People, Locations, Episodes

Aurtherine Lucy, Alabama Activist, and Educator born

*On this date in 1929, Autherine Lucy was born.  She is a Black activist and educator.   Autherine Juanita Lucy was born in Shiloh, Alabama. Her father, Milton Cornelius Lucy, and mother, Minnie Maud Hosea were a sharecropper; she was the youngest child in a family of five sons and four daughters.  The family-owned and farmed 110 acres, and Lucy’s […]

Dorothy Cotton, Southern Activist born

*Dorothy Cotton was born on this date in 1930. She was a Black activist. She was born Dorothy Foreman in Goldsboro, North Carolina.  Her mother died when she was three years old, leaving her and her three sisters to be raised by their father, Claude Foreman, a tobacco factory worker with only a third-grade education.  […]

Robert Benford Sr., Community Advocate born

*Robert Benford Sr. was born on this date in 1930.  He was a Black activist and community administrator.  From Kansas City, MO., Robert Benford grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood in north Minneapolis. He was one of seven children of parents of African, Native American, and Irish ancestry.  In 1969, he was appointed Minneapolis […]

The Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching is Formed

*On this date in 1930, the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL) was founded.   Activist Jesse Ames founded ASWPL with headquarters in Atlanta.  The organization initially excluded Black women and appealed directly to white southern women to stop the lynching. The ASWPL secured the signatures of 40,000 southern women on its ‘Pledge Against Lynching’ (see below). Despite encountering hostile […]

Katie McWatt, Educator, and Activist born

*Katie McWatt was born on this date in 1931.  She was a Black Community Activist, Educator, and administrator.  From Minneapolis, Minnesota, Kathleen Ann Curry was the daughter of an auto mechanic from a farm near Hastings, Minnesota. As a child, she was the only Black girl at her school and was often subjected to racial slurs.  In […]

Lillie Brown, Activist born

*Lillie Brown was born on this date in 1931. She was an African American civil rights activist.

George Wiley, Chemist born

*George Wiley was born on this date in 1931.  He was a Black chemist and civil rights leader.   George Alvin Wiley was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of a postal clerk and one of six children. Wiley’s family eventually moved to Warwick, Rhode Island.  Wiley earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Rhode Island in 1953. He received a doctorate […]

Hakim Abdullah Jamal, Author born

*Hakim Abdullah Jamal was born on this date in 1931. He was a Black radical and author. He was born Allen Donaldson in Roxbury, Boston. His father was an alcoholic, and his mother abandoned him when he was 6. Donaldson started regularly drinking alcohol when he was ten and became a heroin user at 14. […]

John Africa, MOVE Activist born

*John Africa was born on this date in 1931.  He was a Black radical and activist. Born Vincent Leaphart in the Mantua neighborhood of West Philadelphia. His father, Frederick Leaphart, was a handyman, while his mother, Lennie Mae, was a homemaker. He was one of ten children. Lennie Mae died suddenly in her early 40s, […]

Marion Patrick Jones, Librarian and Novelist born

*Marion Jones was born on this date in 1931. She was a Black Trinidadian librarian and novelist. Marion Patrick Jones was born in Woodbrook, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Her father, Patrick Jones, was of African/Chinese heritage and was a leading Trinidadian trade unionist and socio-political activist at the turn of the 20th century. She […]

William Taylor, Lawyer, and Activist born

*William Taylor was born on this date in 1931. He was a Jewish American attorney, lobbyist and Civil Rights activist who played a major role in drafting civil rights legislation.

Desmond Tutu, Anglican Archbishop born

Desmond Tutu was born on this date in 1931. He is a Black South African priest and activist.

Born in Klerksdorp, Transvaal, Desmond Mpilo Tutu and his family moved to Johannesburg when he was 12 years old. Although he wanted to become a physician, his family could not afford the cost and he followed his father’s footsteps into teaching. In 1951, Tutu studied at the Pretoria Bantu Normal College and went on to teach at Johannesburg Bantu High School, where he remained until 1957.

Stuart M. Hall, Educator, and Theorist born

*Stuart Hall was born on this date in 1932. He was a Black Jamaican-British Marxist sociologist, cultural theorist, and political activist. Stuart McPhail Hall was born in Kingston, Jamaica, into a middle-class Jamaican family of African, British, Portuguese, Jewish, and Indian descent. He attended Jamaica College, receiving an education modeled after the British school system. In […]

Andrew Young, Ambassador, and Activist born

*Andrew Young was born this date in 1932. He is an African American Civil Rights activist, former mayor of Atlanta, Georgia and American ambassador to the United Nations.

Benjamin Karim, Historian, and Activist born

Benjamin Karim was born on this date in 1932. He was an African American Muslim minister, author, orator, and aide to Malcolm X.

He was born Benjamin Goodman, in Suffolk, VA., the son of Wilbur Bryant and Mary Goodman. Young Goodman was a U.S. Air Force veteran of the Korean War. After serving in the military, Goodman worked as a recording engineer with a record company when he first heard Malcolm X speak in 1957, and his experience caused him to convert to the Nation of Islam (NOI), cease many secular activities, change his diet, and become sober.