Charles V. Brantley, who was trained for aerial combat as a Tuskegee Airman, was born Charles Vernon Brantley in St. Louis, Missouri, on June 1, 1920. He was reared in the Ville neighborhood and graduated from racially segregated Charles H. Sumner High School in 1938. In 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt directed the War Department to begin training an all-African American […]

Tuskegee Airman and later College President Roscoe Conkling Brown, Jr., was born March 9, 1922, in Washington, DC to Roscoe Conkling Brown Sr., a dentist, and Vivian Kemp Brown, a teacher. He had an older sister, Portia Brown. Roscoe Brown graduated with honors from racially-segregated Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Washington, DC in 1940. He enrolled in Springfield College […]

Tuskegee Airman Earl Roscoe Lane was born in the rural all-Black town of Red Bird, Oklahoma, on July 22, 1920 to Levi and Christine Lane. In 1930, when he was 10, his family moved to Wickliffe, Ohio. His younger sisters were Barbara Lane Martin and Lizzie Mae Lane Smith. Lane attended Wilberforce University, an HBCU in Wilberforce, Ohio. Afterward, he […]

Tuskegee Airman Edward Creston Gleed, World War II combat fighter pilot, was born on November 5, 1916, in Lawrence, Kansas, to Herbert Joseph Gleed Sr. and Carrie Syphax Joseph Gleed, a professor at Tuskegee Institute (now University). Their other son was Herbert Joseph Gleed, Jr., one year older. Gleed graduated from the University of Kansas on June 9, 1941, with […]

The Charleston Cigar Factory Strike was a labor strike that involved workers at the Charleston Cigar Factory in Charleston, South Carolina, from October 22, 1945, to April 1, 1946. The strike resulted from the company refusing to institute raises and racial discrimination. The modern version of the gospel hymn and civil rights anthem that would become popular in the 1960s, […]

Healthcare management executive, strategic planner, and project manager Malika Evans was born Malika Romona Barker in 1983 and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She received the Thomas J. and Marie W. Burke Scholarship, an annual academic scholarship for African Americans or any student of promise to be able to benefit from a Saint Michael’s College education. Evans graduated from […]

Aoua Kéita was a Malian independence activist, politician, feminist, writer, and midwife. Born on July 12, 1912, in then Bamako, French Sudan to Karamogo Kéita, a member of the colonial hygiene service and Miriam Coulibaly, Aoua was one of the few African girls allowed to enroll in the first girls’ school in Bamako. She graduated from the École des filles […]

Beny Jene Primm, a pioneer in HIV/AIDS research and treatment and an anesthesiologist, was born on May 28, 1928, in Williamson, West Virginia, to a funeral director father, George Oliver Primm, and a mother, Willie Henrietta Martin Primm, who taught school. He had one brother, Gerome Primm, who became a funeral director. In 1940 the family moved to The Bronx, […]

Johnie Driver is one of the few non-violent civil rights activists to emerge in Utah in the 1960s.  Yet, even to this day, very little is known about him beyond the fact that he was President of the Salt Lake Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Color People (NAACP). The only information available on him is from […]

Trainee Black chartered accountants need more mentoring and psychological support. Milan Markovic Every year the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants administers the Assessment of Professional Competence (APC). This board exam is the last hurdle for an aspiring chartered accountant en route to qualifying. The latest results, released in late February, had an overall pass rate of 52%. The pass […]