People, Locations, Episodes

Henry A. Tandy, Building Contractor, born

*The birth of Henry A. Tandy is celebrated on this date in c. 1853. He was a Black building contractor and entrepreneur specializing in decorative stone masonry and brickwork. Born enslaved in Estill County, KY, Tandy moved to Lexington, KY, after the American Civil War. In Lexington, 1867, he first worked for local photographer John […]

William C. Chase, News Publisher born

*William Chase was born on this date in 1854.  He was a Black lawyer and newspaper editor.   William Calvin Chase was born to free Black parents in Washington, D.C.  He had five siblings. His Maryland-born father, William H. Chase, an expert blacksmith, was shot and killed in his shop in 1863. Before his father’s […]

Phillip ‘Daddy’ Reid, Businessman born

*Phillip ‘Daddy’ Reid was born on this date in 1854.  He was a Black businessman, baseball administrator, and manager. Phillip Edward Reid was from Frankfort, Kentucky. Not much is known about his childhood other than he grew up in a slave-holding state and would have been very young at the end of the American Civil […]

James C. Farley, Photographer born.

*James C. Farley was born on this date in 1854. He was a Black photographer and proprietor. James Conway Farley was born into slavery in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Both of his parents were also slaves. In 1861, he moved with his mother to Richmond, Virginia in 1861, where she worked as a store-room keeper […]

Christopher Perry, Journalist born

*Christopher Perry was born on this date in 1854.  He was a Black journalist.  Christopher James Perry was born to free people of color from Baltimore, Maryland. Perry attended school in Baltimore, gaining a positive reputation in his local community through his public speeches.  After he graduated from high school in 1873, the ambitious Perry […]

Hazel Augustus, Architect born

*Hazel Augustus was born on this date in 1854.  He was a Black Architect.  Little is known about Augustus’ life.  After marriage and starting a family in Orlando, Florida, he moved to Palm Beach County early in the century, according to an account given to The Post by his goddaughter, Hazel Augustus Driskell, in 1990.  […]

Edwin Berry, Businessman born

Edwin C. Berry, a Black businessman, was born on this date in 1854 in Athens, Ohio.

Berry was often called the “Black Horatio Algier” of Athens. He erected a 22-room hotel, Hotel Berry, one of the finest and most elegant hotels in Ohio in Athens. At the time of his retirement in 1921, he had a reputation as the most successful Black small-city hotel operator in the U.S. (1892).

Berry was a member of the National Negro Business League and Trustee of Wilberforce University. Edwin Berry died 1931.

Thomas M. Stewart, Liberian Administrator born

Thomas McCants Stewart was born on this date in 1854. He was a Black attorney, educator, and minister.

He was born in Charleston, SC. After graduating from the University of South Carolina in 1875, he practiced law in Columbia. Stewart then became a professor of mathematics in the State Agricultural College, in Orangeburg.

George William Cook, Educator born

*George William Cook was born on this date in 1855.   He was a Black educator, administrator, and activist.   Born a slave in Winchester, Virginia, he was one of 8 children of Eliza and Peyton Cook. His family moved to Harrisburg, PA, where he worked in the home of Dr. Mooma.  It was there that […]

Fannie Williams, Social Reformer born

*This date marks the birth of Fannie Barrier Williams in 1855. From Brockport, N.Y., she was a Black social reformer, lecturer, clubwoman, and co-founder of the National League of Colored Women.

Williams graduated from the local State Normal School (now the State University of New York College at Brockport) in 1870. Thereafter she taught in freedmen’s schools at various places in the South and in Washington, D.C. She also studied for periods at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and at the School of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C.

James Woodard, Laborer and Landowner born

*The birth of James Woodard is celebrated on this date in 1855. He was a Black laborer, sharecropper, and landowner. James H. Woodard was born into slavery in Godwin (Wilson County), North Carolina.  His mother’s name was Wadie, and he had several brothers and sisters. His father, Amos Woodard, served in the 14th Heavy Artillery (U.S. Colored Troops). […]

Gertrude Mossell, Journalist, and Educator born

Gertrude Mossell was born on this date in 1855. She was a Black feminist journalist and educator.

She was born in Philadelphia, and worked as a teacher for several years before becoming a journalist in the early 1870s. She wrote columns and articles for many black newspapers including the Indianapolis World, the Philadelphia Echo, the Richmond Rankin Institute, Our Women and Children, and Woman’s Era. She also wrote for white newspapers and magazines such as the Ladies Home Journal, The Philadelphia Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Philadelphia Press.

Sarah Bickford, Businesswoman born

Sarah Gammon Bickford was born on Christmas Day, 1855. She was a Black chambermaid who became an administrator and entrepreneur.

She was born a slave on the Blair Plantation near Greensboro, North Carolina. After the Civil War she lived with an aunt in Knoxville, TN, and changed her last name to her aunt’s name, Gammon. In 1870, Knoxville Judge John L. Murphy was appointed to a judicial post in Virginia City, Montana Territory, and Sarah, at the age of 15, was offered a job caring for the Murphy children. The family arrived in Virginia City, Montana in January 1871.

Granville T. Woods, Inventor born

On this date in 1856, Granville T. Woods was born in Columbus, Ohio. He was an African American businessman and inventor.

Woods began work in a machine shop at age ten. Though largely self-taught, he studied electrical and mechanical engineering from 1876 to 1878. After that he worked on a British steamer, then became an engineer on a railroad based in Cincinnati, where he settled around 1880. Woods received his first patent in 1884 for a steam boiler furnace. In 1885 he invented a system called telegraphony, which allowed telegraph lines to carry voice signals.

Timothy Fortune, Journalist, and Activist born

*On this date in 1856, Timothy Fortune was born. He was a Black journalist and civil rights activist.

He was born a slave in Marianna, Florida, to father and mother Emanuel and Sarah. Timothy Thomas Fortune and his family were forced to leave their home because of dissent after emancipation. Moving to Jacksonville, young Fortune became a compositor at a local newspaper. In 1874, he enrolled at Howard University having to drop out for financial reason and get work for a black weekly newspaper. He returned to Florida after getting married and worked for several newspapers in the area.