William Peyton Hubbard, the first notable Black elected official in Toronto, and will be honored this weekend with the unveiling of a park in his name. Hubbard, the son of slaves, came to politics when he was in his fifties. Hubbard was born in 1842 in an area just outside of Toronto known as “The Bush,” […]
Mae Mallory as an activist and freedom fighter who was at the forefront of some of the civil rights movement’s major events. Ms. Mallory was a founder of the Harlem Nine who railed against New York’s segregated school system and was a supporter of Black radical Robert F. Williams. Born June 9, 1927 in […]
The town of Lyles Station, Indiana was one of the early farming settlements for free Blacks in the North, and remains the only such community of its sort today. The community was featured at the recently opened Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Named after Black farmer Joshua Lyles, the town was […]
Comedian and author Dick Gregory has been active since the ’60’s and is showing no signs of slowing down. Gregory turns 84 today and the activist remains fiery and opinionated as ever. Richard Claxton Gregory was born in 1932 in St. Louis. A star track and field athlete, Gregory ran for two years as a […]
On Tuesday, vice-presidential candidates Tim Kaine and Mike Pence squared off in the small Virginia town of Farmville. While the debate between the party rivals was the centerpiece, the town itself was home to an incident some consider to be one of the earliest protests that helped focus the Civil Rights Movement. On April 23, […]
The nation’s first Black-owned television station, WGPR, officially debuted on this day in 1975 in Detroit, Mich.. The station was the brainchild of William V. Banks, a son of a Kentucky sharecropper who also created Detroit’s first Black-owned radio station bearing the same call letters. William Venoid Banks was a Detroit attorney and leader of […]
In times past, African-Americans have pretended to pass as a white person to avoid harassment and discrimination. The reverse has happened many times as well,(think Rachel Dolezal) as in the case of Rev. L.M. Fenwick, who was a white pastor pretending to be Black. The Fenwick case is curious and not rich in detail, although historians […]
Dr. Ossain Sweet made headlines in the summer of 1925 after he successfully defended his home from an angry white mob in Detroit. The physician and ten of his brothers and friends all faced a pair of trials for killing a mob member but were acquitted by an all-white jury. Sweet was born on October […]
