Carroll Napier Langston (1881-1972), lawyer, banker, and businessman, was one of the principal founders of the One-Cent Savings Bank in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1904, it was the first Black institution of its kind and remains operational today as Citizens Savings Bank and Trust Company, the oldest continuously owned Black financial institution in the country. Langston was born in St. […]

Lucy Breckenridge, best known for her diary covering early Washington State History, was born March 18, 1857, in Staunton, Virginia. In 1870, when Lucy was 13 years old, she did domestic work at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, Virginia. Henry Breckenridge, born October 31, 1848, was a laborer at the asylum. Lucy and Henry married on December 21, 1871, […]

Mary Elliott Hill, a pioneer, educator and inventor, is known as one of the earliest African American women in the field of chemistry and is responsible (with her husband, Carl McClellan Hill) for the development of ketene synthesis. Hill’s research on ketene synthesis is described as a building block and significant in the science and medical community. Elliott—born January 5, […]

Charles Henry Carroll was born May 10, 1877, in Tazewell, Virginia, to Charles H. and Bettee Carroll, who was already widowed by 1880. He attended Virginia State College and went on to earn a medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 1906, where he was among the medical school’s first Black graduates.  A pioneering African American […]

Born in Decatur, Alabama, in 1893, James Blaine Cashin was the youngest of Herschel Vivian Cashin and Minnie Virginia Cashin’s seven children. Herschel Cashin, himself a distinguished lawyer and Republican member of the Alabama House of Representatives during Reconstruction, was widely regarded as ‘one of the fathers of the Reconstruction in Alabama.’  James Cashin graduated from Fisk University in 1916 […]

George William Gore, Jr., educator and administrator, was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 11, 1901, to George W. Gore, Sr., and Emma (Hambrick) Gore. By 1910, however, 8-year-old George was living with Edward W. Byrdsong and his adopted daughter, Sarah Jones. Gore’s mother, Emma, had passed away in 1902 before he was barely a year old. His widowed father […]

William C. McCard, lawyer and realtor, was one of a handful of African American lawyers in early twentieth-century Baltimore, Maryland, who leveraged their positions as officers of the Court to defend the rights of those in the Black community. William McCard was born in 1871, the second of four children of James W. McCard and Elizabeth C. (Williams) McCard in Rockford, […]

Dr. William Augustus Bell was a distinguished educator, businessman, academic administrator, and university president. Born on February 16, 1862, in Elbert County, Georgia, he was the son of Luther H.A. Bell, a farmer and real estate developer, and Mary J. Thompson. From an early age, Bell was immersed in a household that valued hard work, faith, and education—principles that would […]

Hargrove Frederick Wooten, a native of Jacksonville, Florida, was born October 9, 1925, to Edward and Rosa Lee (Hargrove) Wooten, the fourth of eight siblings. His father, Edward Sr., was a tailor, and his mother, Rosa, worked as a laundress. Both attended college. Hargrove was educated in the public schools of Jacksonville. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in […]

James E. Payne was born on March 3, 1968, in Port Arthur, Texas, to James C. Payne and Jessie R. Payne. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Political Science with honors from the University of Houston in 1989, attending on an academic scholarship. He went on to receive his Juris Doctor from the University of Houston Law Center in […]