Marie Couvent: A Controversial African-American Philanthropist
“Marie Couvent was the first [Black] woman to set the example of an enlightened charity, and that for a long time she was the only...
Category : Biographies
Zelda Wynn Valdes: The Creator of the Playboy Bunny Costume
“I just had a God-given talent for making people beautiful…” Zelda Wynn Valdes was a fashion legend who was the first African-American designer to open...
Nkosi Johnson: The Child AIDS Campaigner
Nkosi Johnson was a South African child activist. Johnson was born with HIV and died at the age of 12 in 2001. At the time...
E.R. Braithwaite: The Guyanese-American author of “To Sir With Love”
E. R. Braithwaite was a Guyanese-American writer, teacher, and diplomat, best known for his semi-autobiographical book To Sir, With Love (1959) which was adapted into a...
Lucille Clifton: The Award-winning Poet
“I write to celebrate life.” “I would like to be seen as a woman whose roots go back to Africa, who tried to honor being...
Olive Morris: The Black-British Activist
Olive Elaine Morris was a Black-British community leader and political activist, who campaigned for racial, gender and social equality, as well as squatters’ rights in the...
Thomas Peters: One of the Black Loyalist Founders of Sierra Leone
In 1999, Thomas Peters, one of the founding fathers of Sierra Leone, was honored by the Sierra Leone government by being included in a movie...
Alfred Fagon: Jamaican-born Black-British Playwright
Alfred Fagon was a Jamaican-born playwright, poet and actor. He was one of the most notable Black British playwrights of the 1970s and 1980s. Fagon...
Wilma Rudolph: The fastest woman in the world in the 1960s
Wilma Glodean Rudolph was an African-American athlete who in 1960 became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field at...
Mathias De Sousa: The first African-American in Maryland
Mathias de Sousa, possibly of African and Portuguese ancestry, is considered the first known Portuguese immigrant on record to have settled in North America. He...