James Cameron: The only known survivor of a lynching
[dropcap size=small]J[/dropcap]ames Cameron survived being lynched from a maple tree in Marion, Indiana, when he was sixteen years old. Cameron, who kept a piece of...
Category : African American
The Last Days of Malcolm X
“I’ve been marked for death within the next five days.” By early 1965 most of Malcolm’s closest friends were afraid for his safety. They believed...
Frederick Douglass: The Greatest African-American Leader of the Abolitionist Movement
Frederick Douglass was born Fredrick Bailey in February 1818 on Holmes Hill farm, near the town of Easton on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The farm was...
Crawford Goldsby: The Outlaw known as Cherokee Bill
Crawford Goldsby was a 19th-century American outlaw, known by the alias Cherokee Bill. Responsible for the murders of seven men (including his brother-in-law), he and...
William Sanders Scarborough: The first African American classical scholar
[dropcap size=small]W[/dropcap]illiam Sanders Scarborough is generally thought to be the first African American classical scholar. Born into slavery, Scarborough became a world-respected scholar of Greek...
Moneta Sleet Jr.: The Pulitzer Prize-winning Photojournalist
Moneta Sleet Jr. was the Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, best remembered for his photograph of Coretta Scott King and her daughter at the funeral of the...
Oliver Wendell Harrington: “America’s Greatest Black Cartoonist”
Oliver Wendell Harrington was a political cartoonist and originator of Dark Laughter and Jive Gray comic strips and has been called the “greatest” African American...
Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler: The first Black woman awarded a medical degree in the United States
“I early conceived a liking for, and sought every opportunity to relieve the suffering of others.” [dropcap size=small]R[/dropcap]ebecca Davis Lee Crumpler, was the first African-American...
John Henry: African American folk hero
“This old hammer killed John Henry But it won’t kill me, it won’t kill me.” John Henry is an African American folk hero of extraordinary...
Lear Green: Escaped to freedom in a small sailor’s chest
Lear Green was an enslaved African American young woman who escaped from Baltimore slaveholder James Noble by hiding in an old wooden sailor’s chest. The...