Black History Month

During her career, Furman designed almost 200 structures, residences, and churches. Although many of her earliest buildings have been demolished, extant structures include the Fair Oak Baptist Church (Richmond), Saint James Baptist Church (Goochland County), Mount Nebo Baptist Church (New Kent County), and two churches in Liberia. Her design of

All the Tuskegee Airmen flew pursuit planes and many of them were already overseas in Italy when Irons and Wilkerson arrived. “They had proven themselves,” Irons said. “The military figured blacks could fly bombers too.” The B-25, the type of bomber to which most blacks were assigned, required a five-man

On May 5, 1905, Robert Sengstacke Abbott founded the Chicago Defender in a small kitchen in his landlord’s apartment, with an initial investment of 25 cents and a press run of 300 copies. The Chicago Defender’s first issues were in the form of four-page, six-column handbills, filled with local news

Fuller was the first black member of the National Assn. of Manufacturers. He was a native of Ouachita Parish, La., who left school after the sixth grade. His mother, who died when he was 17, persuaded him that the best way out of poverty was door-to-door sales. After hitchhiking to

Jet is an American weekly digital magazine focusing on news, culture, and entertainment related to the African-American community. Founded in November 1951 by John H. Johnson of the Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago, Illinois,[3][4] the magazine was billed as “The Weekly Negro News Magazine”. Jet chronicled the civil rights movement

The history of The Savings Bank of the Grand Fountain United Order of True Reformers tells a fascinating story about the struggles and triumphs of Rev. William Washington Browne, a former Georgia slave who founded the first ever Black-owned bank in America. Founded in 1888, the bank opened with deposits

Dr. Dorothy Lavinia Brown spent her childhood in an orphanage and grew up to become the first African American woman surgeon in the South, eventually being made chief of surgery at Nashville’s Riverside Hospital. She was also the first African American woman to be made a fellow of the American

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1933, Easley aspired to become a nurse, then a pharmacist. After getting married and moving to Cleveland in 1954, she wasn’t able to continue her pharmacy studies. But after reading a story about twin-sister “human computers” working at a research lab in Cleveland, she determined

Dr. Charles Richard Drew broke barriers in a racially divided America to become one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. His pioneering research and systematic developments in the use and preservation of blood plasma during World War II not only saved thousands of lives, but innovated the

In 1863 the federal government built Freedman’s Village on the grounds of the Curtis and Lee estates. There were about 50 one-and-a-half-story houses, each of which was divided to accommodate two families. The settlement was home to some notable residents, including Sojourner Truth — who in 1864 worked as a

The Rosewood massacre was a racially motivated massacre of black people and the destruction of a black town that took place during the first week of January 1923 in rural Levy County, Florida, United States. At least six black people were killed, but eyewitness accounts suggested a higher death toll

Seneca Village was a 19th-century settlement of mostly African American landowners in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, within what would become present-day Central Park. The settlement was located near the current Upper West Side neighborhood, approximately bounded by Central Park West and the axes of 82nd Street,

Born to sharecropper parents, Alice Walker grew up to become a highly acclaimed novelist, essayist and poet. She is best known for her 1982 novel The Color Purple, which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and soon was adapted for the big screen by Steven Spielberg. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/alice-walker

Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, has become a leading figure in narrative nonfiction, an interpreter of the human condition, and an impassioned voice for demonstrating how history can help us understand ourselves, our country, and our current era of upheaval. https://www.isabelwilkerson.com/

The Devastation of Black Wall Street In 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District, known as Black Wall Street, was one of the most prosperous African-American communities in the United States. But on May 31 of that year, the Tulsa Tribune reported that a black man, Dick Rowland, attempted to rape a

She’s created a wide verity of children’s and adult books to keep people informed about the black experience both inside and outside of America. as well as both historical and present issues. Bell hooks (born September 25, 1952, Hopkinsville, Kentucky, U.S.—died December 15, 2021, Berea, Kentucky) was an American scholar