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...
Tag : Pioneer
The Trees Fall, the Forest Speaks: The Life of Jacques Stephen Alexis
Jacques Stephen Alexis (1922–1961) was a Haitian novelist, neurologist, and Marxist political activist whose life and work came to embody the intertwined struggles for culture,...
Ottobah Cugoano: The Pioneer of the Black Radical Tradition
Ottobah Cugoano was a pioneer of the Black radical tradition, becoming a prominent leader in the British abolitionist movement in 1787 with the publication of...
Paul Belloni Du Chaillu: The “African” Zoologist who became known as the first modern European to confirm the existence of gorillas
“In such a wild country as Africa one does not go far without adventures. The traveler necessarily sees what is strange and wonderful, for every...
William DeHart Hubbard: The first African American to win an Olympic gold medal in an individual event
[dropcap size=small]W[/dropcap]illiam DeHart Hubbard was the first African American in Olympic history to win an individual gold medal, when he won the long (broad) jump...
Jackie Ormes: The first professional African American woman cartoonist
Jackie Ormes (August 1, 1911 – December 26, 1985) was born Zelda Jackson in a small town outside Pittsburgh. She was a self-taught artist who...
Anna Mac Clarke: A Military Pioneer
Anna Mac Clarke was the first African American woman to be a commanding officer of an otherwise all European regiment when the United States military...
Juan Garrido: The first “African American”
Juan Garrido was an African-Spanish conquistador, who is the first documented Black person to arrive in the United States. African by birth, he went to...
Rosa Parks: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement
“My desires were to be free as soon as I learned that there had been slavery of human beings.” [dropcap size=small]R[/dropcap]osa Parks was nationally recognized...
Madam C. J. Walker: Self-Made Millionaire
“I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there, I was...