Category: History

Let it play in the background as you study and immerse yourself in this topic!Award-winning flutist, composer, conductor, and the first woman president of the Association for the Advancement of…

Nathaniel “Nat” Trives, the first African American mayor of Santa Monica, California, was born in 1934 or 1935 in Birmingham, Alabama. Shortly after his birth the family moved to Indiana,…

Dorie Ann Ladner was a lifelong Civil Rights Activist, beginning with becoming a Freedom Fighter in her youth. Ladner was born on June 28, 1942, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Her mother,…

In 2020, Ella Jones became the first Black and first female mayor of Ferguson, Missouri, the St. Louis suburb that became the focal point for national protests following the murder…

Kenneth Cooper Alexander became Norfolk, Virginia’s first African American mayor, a historic milestone for the Commonwealth city founded in 1682. Born in Norfolk on October 17, 1966, to David Alexander,…

Lucy Diggs Slowe was a trailblazer as an academic and athlete. In 1922, she was the first African American woman to serve as permanent Dean of Women and Professor of…

In 2021 Ed Gainey was elected the 61st mayor of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the first African American to be mayor of the city.Ed Gainey was born on February 20,…

The first African American mayor of Las Cruces, New Mexico, Albert Morris Johnson was born in Lebanon, Tennessee. His birth, like those of many African Americans in Tennessee at the…

World-renowned debate coach, philosopher, minister, and orator Thomas Freeman was born Thomas Franklin Freeman on June 27, 1919, in Richmond, Virginia, to Louis H. Freeman Sr. and Louise E. Willis.…

Ronald Blackwood was the first African American mayor of Mount Vernon, New York, a suburb of New York City. Blackwood was born on Jan 19, 1926, in St. Andrew Parish,…