Dr. Herbert Smitherman Sr. was the first black person with a doctorate hired at Proctor & Gamble.
Stanley Robertson was the first black president for NBC and any major network in the country. Robertson, who was also a former associate editor for Ebony magazine, passed away Nov. 16th in his Bel-Air, California home. He was called Hollywood’s only black production executive by the L.A. Times in the 1980s. Robertson was born in […]
George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, also known as The Abyssinian Prince, was a renowned black classical violinist known for his professional relationship with Ludwig Von Beethoven. Bridgetower was said to have been from Barbados and spoke fluent English, French, German, Italian and Polish. Bridgetower was born to John Frederick and Ann Bridgetower in Poland. His father, […]
Charles “Honi” coles was a famous tap dancer of the 1930s who was said to have “the fastest feet in the business.” People who witnessed his dance at the Apollo Theater said that his feet moved so fast, it looked like an illusion. Coles was given the nickname ‘Honi’ by his mother. The streets in […]
This week, a grand jury met one last time over the cold case of Frank Morris, an African-American shopkeeper in Ferriday, Louisiana, who was brutally murdered in 1964, a victim of the Ku Klux Klan. Morris’ case was re-opened in 2007 as part of unsolved civil rights murder investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice. […]
In the Old West, there was a black female slave named Mary Fields who was raised by nuns in Tennessee. She was an orphaned child who never married and never gave birth. After moving to Toledo, Ohio, Fields would spend all of her time in the Catholic Convent with a woman named Mother Amadeus. Though […]
Eleanor Williams was the first black female air traffic controller in the country. The Texas native and mother of seven began working for the FAA in 1963 as a janitor. Three months after working on the cleaning crew, williams took another job working at a cafeteria hospital before attending free classes at a local community […]
In April 2010, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) La’Shanda Holmes became the first African-American female helicopter pilot in the U.S. Coast Guard. Holmes is a pilot of the MH-65 Dolphins. She joins the 85 female pilots of the 1,200 currently serving in the U.S. Coast Guard. A North Carolina native, Holmes and her brother were raised […]
U.S. Air Force Captain Christina “Thumper” Hopper is the first and only black female F-16 Fighting Falcon instructor pilot at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. She’s also the first black female F-16 pilot to fight in a major war. Hopper is an Air Force legacy, born to Susan and Melvin Allick, both former […]
Carolyn Rodgers was a poet, essayist, playwright and author whose literary works thrived in the black arts movement of the 1960s. A longtime resident of Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, Rodgers’ famous works “Paper Soul,” “Songs of a Black Bird” and “How I got Ovah” made her a voice of black struggle, feminism and equality. Rodgers […]
In 1997, Timothy Pigford, an African-American farmer, joined forces with 400 other black farmers and filed a racial discrimination case against Dan Glickman, then the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, and the USDA. The case surrounded the denial of farm credit and benefits to black farmers between 1981 and 1996. The landmark case of Pigford vs. […]
In 1819, artist Charles Wilson Peale painted one of the earliest known portraits of a black practicing Muslim. Peale was in town to do a painting of President James Monroe. The name of the man in Peale’s portrait was Yarrow Mamout, and he was an elderly freed slave living in Washington’s Georgetown area. Peale was […]
