Toussaint Louverture: The Precursor of the First Black Republic
“I am Toussaint Louverture; perhaps my name has made itself known to you. I have undertaken vengeance. I want Liberty and Equality to reign in...
Category : History Makers
Marie Selika Williams: Queen of Staccato
Marie Selika Williams (c. 1849/1850–20 May 1937) was one of the most accomplished and pathbreaking African American classical singers of the nineteenth century. Born Mary...
Lorraine Hansberry: A Radiant Black Radical Imagination
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry lived only 34 years, yet she reshaped American theater, sharpened the intellectual edge of the Civil Rights Movement, and left behind a...
Queen Charlotte Sophia
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was Queen of Great Britain and Ireland from 1761, following her marriage to King George III, until her death in 1818. As...
Queen Charlotte Sophia: Black Queen or Not?
Queen Charlotte’s racial identity remains one of the most intensely debated topics in modern British royal historiography. The controversy raises profound questions about the construction...
Catherine Flon: Seamstress of the Haitian Nation
Catherine Flon holds a revered place in Haitian history as the woman most closely associated with the creation of the first Haitian flag and, by...
John Conyers: The Long Arc of a Civil Rights Legislator
John Conyers Jr. (1929–2019) was the longest-serving African American in congressional history. He was a central architect of Black political power in the late twentieth-...
Anacaona: The Golden Flower of Ayiti
Anacaona (c. 1474–1503) was a distinguished Taíno poet, and composer of sacred areitos, and a leading cacica of Xaragua—the westernmost and most culturally sophisticated of...
Juan Rodríguez: The First Non‑Indigenous New Yorker
Juan Rodríguez (Dutch: Jan Rodrigues; Portuguese: João Rodrigues) holds the distinction of being the first documented non-indigenous person to reside on Manhattan Island. He arrived...
Joe Louis: The Brown Bomber
Joe Louis, the “Brown Bomber,” was one of the most dominant heavyweight champions in boxing history and a national symbol of Black dignity, American patriotism,...