*Albery Whitman was born on this date in 1851. He was a Black poet, minister and orator. Albery Allison Whitman was born into slavery at a farm near Munfordville, Kentucky. After years as a manual laborer, working at a plow shop, on railroad construction and as a teacher, Whitman attended Wilberforce University in 1870. […]
learn more*The birth of Rev. Samuel W. Bacote is celebrated on this date in 1866. He was a Black minister. The son of former slaves, Bacote was born in Society Hill, South Carolina. His mother died when he was three months old, leaving him to be raised by his father and grandmother. His father was literate […]
learn more*John Newton was born on this date in 1725. He was a white-English slave trader and Anglican clergyman. John Newton was born in Wapping, London, the son of John Newton the Elder, a shipmaster in the Mediterranean service, and Elizabeth (née Scatliff). Elizabeth was the only daughter of Simon Scatliff, an instrument maker from […]
learn more*The birth of Lucy Farrow is celebrated on this date in 1851. She was a Black holiness pastor who was instrumental in the early foundations of Pentecostalism. Lucy F. Farrow was born into slavery in Norfolk, Virginia. She was niece of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. In 1905, she worked for Charles Fox Parham during […]
learn more*On this date in 1852, we celebrate the founding of the Third Baptist Church in San Francisco. The church was founded in the home of William and Eliza Davis, on Kearny Street. It was called the First Colored Baptist Church of San Francisco. With the Davis’s, there were seven other Blacks and a band of […]
learn more*The birth of Lewis Woodson is celebrated on this date in 1806. He was a Black minister and abolitionist. Born free in Greenbrier County, Va. (now West Virginia). Woodson was the oldest of eleven children born to Thomas and Jemima Woodson, both mulatto slaves who had gained their freedom. Woodson family oral history, dating to […]
learn more*John B. Meachum, was born on this date in 1789. He was a Black minister, businessman and educator. John Berry Meachum was born into slavery in Goochland County, Virginia. His master took him to North Carolina and then Kentucky. Meachum learned several trades, including carpentry. At 21, he had earned enough money from carpentry […]
learn more*On this date in 1817, The First Baptist Church of St. Louis was founded. Founded by a free slave named John Berry Meachum and John Mason Peck, a white-American Baptist missionary. The First Baptist of St. Louis is the oldest African American church west of the Mississippi River. The First African Baptist Church, now First […]
learn more*On this date in 1827, we examine the Mormon church and American Slavery with a brief article. It was on this date that white Mormon Joseph Smith translated the Golden Plates into English (aka) the Book of Mormon. The Latter-Day Saints Mormon movement has had varying and conflicting teachings on slavery. Early converts were […]
learn more*On this date in 1977, the Hebrew tribe of Dan is briefly described. Though the community has existed since 1000 BCE, we chose this date because it was the date Israel formally acknowledged the tribe of Dan as Jewish. According to the Torah (Hebrew Bible), the Tribe of Dan, also sometimes spelled as “Dann”, was […]
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