Madam Yoko, born Soma in the Gbo Chiefdom, was the head of the Mende people of Sierra Leone. She ruled the extensive Kpa Mende Confederacy for decades before her death. Also known as Mammy Yoko, she and three brothers were raised by their warrior father in the outlands of the West African country. Madam Yoko’s rise to power is attributed […]

King of Zydeco and Louisiana Blues Clifton Chenier, singer, pianist, harmonicist, lyricist, and composer, was born on June 25, 1925, in Opelousas, St. Landry Parish, Louisiana to Joseph Chenier, an accordionist and sharecropper, and Olivia Kennerson Chenier, who introduced him to the rudiments of playing the instrument at an early age. He had an older brother, Cleveland Joseph Chenier, and […]

Rayne Dakota (Dak) Prescott is a National Football League quarterback currently playing for the Dallas Cowboys. Prescott was born on July 29, 1993, in Sulphur, Louisiana to parents Nathaniel and Peggy Prescott. Prescott attended Haughton High School in Haughton, Louisiana and then accepted a scholarship from Mississippi State University. Prescott was redshirted in 2011 and played as backup to Tyler […]

Victoria Ann Shorey was one of the first African American female whalers in San Francisco, California. Shorey was born on August 1, 1898, in California, one of six children born to William Thomas Shorey, California’s only African American whaling captain, and Julia Ann (Shelton) Shorey, a newspaper correspondent and civil rights activist. Victoria Shorey was just one year old when […]

The article below, written for BlackPast.org by Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., describes the role of gospel music in influencing almost all other African American musical genres and in turn impacting all American music. Professor Gates has published numerous books and produced and hosted an array of documentary films. His latest history series for PBS, GOSPEL, premiered in February […]

Milwaukee, Wisconsin Mayor Cavalier Johnson was born in the city on November 5, 1986, to Denise Hardwick-Townsend. Additional information about his father, who was a Milwaukee Public Schools janitor, was not available during this search. However, Cavalier is the youngest of 10 siblings. He attended six different Milwaukee Public Schools, and when he was 14, he was selected by the […]

Since his first part in a play in Junior High, Brian Stokes Mitchell (originally known as just Brian Mitchell) has been loved by audiences all over the world. He’s left an indelible mark on American theatre and on the lives of many who have participated in it. Brian Stokes Mitchell was born in Seattle on Halloween, 1957, to George and […]

The Alexandria Library sit-in was one of the first acts of civil disobedience of its type in United States history involving racial discrimination and is credited with pioneering the use of nonviolent direct action. The sit-in occurred at the racially segregated Alexandria Public Library in Alexandria, Virginia, on August 21, 1939, and was an early model for sit-ins that would […]

The Read Drug Store Sit-Ins, also known as the Baltimore Sit-Ins, occurred on January 20, 1953, in Baltimore, Maryland. The sit-ins were organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and students from Morgan State College (Now Morgan State University) against the two locations of Read Drug Store, Howard and Lexington, in downtown Baltimore, and the Northwood Shopping Center in […]

In the following article University of Louisville historian John McLeod surveys illustrative episodes in the long history of the Sidis, or African-Indians (Indians of African Ancestry) dating back to the thirteenth century. There have been people of African descent in the Indian subcontinent for centuries. Some scholars believe that the Harappans or Indus people, who in the third millennium BCE […]