Bisila Bokoko, the award-winning entrepreneur, philanthropist, women’s advocate, and global leadership speaker, was born Bisila África Bokoko Toichoa in Valencia, Spain, in 1974. Her international roots trace back to her Equatorial Guinean parents, Bwelalele Bokoko, a lawyer, and María Ángeles, a nurse. This diverse background has shaped her global approach to her profession. The family also includes three sons. Bokoko, […]

Christine Mann Darden is an internationally renowned aerospace engineer. In 1967 she became the youngest National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) data analyst and African American female mathematicians, hired by NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. She is the first African American woman at NASA appointed to the highest federal civil service rank of Senior Executive Service. Darden has […]

Inez Beverly Prosser was a teacher, school administrator, psychologist, and the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Psychology in the United States. Her dissertation The Non-Academic Development of Negro Children in Mixed and Segregated Schools would become highly influential as part of the opposition to desegregation in the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling in […]

Entertainment reporter A. J. Calloway was born Albert Johnson Calloway Jr. on August 29, 1974, to Ava Claire Calloway and Albert Johnson Calloway Jr. in Newark, New Jersey. In 1993, he graduated from the prestigious Saint Benedict’s (Catholic) Preparatory School in the Newark, where he was active in producing and marketing activities on campus. Afterward, he enrolled at Howard University […]

Environmental advocate Angelou Ezeilo was born December 11, 1970, in Jersey City, New Jersey to parents Helen and Walter Chiles. As a child, during the summer her family traveled to their second home in upstate New York, which was surrounded by breathtaking nature. Those experiences led her to become involved in enviromental protection. Ezeilo graduated from Mount Saint Mary Academy […]

The first Black mayor of Colorado Springs, Colorado, Blessing Adeyemi (popularly known as Yemi) Mobolade was born in Lagos, Nigeria on February 12, 1979. His father worked for Exxon Mobile and his mother was a secondary school teacher. Both were also Christian ministers. Yemi attended primary and secondary school in Lagos. He was also immersed in the Yoruba culture of […]

The 2nd Cavalry Division was unique the U.S. Army in World II in that it was composed of Black and White troops as early as 1941, at a time when the rest of the Army was racially segregated. The 2nd Cavalry Division was activated in April 1941 at Camp Funston, Kansas. In the early 1940s, the Army wanted to increase […]

Author, playwright, poet, academic, and feminist Ama Ata Aidoo, a towering figure in African Literature, was born Christina Ama Ata Aidoo on March 23, 1942, in Abeadzi Kyiakor, Gold Coast, now Ghana, to Nana Yaw Fama, chief of Abeadzi Kyiakor, and Maame Abasema. She had a twin brother, Kwame Ata. She grew up in the Fanti tribe, and married in […]

Martine Watkins, born in June 1980, became the first biracial mayor of Santa Cruz City, California, in 2020 and served a four-year term. Watkins grew up in Santa Cruz and is the daughter of two educators, Michael Watkins, the former Santa Cruz County Superintendent of Schools and the first African American elected to that position in the State of California, […]

James W. Holley III was the first African American mayor of his hometown, Portsmouth, Virginia. He was born in Portsmouth on November 26, 1926. His parents were Laura and James W. Holley, Jr. James Holley attended local schools in Portsmouth and graduated from I. C. Norcom High School in 1944. After high school he joined the U.S. Army. After completing […]