Contralto, pianist, pedagogist, administrator, and advocate Lulu Vere Childers had a profound impact on African American Spirituals and European classical music.  Childers was the seventh child of 12 born in Dry Ridge, Kentucky, on February 28, 1870, to former enslaved parents, Alex Childres and Eliza Butler Childers originally from New Orleans, Louisiana.  Lulu’s siblings were Agnes A. Childers, Della A. […]

James Robert Ford was a politician, businessman, and the first African American mayor of Tallahassee, Florida. That election also made him the first Black mayor of a US state capital city. Ford was born on December 1, 1925, to unnamed parents in Leon County, Florida. He attended segregated schools and then Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida, where he earned […]