Louisiana Freedom Summer, also known as CORE’s Louisiana Project, was a Civil Rights campaign in Louisiana during the summer of 1964. It co-occurred simultaneously with the more famous Mississippi Freedom Summer Project. Like its Mississippi counterpart, the Project relied on volunteers from across the United States working in Louisiana Parishes (Counties) on various racial justice efforts. Louisiana Freedom Summer started […]

Ngina Kenyetta is the former First Lady of Kenya, widow of Mzee Jomo Kenyetta (the first president of Kenya), the mother of Uhuru Kenyetta (Kenya’s fourth president), and a recipient of the Macky Sall Prize for Dialogue in Africa (2019). She was born Ngina Muhoho on June 24, 1933, to Chief Muhoho wa Gathecha and Anne Nyokabi Muhoho at Ngenda, […]

Pioneering T.V. Broadcaster Dianne White Clatto, born Dianne Elizabeth Johnson on December 28, 1938, in St. Louis, Missouri, was the only child of Milton Johnson and Nettie Johnson. Growing up in north St. Louis, Dianne a child, studied piano and classical ballet Pointe technique. She completed her education at the historic Charles Sumner High School in 1956, the oldest segregated […]

The Katz Drugstore Protests in Des Moines, Iowa, began on July 7, 1948, when Edna May Griffin, John Bibbs, Leonard Hudson, and Griffin’s one-year-old daughter, Phyllis Griffin, entered the Katz Drug Store to eat at the lunch counter. The group was refused service because they were Black, leading Griffin to launch a protest against Katz’s racial discrimination practice. Her protest […]

Charles Luther Sifford, the first Black player to participate in the PGA Tour and the first named to the World Golf Hall of Fame, was born on June 2, 1922, in Charlotte, North Carolina. His parents were Pasco Sifford from Charlotte and Eliza Sifford Darkins from South Carolina. Charles’ siblings were Eddie, Bessie, Willie, Elizabeth, and Frazier. In 1939, at […]

Civil Rights Advocate, professor, and Pastor William “Bill” Lawson was born William Alexander Lawson on June 28, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, to Walter Lawson and Clarisse Lawson Cade. William, his two brothers, and his sister were all reared in Kansas City, Kansas. In 1946, Lawson graduated from the segregated Summer High School in the city. Afterward, he enrolled in […]

Scholars have been able to assemble only a meager amount of information about Queen Turunku Bakwa of Zazzau, at that time, the largest and most powerful of the Hausa city-states in what is now Northern Nigeria. It could be because she remained in the shadow of her husband, King Nikatau, the 22nd ruler of Zazzau and the son of King […]

The Durham Desegregation Movement was a multi-year civil rights campaign in Durham, North Carolina, between 1960 and 1964. On February 8, 1960, seven days after the Greensboro Sit-Ins occurred, seventeen Black North Carolina College (Now North Carolina Central University) students staged sit-ins at three White-only lunch counters in Durham, including Woolworth, Kress, and Walgreens. Several White Duke University students joined […]

Few scholars have seriously attempted to examine the origin and life of the 10th-century Black Jewish woman from the tribe of Dan, who is popularly known as Judith, Queen of the Falashas. Sometimes called Kaila, her existence remains an enigma, involving numerous research conflicts and contradictions. Here is what we know. Judith was Beta Israel, a Jew of Ethiopian origin. […]

Esperanza Spalding, a composer, librettist, bassist, lyricist, violinist, and vocalist, quickly emerged as one of the most successful jazz artists of the 21st Century.  She was born Esperanza Emily Spalding on October 18, 1984, in Portland, Oregon, to an African American father and a mother of American Indian, Hispanic, and Welsh ancestry. She has an older brother, Hoben Spalding. Spalding, […]