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short biographies |
Notable Speeches |
short biographies |
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 Haile
Selassie I |
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| Frederick
Douglass |
W.E.B
Dubois |
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| Bob
Marley |
Nelson
Mandela |
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| Martin
Luther King |
Mary
Church Terrell |
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| Sojourner
Truth |
Paul
Bogle |
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| Malcolm
x |
Harriet
Tubman |
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Mary Bethune |
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| Emperor
Haile Selassie
I
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Haile Selassie was born Tafari Makonnen in Ethiopia in 1892. He married Wayzaro Menen in 1911, daughter of Emperor Menelik II. By becoming prince (Ras), Tafari became the focus of the Christian majority's approval over Menelik's grandson, Lij Yasu, because of his progressive nature and the latter's unreliable politics. He was named regent and heir to the throne in 1917, but had to wait until the death of the Empress Zauditu to assume full kingship. During the years of 1917-1928, Tafari traveled to such cities as Rome, Paris, and London to become the first Ethiopian ruler to ever go abroad. In November of 1930, Zaubitu died and Tafari was crowned emperor, the 111th emperor in the succession of King Solomon. Upon this occasion he took the name Haile Selassie, meaning "Might of the Trinity." |
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| Frederick
Douglass
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Frederick Douglass was born in a slave cabin, in February, 1818, near the town of Easton, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Separated from his mother when only a few weeks old he was raised by his grandparents. At about the age of six, his grandmother took him to the plantation of his master and left him there. Not being told by her that she was going to leave him, Douglass never recovered from the betrayal of the abandonment. When he was about eight he was sent to Baltimore to live as a houseboy with Hugh and Sophia Auld, relatives of his master. It was shortly after his arrival that his new mistress taught him the alphabet. When her husband forbade her to continue her instruction, because it was unlawful to teach slaves how to read, Frederick took it upon himself to learn. |  |
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| Bob
MarleyExodus
African Herbsman
Get up Stand up
Rat Race |
In 1944 a fifty year old white quartermaster, Captain Norval Marley, married an eighteen year old black girl called Cedella Booker. They shortly had a son, Robert Nesta Marley, who was born at two-thirty on a Wednesday morning, February 6, 1945 in his grandfather OmeriaÕs house. The capt ain however, seldom saw his son although he provided financial support. In the late fifties, Bob Marley and his mother moved from St. Ann to Trench Town in Kingston. Bob spent most his time with his friend Bunny, and together they went to Joe Higgs' (a famous singer in Kingston) music class. It was there they met Peter McIntosh. In 1962 Marley auditioned for Leslie Kong, who took the young singer into the studio to record his first single "Judge Not". The following year Bob formed the Wailing Wailers together with Peter an Bunny. |
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| Martin
Luther KingI
have a Dream
The
Negro and the Constitution
address
to first Montgomery improvement association
The
Birth of a New Nation |
Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta on Jan. 15, 1929. His father and grandfather were both Baptist preachers and civil rights leaders (his grandfather, the Rev. A.D. Williams, founded Atlanta's NAACP chapter). A motivated student, the young King entered Morehouse College, in Atlanta, at the age of 15. By his senior year, he had decided to enter the ministry, and he went on to spend the next three years at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pa. At Crozer, he studied Mohandas Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent protest, as well as Protestant theology. After receiving his bachelor of divinity, Dr. King earned a PhD in systematic theology from Boston University. While in Boston, he met Coretta Scott, who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. They married in 1953, and had four children. |
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| Sojourner
TruthTitle 1
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Isabella
Baumfree (Sojourner Truth) BIRTHPLACE: Ulster County, New
York. Sojourner Truth was born in 1797 in Ulster County, a
Dutch settlement in upstate New York. Her given name was Isabella
Baumfree. She was one of 13 children born to slave parents. She spoke
only Dutch until she was sold from her family around the age of eleven.
Because of the cruel treatment she suffered at the hands of her new
master she learned to speak English quickly, but would continue to speak
with a Dutch accent for the rest of her life. She was sold several times
and suffered many hardships under slavery, but her mother endowed her
with a deep, unwavering Christian faith that carried her through these
trials for her entire life.
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| Malcolm
XTitle 1
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Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska on May 19, 1925, Malcolm was the son of a Baptist minister, who was an avid supporter of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. While living in Omaha, the family was often harassed — at one point the family's house was set afire. In 1929 the family moved to Lansing, Michigan. While in Michigan, Malcolm's father was killed; his body severed in two by a streetcar and his head smashed. In his autobiography, written with Alex Haley, Malcolm asserted that his father may have been killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan. His mother, stricken by the death of her husband and the demands of providing for the family, was committed to a mental institution. |  |
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| Lewis
FarrakhanTitle 1
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born (May 11)1955 Louis Eugene Wolcott in New York City. He grew up in Boston and became a nightclub singer in his early twenties. He was known as "Calypso Gene" in those days. He joined the Nation of Islam through the encouragement of Malcolm X and changed his name to Louis X. (He later changed his name again to Abdul Haleem Farrakhan.) He rose quickly in the Nation of Islam because of his speaking and singing talents. When the split occurred between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, Farrakhan became increasingly critical of Malcolm X. He later admitted to helping create the atmosphere that led to the assassination of Malcolm X. Farrakhan formed a new Nation of Islam in the 1970s after Muhammad's son, Wallace Muhammad, changed the name and the purpose of the original organization. |  |
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| W.E.B
DuboisTitle 1
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W.E.B. DuBois was born in Massachusetts in 1868. An excellent student, he enrolled on scholarship at Fisk University in Nashville in 1885. He received a B.A. from Fisk in 1888, and then received a B.A. (1890) and an M.A. (1891) from Harvard. He became the first African-American to receive a Ph.D from Harvard in 1895. Taking a teaching position at Atlanta University in 1897, DuBois explored and confronted the South in person and in the studies of he directed of Southern society. Although he stayed in Atlanta until 1910, DuBois and his wife never became comfortable there. The selection here from his greatest work, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), tells of the death of his young son in Atlanta; in that piece, DuBois expresses the rage, sadness, and frustration that he submerged in his less personal writing. DuBois went on to become the leading black intellectual of the twentieth-century United States. In 1905, DuBois founded the Niagara Movement, which became the NAACP, in opposition to the conservative approach to issues concerning African-Americans taken by Booker T. Washington, as well as to the perceived machine-style tactics used by Washington to stifle opposition. |  |
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| Nelson
MandelaTitle 1
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Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in a village near Umtata in the Transkei on the 18 July 1918. His father was the principal councillor to the Acting Paramount Chief of Thembuland. After his father s death, the young Rolihlahla became the Paramount Chief s ward to be groomed to assume high office. However, influenced by the cases that came before the Chief s court, he determined to become a lawyer. Hearing the elders stories of his ancestors valor during the wars of resistance in defence of their fatherland, he dreamed also of making his own contribution to the freedom struggle of his people. After receiving a primary education at a local mission school, Nelson Mandela was sent to Healdtown, a Wesleyan secondary school of some repute where he matriculated. He then enrolled at the University College of Fort Hare for the Bachelor of Arts Degree where he was elected onto the Student's Representative Council. He was suspended from college for joining in a protest boycott. He went to Johannesburg where he completed his BA by correspondence, took articles of clerkship and commenced study for his LLB. He entered politics in earnest while studying in Johannesburg by joining the African National Congress in 1942. |  |
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| Paul
BogleTitle 1
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Paul Bogle, it was believed, was born free about 1822. He was a Baptist deacon in Stony Gut, a few miles north of Morant Bay, and a voter at a time when there were only 104 in St. Thomas. He was a firm political adherent of George William Gordon. He believed in the teachings of the Holy Bible, endorsing the principles of charity and endurance. Though he was generally regarded as a peaceful man who shunned violence, he was a leader and organizer, he spent time in educating and training his followers. Poverty and injustice in the society and lack of public confidence in the central authority urged Paul Bogle to lead a protest march to the Morant Bay Court-house on October 11, 1865. In a violent confrontation with official forces that followed the march, nearly 500 people were killed and a greater number were flogged and punished before order was restored. Paul Bogle who lived in St. Thomas was captured and hanged on October 24, 1865; but his forceful demonstration achieved it’s objectives. It paved the way for the establishment of just practices in the courts and it brought about a change in official attitude which made possible the social and economic betterment of the people. |
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Some of the great women you will find featured in the National Women's History Project Biography Center are: |
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Alice
Coachman |
Eleanor Roosevelt Harilyn Rousso Lillian Smith Gloria Steinem Harriet Tubman Wilma L. Vaught Rebecca Walker Victoria Woodhull Robin Roberts |
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| Harriet
TubmanTitle 1
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Harriet
Ross was born in Dorchester County, Maryland in 1820. Her parents were
from the Ashanti tribe of West Africa, and they worked as slaves on the
Brodas plantation. In addition to producing lumber, Edward Brodas raised
slaves to rent and sell. Life was difficult on the plantation, and
Harriet was hired out as a laborer by the age of 5. Harriet did not like to work indoors, and she was routinely beaten by her masters. By her early teens, Harriet was no longer allowed to work indoors and was hired out as a field hand. She was a hard worker but considered defiant and rebellious. When she was 15 years old, Harriet tried to help a runaway slave. The overseer hit her in the head with a lead weight, which put Harriet in a coma. It took months for her to recover, and for the rest of her life, Harriet suffered from blackouts. In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. Harriet remained a slave, but she was able to stay in Tubman's cabin at night. Although she was married, Harriet lived in fear of being shipped to the deep South, a virtual death sentence for any slave. In 1849, her fears were realized when the owner of the Brodas plantation died and many of the slaves were scheduled to be sold. After hearing of her fate, Harriet planned to escape that very night. She knew her husband would expose her, so the only person she informed was her sister. Harriet Tubman was not afraid to fight for the rights of African-Americans. Her story is one of dedication and inspiration. During her lifetime Harriet was honored by many people. In 1897, her bravery even inspired Queen Victoria to award her a silver medal. |
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| Mary McLeod Bethune Title 1
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Born near Mayesville, S.C. on July 10, 1875, on a rice and cotton farm, Mary Jane McLeod was the fifteenth of seventeen children, some of whom had been sold into enslavement. In order to do their best by their children, her parents sacrificed so they could buy land to farm. Mary had the same determination. From childhood on, she took advantage of opportunities that were presented to her. Her parents, who had been born into enslavement, wanted their children to have an education. When Mary was about eleven, the Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church opened a school for African-American children. It was about four miles from her home, and the children had to walk back and forth to school, but Mary wanted to go. Her mother commented that some of the children had to be forced to attend, but not Mary, who was well aware of her family's relative poverty. Mary saw education as the key to improving the lives of African-Americans. An incident that occurred when she was quite young may explain this. Mary picked up a book while she was playing with a white child whose parents employed Mary's mother. The white child grabbed the book and told Mary she couldn't have it because African-Americans couldn't read. For Mary, education became the answer to the question, how can African-Americans move up the ladder in American society? |  |
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| Mary
Church TerrellTitle 1
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Mary Eliza Church was born in Memphis, Tennessee on September 23, 1863 to Louisa (Ayres) Church and Robert Church, both former slaves. The Church family, however, soon settled into the black middle-class. Her father, Robert, son of Charles Church, his master, and Emmeline, a housemaid, worked on one of his father's ships as a dishwasher, gaining increasing responsibilities until he was promoted to procurement steward. After the Civil War, Robert opened a prosperous saloon and during the yellow fever epidemic of 1878-79 he, unlike many of Memphis residents, did not abandon his property. Rather, he bought as much land and property as he could and became the first black Memphis millionaire. Louisa Church owned a successful hair salon, the monies from which provided the family with its first home and carriage. When Church Terrell was about three years old her parents divorced. Her mother was granted custody of the two children, Mary and Thomas. Her father continued to see and support his family and ensured that Mary obtained the best education available to a black woman in the nineteenth century. In 1891 Church married Robert Terrell, a young lawyer she had met while working at the Colored High School in Washington, DC. Robert Terrell worked for many years in education and law and became the first black judge for the District of Columbia, a post he held for over twenty years (1902-25), through Republican and Democratic presidents. Terrell and Church had one child, Phillis, named after the eighteenth-century poet Phillis Wheatley. In addition to Phillis, the couple adopted the daughter, Mary, of Church Terrell's brother Thomas. After both Robert Terrell's and Thomas Church's death, Church Terrell also raised her brother's son, Robert. |  |
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