people, organizing a party called the ‘United Colored […]
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