Black History

JOSEPH HAYNE RAINEY (1832-1887) In 1870 Republican Joseph Hayne Rainey became the first African American to be elected to the United States House of Representatives and take his seat.  Others were elected earlier but were not seated.  Rainey was born in Georgetown, South Carolina, on June 21, 1832. His parents had been slaves but his father purchased his family’s freedom and taught him to be a barber. The family moved to Charleston in 1846.  Rainey, however, traveled frequently outside the South and married in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1859. In 1861 Joseph Rainey was drafted to work on a Confederate blockade runner during the Civil War. In 1862 he escaped to Bermuda with his wife and worked there as a barber before returning to South Carolina in 1866. Once back in the state, he joined the executive committee of the newly formed South Carolina Republican party.  In 1868 he was elected a delegate to the state Constitutional Convention. Two years later in 1870 Raine...

PIERRE CALISTE LANDRY (1841-1921) Pierre Caliste Landry, a former slave turned educator and minister, is noted as the first African American to be elected mayor of a town in the Unites States. Landry was born into slavery on April 19, 1841 on a sugar cane plantation in Ascension Parish, Louisiana. He was given the name Caliste at birth by his mother, Marcelite, an enslaved cook on the plantation, and his father, Roseman Landry, a white laborer. Caliste was sent to live with Pierre Bouissiac and his wife Zaides, a family of free African Americans and was educated at a local school for free children. However, despite his owner’s wishes that he be freed, Laundry, at the age of 13 was sold for $1,665 to the Houmas Plantation, whose owner was Marius St. Colombe Bringer. The Bringer Family owned over 35,000 acres of land on various plantations. Landry was allowed to continue his education in the plantation schools and live inside the family mansion. After working various positions, Landry wa...

JONATHAN J. WRIGHT (1840-1885) Jonathan Jasper Wright, the first African American to serve on a state Supreme Court, was born in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania and grew up in nearby Susquehanna County in the northeastern corner of the state.  In 1858, Wright traveled to Ithaca, New York where he enrolled in the Lancasterian Academy, a school where older students helped teach younger ones.  He graduated in 1860 and for the next five years taught school and read law in Pennsylvania. Wright’s first known political activity came in October 1864 when he was a delegate to the National Convention of Colored Men meeting in Syracuse.  The convention, chaired by Frederick Douglass, passed resolutions calling for a nationwide ban on slavery, racial equality under the law and universal suffrage for adult males.  When Wright applied for admission to the Pennsylvania bar, however, he was refused because of his race. In 1865 the American Missionary Association sent Wright to Beaufort...

The contribution Africans may have made to the development of American staple crop development is a contested (and contentious) topic. It has been most thoroughly explored in recent debates over what scholars call the "Black Rice" hypothesis, which maintains that Africans from rice-growing regions of West Africa transferred "an entire cultural system, from production to consumption" to rice-growing areas in South Carolina, along with South America. Types of seed, sowing skills, irrigation technologies, and processing techniques were among the expertise enslaved peoples contributed to wet-land rice farming. Supporters of the Black Rice hypothesis also maintain that Africans "tutored planters in growing the crop." These planters, it is further argued, learned by the early 1700s of the ethnic groups and geographical areas of West Africa that specialized in growing rice on wetlands, and especially about the women who had gendered knowledge of sowing, milling, ...

Sam Cooke Sam Cooke, byname of Samuel Cook, (born January 22, 1931, Clarksdale, Mississippi, U.S.—died December 11, 1964, Los Angeles, California), American singer, songwriter, producer, and entrepreneur who was a major figure in the history of popular music and, along with Ray Charles, one of the most influential Black vocalists of the post-World War II period. If Charles represented raw soul, Cooke symbolized sweet soul. To his many celebrated disciples—Smokey Robinson, James Taylor, and Michael Jackson among them—he was an icon of unrivaled stature. Cooke’s decision to turn his attention to pop music in 1957 had tremendous implications in the Black musical community. There long had been a taboo against such a move, but Cooke broke the mold. He reinvented himself as a romantic crooner in the manner of Nat King Cole. His strength was in his smoothness. He wrote many of his best songs himself, including his first hit, the ethereal “You Send Me,” which shot to number one on all charts i...

Sharon Jones RIP & The Dap Kings, 2015 Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings were an American funk and soul band signed to Daptone Records. They were part of a revival movement of mid-1960s to mid-1970s style funk and soul music. They released their debut album Dap Dippin' in 2002, the first of seven studio albums. Their 2014 album Give the People What They Want was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best R&B Album.[3] Following Sharon Jones' death in 2016, the band released the posthumous album Soul of a Woman in 2017 and a compilation of cover songs in 2020. 1996–2000: The early years with Desco Records In the mid-1990s, artist Phillip Lehman and musician Gabriel Roth (also known as Bosco Mann) founded a band called the Soul Providers, and began recording an album of James Brown-inspired instrumentals and vocal collaborations with deep funk recording artist Lee Fields. After hearing Sharon Jones, a corrections officer turned singer, record backing vocals for a Fields track...

Chief Kedrick Sadler, Oceanside Police Department Congratulations Sir! Longtime Oceanside police officer Kedrick Sadler has been appointed to serve as Oceanside’s next police chief, the city announced Friday. Sadler’s appointment is effective Saturday, when he will take over for retiring chief Fred Armijo. Sadler has spent 22 years as a police officer in Oceanside, where he has served as patrol officer, canine handler, property crimes detective, homicide detective, patrol sergeant, support operations division lieutenant and captain. Oceanside City Manager Jonathan Borrego said in a statement, “Chief Sadler is committed to advancing a department that values professionalism, transparency, community service and innovation.” Borrego said a 10-member community stakeholder committee took part in the interview process for the new chief and “Their feedback and perspective were invaluable to our efforts.”

JOHN MERCER LANGSTON (1829-1897) John Mercer Langston, the youngest of four children, was born a free black in Louisa County, Virginia on December 14, 1829. Langston gained distinction as an abolitionist, politician, and attorney.  Despite the prominence of his slaveowner father, Ralph Quarles, Langston took his surname from his mother, Lucy Langston, an emancipated slave of Indian and black ancestry.  When both parents died of unrelated illnesses in 1834, five-year-old Langston and his older siblings were transported to Missouri where they were taken in by William Gooch, a friend of Ralph Quarles. At fourteen Langston began his studies at the Preparatory Department at Oberlin College. Known for its radicalism and abolitionist politics, Oberlin was the first college in the United States to admit black and white students.  Langston completed his studies in 1849, becoming the fifth African American male to graduate from Oberlin’s Collegiate Department. At fourteen Langston ...

WALTER MOSES BURTON (1829-1913) Walter Moses Burton holds the distinction of being the first black elected sheriff in the United States.  Burton was also a State Senator in Texas. Burton was brought to Fort Bend County, Texas as a slave from North Carolina in 1850 at the age of twenty-one.  While enslaved, he was taught how to read and write by his master, Thomas Burton. After the Civil War his former owner sold Burton several large plots of land for $1,900 making him one of the wealthiest and most influential blacks in Fort Bend County.  In 1869, Walter Burton was elected sheriff and tax collector of Fort Bend County.  Along with these duties, he also served as the president of the Fort Bend County Union League. In 1873 Burton campaigned for and won a seat in the Texas Senate, where he served for seven years, from 1874 to 1875 and from 1876 to 1882.  In the Senate he championed the education of African Americans.  Among the many bills that he helped push t...

ALEXANDER TWILIGHT (1795-1857) Reputed to be the first African American in the United States to graduate from college, Alexander Twilight was born on a farm in Corinth, Vermont to a white or fair-skinned mother, Mary Twilight, and a mixed-race father, Ichabod Twilight, who had served as a private in the American Revolution.  The young Alexander was forced to work as an indentured servant on a farm neighboring his parents’ farm from the ages of eight to 21. Nonetheless, he managed to graduate from Middlebury College in 1823, after which he taught school in Peru, New York, where he studied for the Congregational ministry and, in 1826, married Mercy Ladd Merrill.  Called successively to pastor congregations in Vergennes and Brownington, Vermont, Twilight also became the headmaster of the Orleans County Grammar School.  To meet growing enrollment needs, he designed, raised funds for, and built the first granite public building in Vermont, Athenian Hall, which contained classr...

MATTHIAS DE SOUSA Matthias de Sousa, an indentured servant, was the only black person to serve in the colonial Maryland legislature.  As such he is the first African American to sit in any legislative body in what would become the United States. As one of nine indentured servants working for Father Andrew White, a Catholic priest, de Sousa arrived at St Mary’s City, St Clements Island, Maryland, in 1634 on the ship The Ark along with White and other European settlers. De Sousa was probably of mixed African and European (possibly Portuguese) descent judging by land records that record him being called a ‘Molato’ (Mulatto) by a priest in the colony. For the first few years he lived in Maryland, de Sousa worked for Jesuit priests although the exact details of his activities are not know.  Generally such servants built and maintained churches and houses for the Jesuits. In 1638, having worked for the required four years as an indentured servant, de Sousa became a free man. He earn...

Esther Phillips Phillips was born Esther Mae Jones in Galveston, Texas, U.S. Her parents divorced during her adolescence, and she divided her time between her father, in Houston, and her mother, in the Watts section of Los Angeles. She was brought up singing in church and was reluctant to enter a talent contest at a local blues club, but her sister insisted. A mature singer at the age of 14, she won the amateur talent contest in 1949 at the Barrelhouse Club, owned by Johnny Otis. Otis was so impressed that he recorded her for Modern Records and added her to his traveling revue, the California Rhythm and Blues Caravan, billed as Little Esther. She later took the surname Phillips as her stage name, reportedly inspired by a sign at a gas station. Her first hit record was "Double Crossing Blues", with the Johnny Otis Quintette and the Robins (a vocal group), released in 1950 by Savoy Records, which reached number 1 on the Billboard R&B chart. She made several hit records for ...

Frederick William Green Frederick William Green (March 31, 1911 – March 1, 1987) was an American swing jazz guitarist who played rhythm guitar with the Count Basie Orchestra for almost fifty years. Green was born in Charleston, South Carolina on March 31, 1911. He was exposed to music from an early age, and learned the banjo before picking up the guitar in his early teenage years. A friend of his father by the name of Sam Walker taught a young Freddie to read music, and keenly encouraged him to keep up his guitar playing. Walker gave Freddie what was perhaps his first gig, playing with a local community group of which Walker was an organizer. Another member of the group was William "Cat" Anderson, who went on to become an established trumpeter, working with notable figures such as Duke Ellington. It was around this time that Green's parents died, and he moved to New York City to live with his aunt and continue his education. The move opened up a new musical world to Fredd...

ROBERT C. MAYNARD (1937-1993)   Robert C. Maynard, the first African American editor and owner of a major daily newspaper in the United States, was known as a trailblazing journalist who led efforts to desegregate newsrooms and educate minority students to pursue careers in journalism. Maynard was born in 1937 in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York. He dropped out of high school when he was 16 to work as a freelance writer for newspapers including the black weekly, The New York Age. He landed his first journalism job in 1961, when he joined The York Gazette and Daily in York, Pennsylvania. Five years later, he received a prestigious Nieman fellowship to Harvard University then served as a national correspondent, ombudsman, and editorial writer for The Washington Post. In 1979, Maynard became editor of The Oakland (California) Tribune, which had been called “the second worst newspaper in the United States.” But he quickly turned it around and purchased the paper in ...

ROBERT LOUIS JOHNSON (1946- ) Robert L. Johnson, in full Robert Louis Johnson, (born April 8, 1946, Hickory, Mississippi, U.S.), American businessman, founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET), and the first African American majority owner of a major professional sports team in the United States. Johnson grew up in Freeport, Illinois, the 9th of 10 children. He majored in history at the University of Illinois (B.A., 1968) and, after studying public affairs at Princeton University (M.A., 1972), moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Urban League. He began cultivating valuable political and business connections that later helped him bankroll his vision of creating a Black-owned cable television company. As a lobbyist for the nascent cable industry from 1976 to 1979, he noticed that the large African American TV audience was going unrecognized and untapped. Johnson built BET from a tiny cable outlet, airing only two ho...

Camp Atwater Ballet Group, 1951 Camp Atwater is a cultural, educational, and recreational camp designed for the children of African American professionals.  The camp, founded in 1921 by Dr. William De Berry, was located in North Brookfield, Massachusetts. Initially named St. John’s Camp, in 1926 the name was officially changed to Camp Atwater when Ms. Mary Atwater donated $25,000 with the stipulation that the camp’s name honor her late father, Dr. David Fisher, a well-known and distinguished physician in the town. The camp is the oldest American Camp Association (ACA) accredited African American owned and operated camp in the nation. The primary mission of the 75 acre, 30 building camp situated along Lake Lashway in Brookfield, Massachusetts is to focus on developing the emotional and academic maturity of its members. The camp was initially created to provide recreational opportunities for African American children of families who had moved to Springfield, Massachusetts from the so...

Black Swan Records was the first Black-owned recording company that sold popular music to Black audiences. Black Swan Records specialized in jazz and blues recordings, but it also became the first company to record black classical musicians. During its brief existence from 1921 and 1923, Black Swan Records released over 180 records, a number that far surpassed any subsequent Black-owned record company until the 1950s. Based in Harlem, New York, Black Swan Records was founded in 1921 as the record division of Pace Phonographic Corporation by Harry Pace, a music publisher and Atlanta University graduate. Pace named the division after African American opera singer Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield (1809-1976), known as “The Black Swan.” The label’s mission was to serve Black stockholders, employees, singers and musicians. The Black Swan Board of Directors included Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, Dr. Matthew V. Boutte, Dr. Godfrey Nurse, Dr. W.H. Willis, Truman K. Gibson, Viola Bibb, John P. Quander and John...

Johnny Mathis Johnny Mathis, byname of John Royce Mathis, (born September 30, 1935, Gilmer, Texas, U.S.), American pop singer who achieved wide and enduring popularity as an angelic-voiced crooner of romantic ballads. He was perhaps best known for his affecting rendition of the Erroll Garner composition “Misty” (1959). Mathis grew up in a large working-class family in San Francisco. He developed an appreciation of music from his father, a former vaudeville performer, and, as a child, he sang regularly in church and at school events. From age 13 he also took vocal lessons, which provided him with a classical foundation for his burgeoning talent. Mathis meanwhile excelled at high-school sports and earned an athletic scholarship to San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University). While in college he began singing at local jazz clubs, through which he attracted the attention of a Columbia Records representative. Although his skill at the high jump earned him an invitation ...

Ruthie Foster 👑 Ruthie Cecelia Foster (born February 10, 1964) is an American singer-songwriter of blues and folk music. She mixes a wide palette of American song forms, from gospel and blues to jazz, folk and soul. She has often been compared to Bonnie Raitt and Aretha Franklin. Foster is from Gause, Texas, and comes from a family of gospel singers. At the age of fourteen, Foster was a soloist in her hometown choir, and was certain that her future would revolve around music. After high school, she moved to Waco, Texas, to attend community college, where her studies concentrated in music and audio engineering. She began fronting a blues band, learning how to command a stage in the bars of Texas. Hoping to travel and gain a wider world perspective, Foster joined the Navy, and soon began singing in the naval band Pride, which played pop and funk hits at recruitment drives in the southeastern United States. Following her tour of duty, Foster headed to New York City, where she became a re...

  Debi Thomas Debra “Debi” Thomas was born in 1967 in Poughkeepsie, NY to McKinley and Janice Thomas. Early on, the family moved to San Jose, CA where they were one of few African-American families in their area. She began skating at age five—a significant enterprise for her family, especially after her parents divorced in 1976. Responsibility for driving Debi over 100 miles daily between home, school and the ice rink fell on her mother, which was in addition to the roughly $25,000-a-year in expenses for equipment, costumes, coaching and ice time. There were multiple stretches during which Thomas would put her lessons and skating on hold due to finances. As an African-American in the world of skating, Thomas also encountered discrimination. At one point, her family returned from a competition to find a cross burning on their lawn. Thomas first emerged on the national stage at age 12 making it to the national novice finals and winning the silver medal. As a result, her mother let he...

Eartha Kitt American musician and actress Alternate titles: Eartha Mae Kitt Eartha Kitt, in full Eartha Mae Kitt, (born January 17, 1927, North, South Carolina, U.S.—died December 25, 2008, Weston, Connecticut), American singer and dancer noted for her sultry vocal style and slinky beauty who also achieved success as a dramatic stage and film actress. Kitt was the daughter of a Cherokee and Black mother and an white father she never knew, and from the age of eight she grew up with relatives in an ethnically diverse section of Harlem, New York City. At 16 she joined Katherine Dunham’s dance troupe and toured the United States, Mexico, South America, and Europe. When the Dunham company returned to the United States, the multilingual Kitt stayed in Paris, where she won immediate popularity as a nightclub singer. She made her acting debut as Helen of Troy in Time Runs, an Orson Welles adaptation of Faust, in 1950. With her appearance in the Broadway revue Leonard Sillman’s New Faces of 195...