Joe Clough was born in Jamaica in 1887 and orphaned at an early age. He became the first Black bus driver of a London motorbus. As a boy, he was employed by a Scottish doctor, Dr R C White, to look after his polo ponies. In 1905 while they were returning from a dance at the governor’s house in Kingston, they had a conversation that was to change Clough’s life. […]
The Taíno were an Arawak people who were the indigenous people of the Caribbean and Florida. At the time of European contact in the late 15th century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic and Haiti), and Puerto Rico. In the Greater Antilles, the northern Lesser Antilles, and the Bahamas, they were known as the Lucayans and spoke the Taíno language, a derivative of the the Arawakan languages. The ancestors of the Taíno entered the Caribbean from South America. At the […]
The name Nubia is derived from that of the Noba people, nomads who settled the area in the 4th century, with the collapse of the kingdom of Meroë. The Noba spoke a Nilo-Saharan language, ancestral to Old Nubian. A man in traditional dress next to a traditional Nubian house, Nubia, southern Egypt, When discussing the civilisations of the Nile Valley, many histories focus almost exclusively on the role of […]
06 October 1917 - Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer rose from humble beginnings in the Mississippi Delta to become one of the most important, passionate, and powerful voices of the civil and voting rights movements and a leader in the efforts for greater economic opportunities for African Americans. Hamer was born on October 6, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi, the 20th and last child of sharecroppers Lou Ella […]
5 October 1995 - Barbara Jordan On October 5, 1995, three months before her death, former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan received the Sylvanus Thayer Award named in honor of Sylvanus Thayer, Class of 1808, who was the thirty-third graduate of the Academy and who nine years later became its fifth superintendent. The award is presented by the Association of Graduates of the United States Military Academy to an outstanding citizen of […]
04 October 2013 - Juanita Jewel Shanks A small but growing number of black women are slowly being recognized for their contributions to the “long” civil rights movement, the nearly century-long struggle by African Americans against all forms of racial discrimination. In the account below University of Texas-El Paso historian Cecilia Gutierrez Venable describes Juanita Jewel Shanks Craft, one of the most important of these activists in 20th Century […]
3 October 1954 - Alfred Charles Sharpton Born in Brooklyn, New York on October 3, 1954, Alfred Charles Sharpton, Jr., is an American Baptist minister and political, social, and human rights advocate. Known as “the Wonder Boy” as a youth, he was licensed and ordained as a Pentecostal minister and toured with the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. In the late 1980’s, Sharpton became a Baptist minister. Often criticized and […]
02 October 1936 J. Gary Cooper, military, government, and business leader, was appointed United States Ambassador to Jamaica by President Bill Clinton in 1994. He was the first African American to occupy the position. Prior to his appointment, he had a distinguished military career. Jerome Gary Cooper was born on October 2, 1936 in Lafayette, Louisiana to a devout Catholic family, but grew up in segregated Mobile, Alabama and attended McGill-Toolen Catholic High School. Based on a recommendation from Archbishop Fulton Sheen of New York, he won an […]
During October the UK Celebrates Black History Month. Although Black History Month has been celebrated every February in the USA since 1970, it was not officially celebrated in the UK until 1987 when it was organised by the activist Akyaaba Addai-Sebo who, at the time was the coordinator for special projects for the Greater London Council. The first Black History Month was celebrated only in London, but in the years […]
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