Leah Penniman is a farmer and food sovereignty activist who cofounded Soul Fire Farm near Grafton, New York, in 2010. Penniman was born in 1980 to Adele Smith, an African American woman and a White father in Central Massachusetts. Penniman’s parents divorced at an early age. At age 16, Penniman began farming, working with The Food Project in Boston, Massachusetts. […]

David Isom, Jr., a 19-year-old African American civil rights activist born in 1939, broke the color line at a segregated pool in the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1958. At the time, African Americans were in Tampa-St. Petersburg area was relegated to swimming in Tampa Bay’s South Mole Beach (now called Demens’ Landing) while whites used the Spa Beach […]

Vince Lamar Carter Jr, a former National Basketball Association (NBA) basketball player and T.V. producer, was born on January 26, 1977, in Daytona Beach, Florida. He is the son of Michelle and Vince Carter Sr, who divorced when he was seven. Carter attended Mainland High School in Daytona Beach, Florida, where he not only excelled in sports but also showed […]

Alonzo Harding Mourning Jr is a former National Basketball Association (NBA) star and, more recently, a cancer survivor. Born on February 8, 1970, in Chesapeake, Virginia, to Alonzo Mourning Sr and Julia Hadnot, Mourning’s talent on the high school basketball team was undeniable. His junior year saw him help lead the team to a state title, and his senior year […]

Edgar Amos Love was an American bishop with the Methodist Episcopal Church and cofounder of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. Love was born on September 10, 1891, to Julies C. Love, a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and Susie Love, a licensed minister and the first woman to graduate from Morgan College (Now Morgan State University). Love attended the Normal […]

Sharon Y. Bowen, the first Black woman to head the New York Stock Exchange, was born on July 23, 1956, in Chesapeake, Virginia, to Leverta Wilson and Allen Dosher Bowen, Sr. She is the youngest of five children. Her father was an electrician at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. Her sister, Sheila Bowen Taylor, was the first Black woman to serve […]

Charles Smith, a visual artist, historian, activist, and minister, was born on November 11, 1940, to Bertha Mary Smith and an unnamed father in New Orleans, Louisiana. His early life was marked by tragedy when his father was killed in what local officials in New Orleans described as a ferry accident, but Smith believed it was a hate crime. This […]

Prince Abdul Rahman Ibrahima Sori was an African prince who was captured in 1788 and sold as an enslaved man in Mississippi. He spent 40 years enslaved on a plantation in the Natchez area before he gained his freedom in 1828. Abdul Rahman was born in 1762 in Timbuktu, a city in the current western African country of Mali. He […]

Jeanne Martin Cissé was a Guinean teacher and nationalist politician. Cissé was born on April 6, 1926 to Darricau Martin Cissé and Damaye Soumah in Kankan, Guinea. She attended the Ecole Normale de Rufisque, a teacher-training institute for women in Dakar, Senegal, where she trained to become a teacher. In 1944, Cissé became one of Guinea’s first female teachers and […]

Louis Allen, an American farmer and logger, was murdered on January 31, 1964, because of his efforts to vote in Amite County, Mississippi. Allen was born on April 25, 1919, to unnamed parents in Amite County, Mississippi. He served in the United States Army during World War II. After the war, Allen returned to Mississippi, where he worked as a […]