What is the Maafa?
April 19, 2026
[dropcap size=small]O[/dropcap]tis Frank Boykin was an African-American inventor and engineer. Boykin is credited with patenting twenty-eight electronic devices...
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was the best known spokesperson for African-American rights during the first half of...
“I Always Wanted to Be Somebody.” Althea Gibson was the first African American tennis player to win a Grand Slam title (the French Open). In 1957, she also won both Wimbledon...
Joseph Douglass (1871–1935) was a groundbreaking African-American concert violinist. He was the grandson of abolitionist Frederick Douglas; and...
[dropcap size=small]A[/dropcap]rthur Bertram Cuthbert Walker, Jr. was an African American physicist and educator who helped develop solar telescopes...
Charles Ball was an enslaved African-American from Maryland, best known for his account as a fugitive, The Life and Adventures of Charles Ball (1837). Ball also served the United States in...
“To know Dr. Hilliard was in some respects to know Africa.” Asa Hilliard, III was a world renowned...
On August 21, 1860, enslaved African American Eliza Winston was freed from her Mississippi enslaver in a Minneapolis...
George Bonga was a fur trader of African-American and Native American heritage, and one of the first African Americans born in what is now Minnesota. Bonga lived along the shores of...
[dropcap size=small]M[/dropcap]ary Ellen Pleasant was a 19th-century African American entrepreneur who used her fortune to further the abolitionist...
“My idea, my belief, my intention is for the United States of America to be known as a...
Archibald Henry Grimké was a leading African-American intellectual, activist, and author on racial equality in early 20th Century America. Grimké was born into the Maafa (slavery) near Charleston, South Carolina on...
Meserette Kentake, founder of Kentake Page, was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, and is of Yoruba descent (mtDNA). Now based in London, she holds a BSc in Counselling Psychology but is most passionate about…
