Damola Adamolekun is a Nigerian-American business executive and restauranteur. He was the first Black CEO of P. F. Chang’s, a major Asian-American fusion restaurant chain. Adamolekun was born in Nigeria to Yoruba parents. His father is a neurologist, and his mother is a pharmacist. He spent his early childhood in Zimbabwe and the Netherlands before moving to Springfield, Illinois, when […]

Named after the famous poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, the Dunbar Apartments, also known as the Paul Laurence Dunbar Garden Apartments and Dunbar Garden Apartments, is a complex of ten separate U-shaped buildings centered around an interior garden courtyard with a total of 511 apartments. The apartment complex is located on West 149th and West 150th Streets between Frederick Douglass Boulevard, […]

Mboka Mwilambwe, born 1970 in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was elected as the first African American mayor of Bloomington, Illinois, in 2021. His father was employed as an official for UNICEF, a specialized United Nations agency focused on improving the lives of children and mothers in developing countries. The youngest of seven children, his family […]

387 U.S. 369 (1967) REITMAN ET AL. v. MULKEY ET AL. No. 483. Supreme Court of United States. Argued March 20-21, 1967. Decided May 29, 1967. CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA. Samuel O. Pruitt, Jr., argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs was William French Smith. Herman F. Selvin and A. L. Wirin argued the […]

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 […]