Doctor Caesar: An Early Case of Reparatory Justice
Caesar was an African healer living under forced servitude in early South Carolina whose knowledge of botanical medicine became valuable enough to secure his freedom....
Category : Black Firsts
Joseph Emidy: The Afro‑Portuguese Virtuoso Britain Tried to Forget
Joseph Antonio Emidy (c. 1775–23 April 1835) was an Afro‑Portuguese violinist, composer, and teacher who became one of the most prominent musical figures in early...
Billy Strachan: A World War 2 RAF Hero
Billy Strachan was a World War 2 RAF hero and civil rights pioneer. A campaigner against colonialism, he was a member of the Communist Party...
Mary Annette Anderson: The first African American woman elected to Phi Beta Kappa
“The sunshine of her life she gives, To everything around her, Though brief the season that she lives Nor lost is her endeavor. She is...
Gwendolyn B. Bennett: The Harlem Renaissance Writer and Painter
Gwendolyn B. Bennett was an African-American poet, essayist, short-story writer, and artist. Although she never published her own volume of poetry, she was one of...
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...
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...
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...
The Bronze Woman: The first public statue of a Black woman in England
The Bronze Woman, which was unveiled on October 8, 2008, in the south London town of Stockwell at the Stockwell Memorial Gardens, is a 10-foot...
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...