Phyllis Wheatley

Born: 1753
Birthplace: Africa
Died: 5 December 1784
Best Known As: First published black woman in
America

Phillis Wheatley was an African slave in Boston, Massachusetts

when she became the first published black poet in America in 1767.
Wheatley came to the Boston slave market in 1761 (some have
guessed from Senegal) and was purchased by John Wheatley for his
wife, Susannah. Named Phillis and given her master's surname, it was estimated she was between 7 and 8
years old. She quickly mastered English and the Wheatleys saw to it that she learned literature, mythology,
Latin and Greek. By the time she was 13 she was writing her own poems, influenced especially by the
poetry of Alexander Pope and John Milton. She published locally in 1767 and was considered a prodigy
among the Boston literati, thanks to her "lively" personality as well as her sophisticated verse. While on a
visit to England in 1773 she was dubbed "the sable muse," and her first collection, Poems on Various
Subjects, was published. Her mature handling of the neoclassical style, with its Biblical and Homeric
touches, was such that the book came with sworn assurances that this teenage African girl had, in fact,
written the poems. After Susannah Wheatley died Phillis was freed; she married John Peters in 1778 and
spent the rest of her life in poverty and obscurity, dying at the age of 31. Two books of her writings were
published posthumously: The Memoirs and Poems of Phillis Wheatley (1834) and The Letters of Phillis
Wheatley (1864). Although her place as a historical figure is secure, as a poet she engenders scholarly
debate to this day, her heritage and sex complicating the question of her artistic merit.

Bishop Richard Allen

Born: Feb. 14, 1760
Birthplace: Philadelphia, Pa.
Died: died March 26, 1831, Philadelphia
Best Known As: First Bishop of the African Methodist
Episcopal Church

U.S. religious leader. He was born to slave parents, and his family was
sold to a Delaware farmer. A Methodist convert at 17, he was licensed to
preach five years later. By 1786 he had purchased his freedom and settled
in Philadelphia, where he joined St. George's Methodist Episcopal
Church. Racial discrimination prompted him to withdraw in 1787, and he
turned an old blacksmith shop into the first black church in the U.S.
Allen and his followers built the Bethel African Methodist Church, and in 1799 he was ordained as its
minister. In 1816 he organized a conference of black leaders to form the African Methodist Episcopal
Church, of which he was named the first bishop.

Prince Hall

Born: 1735
Died: December 7, 1807
Best Known As: Father of Black Masonry in the United

State

Prince Hall was a tireless abolitionist and a leader of the free black
community in Boston. Hall tried to gain New Englands enslaved and free
blacks a place in some of the most crucial spheres of society, Freemasonry,
education and the military. He is considered the founder of Black
Freemasonry in the United States, known today as Prince Hall
Freemasonry. Hall formed the African Grand Lodge of North America. Prince Hall was
unanimously elected its Grand Master and served until his death in 1807. He also
lobbied tirelessly for education rights for black children and a back-to-Africa movement.
Many historians regard Prince Hall as one of the more prominent African American
leaders throughout the early national-period of the United States.

Denmark Vesey

Born: c. 1767
Birthplace: ?
Died: 2 July 1822 (execution by hanging)
Best Known As: Leader of South Carolina's 1822 slave rebellion plot

Denmark Vesey was executed on 2 July 1822 after being accused of planning a
slave rebellion against slave owners and other whites in Charleston, South
Carolina. Vesey was a well-respected carpenter and minister who in his teens had
been sold into slavery from the West Indies island of St. Thomas. For years he
was the household servant to Captain Joseph Vesey, who settled in Charleston in
1783. Denmark Vesey won $1,500 in a lottery in the year 1800. He used the
money to buy his freedom and set up a carpentry shop, where he prospered.
Educated and financially successful, he also co-founded a separate black
Methodist church in Charleston in 1816 (though it was closed by white authorities four years later). In 1822
he was accused of being the leader of a secret plot to rebel against whites, a plot that supposedly involved
9,000 slaves and more than two years of preparation. The alleged plan was for the slaves to murder as
many whites as they could, then set sail for Africa or Haiti. In the wake of rumors of the plot, Charleston
authorities charged 131 people with conspiracy, convicted 67 and executed at least 35, including Denmark
Vesey. Though the story of Vesey and the rebellion has long been taken for fact, a few historians have
argued that no such rebellion ever was planned, and that Vesey and others were victims of false rumors
that spread among nervous slaveholders.

Martin Delany

Born: 1812
Birthplace: Charles Town, Virginia
Died: 2 July 1855
Best Known As: Leader of South Carolina's 1822 slave rebellion
plot. Delany was called the father of Black Nationalism. Delany coined
the phrase Africa for the Africans
Delany, Martin Robinson, American black leader. The son of free blacks, he
attended a black school in Pittsburgh and studied medicine at Harvard. He
emphasized the practical aspects of black problems. Taking up the cause of
emigration (the return of American blacks to Africa), he was largely
responsible for the first National Emigration Convention in 1854 and
headed an expedition to the Niger valley. In the Civil War he was an army
physician. Later he was in the Freedmen's Bureau, served as a trial judge in
Charleston, S.C., and lost (1874) the election for lieutenant governor of
South Carolina; he was a stern enemy of corruption. His ideas of race appeared in Principles of Ethnology
(1879).

J.E Casle Hayford

Born: 1866
Birthplace: Cape Coast (now Ghana)
Died: 1930
Best Known As: Active pan-African nationalist.

Joseph Ephraim Casely-Hayford or Ekra-Agiman was a Fante journalist,

author, lawyer, educator, and politician who supported pan-African
nationalism. Hayford was also heavily involved in the political movement for
African emancipation. He participated in Booker T. Washington's
International Conference on the Negro in 1912, and his correspondence with
Washington fostered the pan-African movement in both Africa and the
United States

Frederick Douglass
Born: February 1818
Birthplace: Near Easton, Maryland
Died: 20 February 1895 (heart attack)
Best Known As: Former slave turned anti-slavery

leader
Frederick Douglass was a former slave who became one of the great
American anti-slavery leaders of the 1800s. Douglass was born into
slavery in Maryland but in 1838, at age 20, he escaped to freedom in
New York. A few years later he went to work for abolitionist William
Lloyd Garrison, travelling and speaking on behalf of Garrison's paper
The Liberator. Douglass published his memoir Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass, an American Slave in 1845. Eloquent, smart and
determined, Douglass gained fame as a speaker, began his own anti-slavery publications and became a
'conductor' on the Underground Railroad. In later years he became a personal friend of Abraham Lincoln
and helped persuade Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He also was a strong supporter of
women's rights. He is often described as the founder of the American civil rights movement.

Bishop Henry McNeal Turner

Born: 1834
Birthplace: near Abbeville, South Carolina
Died: 1915
Best Known As: bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal

Church
Turner was born "free" in Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina . Instead
of being sold into slavery, his family sent him to live with a Quaker family.
The law at the time of his birth prevented a black child from being taught
to read or write. Assisted by some sympathetic whites and through
observation at a law firm, where he worked as a caretaker, he learned to
read and write. He received his preacher's license from the Methodist Church South in 1853. He traveled
through the south for a few years as an evangelist. In 1856, Turner was married for the first time and
would outlive 3 of his four wives. Turner had 14 children, four of which lived to adulthood. Henry was
inspired by a Methodist revival and swore to become a pastor. In 1858 he transferred his membership to
the African Methodist Church and studied the classics, Hebrew and divinity at Trinity College.[1] In
1880,[1] he became a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

J. Albert Thorne

Born: 1860
Birthplace: Barbados
Best Known As: introduced the Back-to-Africa idea to Jamaica

J. Albert Thorne introduced the Back-to-Africa idea to Jamaica. Thorne was born in Barbados in 1860
where he worked as a schoolteacher. His goal was for Blacks to settle in parts of Africa that were ruled by
Britain because he felt that the British owed them something. To accomplish his goals Thorne started the
African Colonial Enterprise and distributed pamphlets with information about the Back-to-Africa
movement. Thorne was unsuccessful for several reasons, the most influential one being the time-period.

W.E.B DuBois

Born: 23 February 1868

Birthplace: Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Died: 27 August 1963
Best Known As: Author of The Souls of Black Folk

Name at birth: William Edward Burghardt DuBois

Scholar and political activist W.E.B. Du Bois helped found the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). DuBois
attended Harvard University and in 1895 became the first AfricanAmerican to receive a doctorate from the school. He became a
university professor, a prolific writer and a pioneering social scientist on
the topic of black culture. DuBois particularly disagreed with black
leaders such as Booker T. Washington who urged integration into white society; Du Bois championed
global African unity and (especially in later years) separatism. He distilled his views in his famous 1903
book The Souls of Black Folk. In 1909 he was a founding member of the NAACP, an organization
promoting progress and social equality for blacks. Du Bois continued for decades as a strong public voice
on behalf of African-Americans. In the 1950s he clashed with the federal government over his support for
labor, his public appreciations of the Soviet Union, and his demands that nuclear weapons be outlawed. He
emigrated to Ghana in 1961 and became a citizen of that country shortly before his death in 1963. The
Autobiography of W.E.B. DuBois was published posthumously in 1968.

George Padmore

Born: 1902
Birthplace: Trinidad
Died: 1959
Best Known As: Trinidadian leftist political activist and author as
well as a noted pan-Africanist ideologue
Over time, Padmore's ardent belief in communism dissipated and he began to
shift his focus to Africa.
One consequence of Padmore's travel to the Soviet Union was an end of his
time as a resident of the United States. As a non-citizen and a communist,
Padmore was effectively barred from reentry to America once he had
departed.
In 1934 Padmore resigned his positions and moved to London, where he collaborated with C.L.R. James
and other Caribbean and African intellectuals. In response to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia James and
Padmore organised the International African Services Bureau, of which he was chairman and James editor
In his capacity as leader of the IASB Padmore helped organise the 1945 Manchester Conference which was
attended by Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, W. E. B. Du Bois, Jaja Wachuku. This conference helped
set the agenda for decolonisation in the post-war period.
When Ghana became independent in 1957 Padmore moved there and served as an advisor to Nkrumah.

Louis Farrakhan
Louis Farrakhan Muhammad, Sr. (born Louis Eugene Walcott; May 11,
1933) is the leader of the well-known African-American new religious
movement the Nation of Islam (NOI). He served as the minister of major
mosques in Boston and Harlem, and was appointed by the longtime NOI
leader, Elijah Muhammad, before his death in 1975, as the National
Representative of the Nation of Islam. After Warith Deen Muhammad
disbanded the NOI and started the orthodox Islamic group American
Society of Muslims, Farrakhan started rebuilding the NOI. In 1981 he
revived the name Nation of Islam for his organization, previously known as
Final Call, regaining many of the Nation of Islam's National properties
including the NOI National Headquarters Mosque Maryam, reopening over
130 NOI mosques in America and the world.
Farrakhan is a black religious and social leader and a critic of the United
States government on many issues. Farrakhan has been both praised and
widely criticized for his often controversial political views and outspoken
rhetorical style. In October 1995, he organized and led the Million Man
March in Washington, D.C., calling on black men to renew their commitments to their families and
communities. Due to health issues, in 2007, Farrakhan reduced his responsibilities with the NOI.

Kwame Ture (born Stokeley Carmichael)

Kwame Ture was born of working class parents in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad on
November 15, 1941. When he was seven years old, he migrated to New York
City with his parents, and four sisters. Ture was a brilliant student who excelled
at the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, from which he graduated in
1960.
In 1968, he married the great South African singer, Miriam Makeeba.
His work with Nkrumah and Toure led him to found the All-African People's
Revolutionary Party whose chairman he remained until his death. In his
unflagging efforts to forge a diasporal coalition of African peoples who could
stand against imperialism and exploitation, Ture attempted to develop unified
social and economic ideology. His study of the writings of the Marxists and of
the principles of African socialism led him to scientific socialism, which he
advocated for the last thirty years of his life.
Unlike most of the radical activists of the '60's, Kwame Ture never compromised. His was a voice that
would accept nothing less than true empowerment for his people even if that meant the dismantling of the
international order that hoards the world's resources and keeps most of its people down. He was especially
unforgiving of American capitalism, which he saw as the greatest oppressor on Earth.
Even after his body weakened under assault of prostate cancer, his spirit never faltered and his
commitment never flagged. To the end he worked to bring the various elements of the African-American
community into coalition. To the end he answered the telephone, "ready for the revolution."

Kwame Nkrumah
(born September 1909, Nkroful, Gold Coast died April 27, 1972,
Bucharest, Rom.) Nationalist leader and president of Ghana (1960 66).
Nkrumah worked as a teacher before going to the U.S. to study literature
and socialism (1935 45). In 1949 he formed the Convention People's
Party, which advocated nonviolent protests, strikes, and noncooperation
with the British authorities. Elected prime minister of the Gold Coast
(1952 60) and then president of independent Ghana, Nkrumah
advanced a policy of Africanization and built new roads, schools, and
health facilities. After 1960 he devoted much of his time to the PanAfrican movement, at the expense of Ghana's economy. Following an
attempted coup in 1962, he increased authoritarian controls, withdrew
from public life, increased contacts with communist countries, and wrote
works on political philosophy. With the country facing economic ruin, he
was deposed in 1966 while visiting Beijing.

Jomo Kenyatta

Daniel arap Moi.

(born c. 1894, Ichaweri, British East Africa died Aug. 22, 1978,
Mombasa, Kenya) First prime minister (1963 64) and then president
(1964 78) of independent Kenya. Of Kikuyu descent, Kenyatta left the
East African highlands c. 1920 to become a civil servant and political
activist in Nairobi. He opposed a union of the British colonial territories of
Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika. In 1945 he helped organize the sixth PanAfrican Congress, attended by such figures as W.E.B. Du Bois and Kwame
Nkrumah . In 1953 he was sentenced to a seven-year prison term for
directing the Mau Mau rebellion, though he denied the charges. In 1962 he
negotiated the constitutional terms leading to Kenya's independence. As its
leader he headed a strong central government, rejected calls to nationalize
property, and made Kenya one of the most stable and economically
dynamic African states. Critics complained of the dominance of his Kenya
African National Union (KANU) party and the creation of a political and
economic elite. Many of his policies were continued under his successor,

Patrice Lumumba
(born July 2, 1925, Onalua, Belgian Congo died January 1961, Katanga
province, Republic of the Congo) African nationalist leader, first prime
minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (June September
1960). Lumumba worked as a trade-union organizer before founding the
Mouvement National Congolais, Congo's first nationwide political party, in
1958. That same year his militant nationalism at a major Pan-African
conference in Accra, Ghana, brought him to prominence. During
negotiations in Belgium in 1960, he was asked to form the first
independent Congolese government. His rival Moise Tshombe
immediately announced the secession of Katanga province. When Belgian
troops arrived to sustain the secession, Lumumba appealed first to the UN
and then to the Soviet Union. He was dismissed by Pres. Joseph Kasavubu
and, a short time later, assassinated by Tshombe loyalists. His death caused
a scandal throughout Africa, where he was looked on as a leader of PanAfricanism.

Malcom X
Mariamne Samad
Black Panthers - Huey Newton
Martin Luther King