*Dena Epstein was born on this date in 1916. She was a white Jewish-American music librarian, author, and musicologist. Dena Julia Polacheck was born in Milwaukee to William Polacheck and Hilda Satt. She studied music at the University of Chicago and library science at the University of Illinois, graduating in 1943. She worked as a […]
learn more*Eric Foner was born on this date in 1943. He is a white Jewish-American historian and author. Foner was born in New York City, New York, the son of Jewish parents, Liza (née Kraitz), a high school art teacher, and historian Jack D. Foner, who was active in the trade union movement and the campaign […]
learn more*Fanny Ellison was born on this date in 1911. She was a Black editor, writer, and literary activist. Born Fannie Mae McConnell in Louisville, Kentucky, she was the daughter of Ulysses McConnell and Willie Mae Brock. Her parents divorced when she was a year old, and her mother took her to Pueblo and Denver, Colorado. […]
learn more*Luís Gama was born on this date in 1830. He was an Afro Brazilian self-taught lawyer, abolitionist, orator, journalist, and writer. He was a black intellectual in 19th-century slave-owning Brazil who spent his life fighting for the abolition of slavery and for the end of the monarchy in Brazil. Luís Gonzaga Pinto da Gama was born in […]
learn more*The Brownies’ Book publication is celebrated on this date in 1919. This was the first magazine published for African American children and youth in the United States. Three people created the magazine. Its editor was W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the founders of the NAACP, and its business manager was Augustus Granville Dill. The magazine’s […]
learn more*Pilar Barrios was born on this date in 1889. He was an Afro-Uruguayan poet. He was born in Rocha Department, Uruguay, with a brother, Ventura, and a sister, Maria, both writers. Barrios was an essential poet of the Black community of Uruguay and one of the founders of the Partido Autóctono Negro. His poetry demonstrated an understanding of […]
learn more*Edward N. Harleston was born on this date in 1869. He was a Black poet and journalist. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Edward Nathaniel Harleston worked as a carpenter machinist and owned a funeral home early in his life. After his first wife, Mattie Gadsen, died in 1895, he moved to Atlantic City and became superintendent of […]
learn more*Theresa Venable was born on this date in 1948. She is a Black educator, historian, and retired librarian. From Knoxville, TN, Theresa Evans Venable earned a B.S. in Elementary Education and an M.S. in Information Sciences from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN. For thirty years, she was an elementary and middle school reading and […]
learn more*Marguerite DeMond was born on this date in 1907. She was a Black archivist and curator. Born in Buxton, Iowa, her father was Abraham Lincoln DeMond, and her mother was Lula Irene Watkins. She lived in Macon, Bibb, Georgia, in 1910 and Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina, in 1920. Marguerite Lula DeMond attended Avery Normal Institute. She also […]
learn more*Michael DeMond Davis was born on this date in 1939. He was a Black journalist and a pioneer in African American journalism, opening the doors for many African American writers. Michael Davis was born in Washington, D.C., the son of John P. Davis and Marguerite DeMond Davis, and grew up in a black middle class […]
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