*The founding of Asbury United Methodist Church is celebrated on this date in 1836. Asbury Chapel is the oldest black United Methodist church in Washington, D.C. The church pioneered Black Methodism in Washington, D.C., and of social history through Slavery, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and the American Civil Rights movement. It is the city’s oldest Black church […]
learn more*Dennis Oglesby was born on January 21, 1960. He was a Black minister and community activist. Born in Chicago to insurance executive Dennis Michael Oglesby Sr. and community organizer Sylvia Oglesby, Dennis Jr. grew up in California with his father after his parents divorced. In 1983, he graduated from Rust College, an HBCU in Holly […]
learn more*Charles C. Jones Sr. was born on this date in 1831. He was a white-American Presbyterian clergyman, educator, and planter. He was both a slave owner and a missionary to slaves. Charles Colcock Jones Sr. was born at Liberty Hall, his father’s plantation in Liberty County. He made a profession of faith when he was 17 for […]
learn more*The birth of Saint Gelasius I is celebrated on this date in c 450. He was the Black Roman African bishop of Rome. Gelasius was born in Africa and was one of the most prolific authors of the early bishops of Rome. Over 100 Gelasian letters survive; although 49 are fragmentary, some are relatively short. Additionally, six treatises are […]
learn more*The birth of Pope Victor I is affirmed on this date in c 169. He was a Roman African bishop prelate of the early Christian Church who was Bishop of Rome in the late second Century. He was born in the Roman Province of Africa in Leptis Magna, present-day Libya. He was of Berber origin. The primary sources […]
learn more*Shais Rishon was born on this date in 1982. He is a Black Orthodox rabbi, activist, and writer. Shais Rishon, known by the pen name MaNishtana, was born in Brooklyn, New York, to an Ashkenazi Jewish family linked with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. He says his mother’s ancestors have practiced Judaism since the 1780s. His father, Asher Rishon, […]
learn more*Homer Jack was born on this date in 1916. He was a white-American Unitarian Universalist clergyman, pacifist, and social activist. From Rochester, NY., Homer A. Jack was an only child to active socialist parents. His grandparents had immigrated from central and eastern Europe to escape oppression and poverty. Like his parents, young Jack was a […]
learn more*Cameron Alleyne was born on this date in 1880. He was a Caribbean-American bishop. Cameron Chesterfield Alleyne was born in Bridgetown, Barbados, to Robert Henry Alleyne and Amelia Anna Alleyne. He attended Naparima College in Trinidad between 1899 and 1903 before traveling to the United States for a Bachelor of Arts degree at Tuskegee Institute in […]
learn more*Olive Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church is celebrated on this date in 1853. The Reverend Jordan Winston Early founded the congregation. Services began in a private home. Also known as Olive Chapel AME Church, it is a historic church at 309 S. Harrison Avenue in Kirkwood, Missouri. It is the oldest Protestant church in Kirkwood. […]
learn more*Jordan Winston Early was born on this date in 1814. He was a Black Methodist preacher. Jordan Early was born into slavery in Franklin County, Virginia. After his mother’s death, when Early was three, he and his siblings were cared for by a maternal aunt, an uncle who taught him astronomy, and an older woman […]
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