Thomas Bailey Shropshire, a Past Grand Sire Archon of the Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity (The Boulé), was a transformative figure in the brewing industry. He played a critical role in establishing Miller Brewing Company as one of the top brewers in the world. Shropshire was born on October 15, 1925, in Little Rock, Arkansas, to William Shropshire, a railroad worker, […]

Huel Davis Perkins, a distinguished composer, pianist, professor, administrator, and orator, was born on December 27, 1924, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. From 1943 to 1946, Perkins served in the U.S. Navy as a Musician First Class. After being honorably discharged, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Southern University in Baton Rouge in 1947, where he became a member […]

Glenn Dale Cunningham was the first African American mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey. He was born in Jersey City on September 16, 1943, reared in Jersey City, and attended Henry Snyder High School. Years later in 2018 he was inducted into the school’s first group of Hall of Fame honorees. After high school Cunningham joined the Marines, serving during […]

The Honorable George W. Draper, the first African American to serve as Chief Judge on the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, was born on August 5, 1953, in St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated from Morehouse College, completing his bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1977, then received his Juris Doctorate from Howard University, an HBCU, in 1981. Judge Draper built […]

Elbert Frank Cox, who perhaps most famous for exploring and expanding the Boole summation formula based on the work of the Danish mathematician and astronomer Niels Erik, was born in Evansville, Indiana, on December 5, 1895. His father, Johnson D. Cox, was principal and teacher at the segregated Third Avenue School, and his mother was Eugenia Talbot Cox. The Coxs […]

Attorney Charles H. Calloway was born in Bradley County, Tennessee, on June 16, 1878. He graduated from the public school system in Bradley County and earned a Bachelor of Arts from HBCU Fisk University in Nashville in 1903. After graduation, he pursued legal studies at the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis. Dean William S. Patte and William R. […]

Robert Vernon Franklin, Jr. was a retired Lucas County Common Pleas Court judge who presided over trials and hearings in over 25 counties throughout Ohio. He was born on January 6, 1926, in Toledo, Ohio, to Josephine Beard Franklin and Robert V. Franklin, Sr. As the youngest child, he had two sisters, Lucille Franklin Odom and Flora Mae Franklin Mudd, […]

In 1836, 27 years before President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, a group of literate African American men gathered in a brick schoolhouse on South Division Street to establish the Second Baptist Society of Buffalo. This meeting led to the creation of the Michigan Street Baptist Church (MSBC) located at 511 Michigan Avenue in Buffalo, New York. […]

Herbert T. Miller, a distinguished social services and religious leader, organizer, and fundraiser, was born Herbert Tise Miller on July 16, 1900, in Ford, Kentucky. He spent his formative years in Cincinnati, Ohio, alongside his sister, Bertha Miller Anderson. His parents, Cyrus D. Miller and Georgie C. Hampton Miller, instilled in him the value of community service, shaping his future […]

Maria Louise Baldwin, a pioneering educator, made history in 1881 by becoming a teacher at the Louis Agassiz School, an all-white school for the children of Harvard University professors and white citizens of Cambridge, Massachusetts. She supervised 12 white teachers and educated over 500 white students. By 2004, the Cambridge School Committee renamed the Agassiz School, the Maria L. Baldwin […]