Lucy Diggs Slowe was a trailblazer as an academic and athlete. In 1922, she was the first African American woman to serve as permanent Dean of Women and Professor of English at Howard University. Slowe established a separate women’s campus and three new dormitories to address women’s academic, physical, professional, and social development on the Howard campus. In 1917, however, […]

Dorie Ann Ladner was a lifelong Civil Rights Activist, beginning with becoming a Freedom Fighter in her youth. Ladner was born on June 28, 1942, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Her mother, Annie Woullard, was a homemaker, and her father, Eunice Ladner, was a dry cleaner. Ladner’s parents divorced when she was a toddler, and her mother later married a mechanic, William […]

In 2020, Ella Jones became the first Black and first female mayor of Ferguson, Missouri, the St. Louis suburb that became the focal point for national protests following the murder of teenager Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer. After completing high school in 1972, Jones attended St. Louis Community College, Florissant Valley for two years. She then transferred to […]

Kenneth Cooper Alexander became Norfolk, Virginia’s first African American mayor, a historic milestone for the Commonwealth city founded in 1682. Born in Norfolk on October 17, 1966, to David Alexander, a funeral director and business owner, and Ruby Rebecca Cooper, a college graduate, professional clarinetist, and athlete, Kenneth was reared by his grandparents, Ruby Rose Cooper, a church secretary, and […]

World-renowned debate coach, philosopher, minister, and orator Thomas Freeman was born Thomas Franklin Freeman on June 27, 1919, in Richmond, Virginia, to Louis H. Freeman Sr. and Louise E. Willis. Young Thomas preached his first sermon at nine years old. He had seven brothers and three sisters. Freeman graduated from Armstrong High School in 1934 at 15 and received a Bachelor […]

Floyd Adams Jr. made history as the first African American to be elected mayor of Savannah, Georgia’s oldest city. Adams was born on May 11, 1945, to Floyd “Pressboy” Adams, Sr., and Wilhelmina Anderson Adams, founders of The Herald Newspaper and Printing Company, a weekly newspaper covering Savannah’s African American community. The couple had three other children: Jacquelyn, Carl, and […]

In 2021 Ed Gainey was elected the 61st mayor of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the first African American to be mayor of the city. Ed Gainey was born on February 20, 1970 in East Liberty, Pennsylvania to a single, teenage mother, Darlene Gainey-Craig. His mother, extended family, and local community supported young Gainey, encouraging him to do well in school. […]

The first African American mayor of Las Cruces, New Mexico, Albert Morris Johnson was born in Lebanon, Tennessee. His birth, like those of many African Americans in Tennessee at the time, was not officially recorded but he recalled that the year was 1935. He was the son of Allen P. Johnson and Louise Ricks. Johnson attended Pearl High School in […]

Ronald Blackwood was the first African American mayor of Mount Vernon, New York, a suburb of New York City. Blackwood was born on Jan 19, 1926, in St. Andrew Parish, Jamaica. In search of a better life, he immigrated to the United States at the age of 28 and settled in Mount Vernon, New York to attend nearby Iona College […]

Born September 25, 1946, in Temple, Texas, Charles Edward Greene would be known to posterity by another name, “Mean Joe” Greene, and as one of the most dominant football players of his era at the professional level. With limited collegiate football options after playing on a mediocre high school football team and graduating from Temple Dunbar High School, Greene attended […]