Born Isabella in 1797 in Ulster Country, New York, she ran away from slavery in 1843 and changed her name to Sojourner Truth. At a time when oratory was a fine art, Sojourner Truth, through her strong character and acid intelligence, was among the best and most famous...
Born on April 23, 1856 in Columbus, Ohio, Granville Woods was the individual most responsible for modernizing the railroad. During his lifetime, Granville T. Woods earned over thirty-five patents ranging from a steam boiler furnace in 1884, an incubator in 1900, to...
Carter Godwin Woodson, the father of “Black History,” was born on December 19, 1875 in New Canton, Virginia. Despite the pioneering efforts of many Black writers and scholars, the systematic treatment of Black history was not achieved until 1915 when...
A civil rights leader who urged African Americans to work within the system, Whitney Moore Young, as executive director of the National Urban League from 1961 to 1971, played a leading role in persuading America’s corporate elite to provide better opportunities...
Raised in abolitionist traditions by his minister father, A. Philip Randolph mirroed those beliefs for more than 60 years as a champion of equal rights. He came to national prominence by organizing the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and achieved the first union...
As a diplomat who accomplished the seemingly impossible by negotiating the 1949 armistice between one-year-old Israel and its Arab neighbors, Ralph Bunche demonstrated that there is more than one way to resolve an issue. For that he earned the Nobel Prize for Peace in...
When you turn your lights on, you can thank this man who is responsible for the version of the light bulb we all use today. Thomas Edison developed the concept but this man’s use of carbon filaments in the light bulb made them work. The same process is used today. The...
The Los Angeles Pobladores, or “townspeople,” were a group of 44 settlers and four soldiers from Mexico who established the famed city on this day in 1781 in what is now California. The settlers came from various Spanish castes, with over half of the group being...
If an honest history of the deep South is ever written, Dr. George Washington Carver will stand out as one of the truly great men of his time. Born of slave parents in 1860 in Diamond, Missouri, Dr. Carver almost single-handedly revolutionized southern agriculture....
When Frederick A. Douglass was born in 1817 on a Maryland plantation, his given name was Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. Frederick Douglass constantly fought against his slave condition and was constantly in trouble with the overseer. When he escaped on...
