In November 2023 Dontae Payne was elected mayor of Olympia, Washington. He is the first African American and openly gay mayor in Olympia’s 164 year history. Payne was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Soon after his birth the family moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania where Payne attended local schools. After graduating from high school Payne enlisted in the United States army. He […]

Olivette Miller, a harpist, vocalist, and actress, was born in New York City on February 2, 1914. Her parents were Flournoy Eakin Miller, an actor and playwright from Columbia, Tennessee, and Bessie Oliver Miller, an early 1900s chorus girl and a respected actress. Olivette, an only child, was reared in the Harlem’s famous Striver’s Row now known as the St. […]

Pamela Goynes-Brown, the first African American major of North Las Vegas, was born in 1962 on a Navajo Indian Reservation in Utah. Her parents were Theron and Naomi Goynes. In 1964 the family moved to North Las Vegas so they could pursue careers in education. Pamela Goynes attended local schools in North Las Vegas but after high school graduation she […]

The Freedom House Ambulance Service was an emergency medical service (EMS) founded in 1967 to provide medical services to the predominantly African American Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The service was staffed entirely by African Americans. The Freedom House Ambulance Service was also the first EMS in the United States to be staffed by paramedics with medical training beyond first […]

The Wiley debate team’s history goes back to 1924 when Melvin Beaunorus Tolson took a job teaching English and speech at Wiley College (now Wiley University). Tolson also served as the football coach and speech and debate coach. On October 28, 1924, he founded the Forensic Society of Wiley College debate team. In early 1930, the Wiley Debate Team debated […]

Coleridge Bernard “C.J.” Stroud IV is a American football quarterback for the Houston Texans in the National Football League (NFL). Stroud was born on October 03, 2001 to Kimberley Stroud and Coleridge Bernard Stroud III in Rancho Cucamonga, California. Growing up, his father pleaded guilty to kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery and received a 38-years-to-life sentence under the California three strikes […]

The 1956 Sugar Bowl Football Game Controversy stemmed from a college bowl game played between the Georgia Tech University Yellow Jackets and the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) Panthers on January 2, 1956, in New Orleans, Louisiana. The controversy stemmed from the decision by Georgia governor Marvin Griffin, a white segregationist, to ban any Georgia team from playing the Pitt Panthers […]

Stephen K. Benjamin, the first African American mayor of Columbia, South Carolina, was born Stephen Keith Benjamin on December 1, 1969, in Queens, New York. Both parents were from Orangeburg, South Carolina. Benjamin grew up in New York City. He received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of South Carolina in 1991, where he was elected […]

In 1956, running back Abner Haynes and his teammate Leon King became the first Black student-athletes to play for a predominantly white four-year Texas university at North Texas State College (NTSC), today known as the University of North Texas, in Denton. Haynes sparked the freshman team to an undefeated 5-0 season. The next three seasons, he led the team in […]

Leon King in 1956, along with teammate Abner Haynes, became the first Black student-athletes to attend a previously-segregated four-year Texas university when they enrolled at North Texas State College (NTSC) in Denton. King, a talented receiver and punter for Dallas’s Lincoln High School, met teammate Abner Haynes there. As Lincoln High seniors in 1955, King and Haynes played Port Arthur […]