Ida Wells-Barnett (1862-1911)

1. Ida Wells-Barnett(1862-1911) • “I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap.” Ida Wells-Barnett fought all her life against racial injustice, but she is today honored most for her relentless and literally death-defying campaign against racial lynching. Wells-Barnett was an early predecessor of Rosa Parks in her refusal, in May 1884, to give up a train seat in the white section. Removed by force, she sued and won in the circuit court, but the Tennessee Supreme Court later reversed the decision. The disheartening incident galvanized her desire to fight for racial equality, using the weapon she wielded best - the pen. Wells-Barnett became a full time journalist in 1891, and for many years she defied mob violence and terror to train a relentless and harse light on the national disgrace of lynching, even taking her campaign abroad.

2. Martin R. DelaneyAfrican AmericanCivil Rights Activist • Martin R. Delaney was born 1812. He published his own newspaper, ‘The Mystery’ in 1843. Helped Frederick Douglas publish ‘The North Star’ from 1847 to 1849. Published a book ‘The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered in 1852. Led the first and only exploratory party of American-born Negroes to Africa in 1859. Published a book “The Principles of Ethnology: The Origins of Race and Color” in 1879. Commissioned a Major in the U.S. Colored Troops. Customs inspector and a trial judge in Charleston, South Carolina.

3. Jonathan Jasper WrightAfrican American Jurist • Born in Pensylvania, Jonathan Wright studied law in a private law office and in 1866 became the first Negro to be admitted to the state bar. In 1865 the American Missionary Society sent him to South Carolina to help organize schools for freedmen. From 1866 to 1868 he was employed by the Freedmen's Bureau as a legal advisor. Wright resigned his post with the Bureau to participate in politics and was a member of the constitutional convention of 1868 and later elected state senator from Baufort. From 1870 to 1879 he was Associate Justice of the State Supreme Court of South Carolina. No other Negro rose to such a high judicial post during the entire Reconstruction Era, and few spoke out as eloquently against the institution of slavery.

4. Inman E. PageAfrican American Educator • Inman E. Page was born in 1853 in Warrenton, Ohio. He received his A.B. (1877) and M.A. (1880) from Brown University and an honorary Dr. of Laws degrees from Wilberforce and Howard Universities. In 1877 he began teaching and, from 1880 to 1898, was president of Lincoln University in Missouri. After his next appointment as president of the Colored Agricultural and Normal University (1898-1915) he headed Western Baptist College and Roger Williams University (1916-1921). He served as principal of Douglass High School and supervising principal of the city's Negro elementary schools from 1921 to 1935 - an inspiration to countless young men and women as well as a dynamic leader whose institutions flourished under him.

5. Ms. W. E. MatthewsAfrican American Journalist • This journalist and author was born in Fort Valley, Georgia, in 1861. The cruelty of the times drove her mother to New York where she brought and educated her legally freed family. Mrs. Matthews wrote for periodicals, white and Negro: The New York Times, Herald, Mail, Express, National Leader, Detroit Plaindealer and many Afro-American weeklies. She was a member of the Woman's National Press Association, and her later writings included several textbooks and school literature.

6. Leonard A. GrimesChristian African American • Born in Leesburg, VIrginia, Nov. 9, 1815, Leonard Andrew Grimes grew up hating slavery and its cruelties. Although he was born free and so light he often passed for white, he served a prison term in Richmond for aiding escaping slves. In 1843 the Twelth Street Baptist Church in Boston was formed and Grimes was ordained pastor, a position he held until his death. He also served as president of the American Baptist Missionary Convention and the Colsolidated Baptist Convention. Hundreds of escaping slaves passed through his hands enroute to Canada, and he raised monies to buy the freedom of many who were caught. During the Civil War he aided the enlistment of colored soldiers and was offered the chaplaincy of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment.

7. Madam Elizabeth KeckleyAfrican American Businessperson • Madam Keckley was known as a "White House modiste and author." As a slave, born in 1840, she learned the art of dressmaking so well that she became the modiste to Mrs. Mary Lincoln. An intelligent and creative person, she authored a book published in 1868 titled Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Year in the White House. Her knowledge led, after the war, to her being appointed director of Domestic Art at Wilberforce University in the combined Normal and Industrial Department.

8. Robert Russa MotonAfrican American Businessperson • A native of Amelia County, Virginia, and a graduate of Hampton, Robert Moton succeeded Booker T. Washington as president of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Through Moton's efforts a five million dollar increase in endowment was achieved for Hampton and Tuskegee in 1925. A speaker throughout the South on race relations and White House representative under Wilson, Moton fought white townspeople for control of Veterans Hospital at Tuskegee. As a result, the hospital ws finally staffed completely by Negro doctors, nurses, and workers. The author of an autobiography, Finding a Way Out (1920), and What the Negro Thinks (1920), Moton received many honorary degrees, as well as the Harmon Award (1930) and the Spingarn Medal (1932).

9. John Mitchell, Jr.African American Businessperson • Born July 11, 1863, in Henrice County, John Mitchell attended Richmond Normal High School and received gold medals for map drawing and oratory. In 1883 and 1884 he was the richmond correspondent of the New York Freeman and in December 1884 became editor of the Richmond Planet. His bold and fearless personal investigations and writings on lynchings and murders occurring in the south earned Mitchell the reputation of a daring and vigorous editor. Without fear or seeming concern for his own welfare he south the truth about "Southern justice: and wrote about it in direct and vitriolic language.

10. Isaac MyersAfrican American Businessperson • Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Isaac Myers worked as an apprentice caulker, and learned the trade so well he ws made supervisor in one of the largest shipyards in Baltimore. To counteract a movement to remove blacks from the ship building industry, Myers raised ten thousand dollars and set up a black-owned and controlled shipyard, employing three hundred Negroes. When the National Labor Union attempted to divide the colored vote in the South, Myers called for a national labor convention of all Negro workers and urged the formation of local unions. The black National Labor Union, formed in 1869, failed after three years, but Myers continued to be active in unionism and Republican politics until his death in 1891.

11. Andrew F. BrimmerAfrican American Businessperson • Recipient of the "Government Man of the Year" award (1963), Andrew Brimmer was born the son of a sharecropper in Newwllton, Lousiana, on September 13, 1926. He secured his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Washington, and Ph.D. from Harvard (1967). An economist from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1955-1958), a teacher at Harvard City College of New York, the University of California, and Michigan State University, Brimmer was appointed to the Department of Commerce (1963-1966), and became the first Negro member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (1966). He also helped develop the Anti-Poverty Program, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and still found time to author numerous articles and books.

12. T. Thomas FortuneAfrican American Businessperson • T. Thomas Furtune, born October 6, 1856, in Florida of slave parents, worked in alocal newspaper office, served as special inspector of customs attended Howard University and taught school before he began publication of a newspaper, The New York Globe, in 1882. One week after it folded in 1884 he opened The New York Freeman (later remaned The New York Age), a militant newspaper. Author of three books, Black and White, The Negro in Politics, and Dream of Life, Fortune believed that the racial situation was a cancer upon the body of AMerican society and that a bond of union between whites and blacks of the South was essential.

13. Miss Mary MahoneyAfrican American Businessperson • Although the exact date of birth of Miss Mahoney is unknown, her significant achievement is dated during the Reconstruction Era. During this period when racial bars were at their highest and educational opportunities for Negroes were at their lowest, Miss Mahoney entered the medical school of the New England Hospital for Wonen and Children, and graduated in 1879 to become the first professional colored nurse.

14. Hobart Taylor, Jr.African American Businessperson • Banker and lawyer, Hobart Taylor, Jr. was born in Texarkana, Texas on December 17, 1920, received his A.B. from Prairie View State College (1939), A.M. from Howard University (1941), LL.B. from the University of Michigan (1943). Admitted to the Michigan bar in 1944, he was a research assistant for the Michigan Supreme Court (1944-1945), partner in the firm Bledsoe and Taylor (1945-1948), assistant prosecuting attorney in Wayne County, Michigan (1949-1950), served as special counsel to the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (1961-1962), and executive vice chairman of CEEP from 1962 to 1965. He resigned this position to become director of the Export-Import Bank of Washington, continuing to serve as special consultant to Plans for Progress, an association which he previously directed.

15. Mary E. PleasantAfrican American Businessperson • For a period "Mammy Pleasant" led an eventful life in San Francisco, acting as financial advisor to distinguished white gentlemen, and securing a Negro monopoly on domestic jobs in the state. Reported to have given John Brown thirty thousand dollars to finance the raid on Harpers Ferry, mysterious Mary Ellen Pleasant began life as a slave in Georgia, but in 1849 settled in San Francisco, California. In 1864 she brought suit against a street car company for rude treatment and won a favorable judgement. She aided in the rescue of slaves who were being held illegally and in 1863 won for Negroes the Right of Testimony.

16. John H. JohnsonAfrican American Businessperson • John H. Johnson, born on Jan 19, 1918 in Arkansas City, Arkansas, in 1937 moved to Chicago. He started thr Negro Digest (later called Black World) in 1942 with a $500 loan; published the first issue of Ebony in 1945; published two pocket-sized magazines, Jet and Hue, followed by Tan (later changed to Black Stars), a "true confession" type of magazine; entered the field of hard-covered books in 1963 with volumes by Lerone Bennett and other writers. The Johnson Publishing Company grossed over $23 million in 1972, even before it purchased radion station WGRT in 1973, the first station in Chicago to be owned by blacks.

17. A. Phillip RandolphAfrican American Businessperson • Asa Phillip Randolph was born April 15, 1889 in Cresent City, Florida; wrote for Opportunity magazine and co-edited The Messenger (1917); organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, AFL, in 1925; organized and directed the 1941 March on Washington which led President Roosevelt to start the FEPC; helped mount the pressure which led to desegregation of the Armed Forces in 1946; helped plan the first Freedom Rides in 1946; became the first Negro vice-president of the AFL-CIO in 1957; helped organize and lead the 1963 March on Washington; advocated the $185 billion Freedom Budget in 1966.

18. Malcolm Malik El-ShabazzAfrican American Businessperson • One of the most compelling human rights activists of modern America, Malcolm X was an ideological heir to Marcus Garvey and others who regarded black self-hatred as the most insidious product of racial oppression - and the most fundamental obstable to black self-realization. In the now-classic Autobiography of Malcolm X (with Alex Haley, 1964) he recounted his own journey from troubled you to exponent of black power as an adherent of the Nation of Islam. Born Malcolm Little, he replaced his surname with the designation “X” (for the unknown African tribe of his origin) in the early 1950s and articulated a political vision more concerned with challenging white domination than racial segregation per se, using rhetoric that was distinctly harsher and more separatist thean that of the mainstream civil rights movement. With an ever-searching intellect, Malcolm X also had the courage to revise his ideas as his thought evolved, holding up his transformations as useful examples for others. Though assassinated in 1965, Malcolm X remains a powerful symbol of unbowed black dignity and possibility.

19. Richard Wright(1908-1960) • Born on a Mississippi plantation, Richard Wright was the son of a farmworker, and his early life was marked by poverty, hunder, and racial prejudice, experiences that formed the core of his later work. “Negroes are my people,” he said in acceting the Spingarn Medal in 1941, “ and my writing-which is my life and which carrier my convictions - attempts to mirror their struggles for freedom during these troubled days.” From his forst stories, collected in Uncle Tom’s Children, to the celebrated novel Native Son and the autobiographical Black Boy, Wright created provocative works of lasting influence. He broke ground for other African Amrican writers - Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin among them - and was, in the words of biographer Robert Felgar, “perhaps the very first writer to give the white community explanations and themes that ut through its predjudices and forced it to look at the reality of black life in America.

20. Booker T. Washington(1859-1915) • Born in Franklin County, Virginia, just before the U.S. Civil War of a mulatto mother and a white father, Booker T. Washington grew up and tenaciously pursued an education in the turbulent Reconstruction era. He worked in salt furnaces and coal mines to get the means to travel to the Hampton Institute, where he worked as a janitor for his room and board. Further education and growing experience as a teacher led to his appointment in 1881, as organizer and principal of Tuskegee Institute. Author of a number of books, including the admirable autobiography Up from Slavery, Washington was also one of the most able public speakers of his time. It was a speech he ave in 1895 on the place of the Negro in American life that opened an oftern strident debate among African American leaders on whether slow development through vocational training, as advocated by Washington, was the correct course or whether immediate equality and full citizenship should be demanded.

21. Sojourner Truth(1797-1883) • Sojourner Truth was, and in some ways still seems, ahead of her time - as a feminist in an abolitionist movement in which “slave” typically meant “man” and as an activist for African American rights in a suffregist movement in which “woman” typically meant “white middle-class woman.” If there was ever a person fit to take on the problem of black female invisibility, however, it was the electrifying Truth. Like Harriat tubman, Truth was born into slavery (with the given name Isabella) and had no formal education. She fled the last of a series of masters in 1827, and several years later, in response to what she described as a command from God, became an itinerant preacher and took the name Sojourner Truth. One of her most memorable appearances was at an 1851 women’s rights conference in Akron, Ohio, where she forcefully attacked the the hypocrisies of organized religion, white privilege, and everything in between in her famous “Ain’t I a woman?” speech.

22. Harriet Tubman(1820-1913) • Harriet Tubman was the best-known “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, a network of abolitionists who spirited blacks to freedom. A fugitive slave herself, Tubman made some nineteen return trips to rescue as many as three hundred slaves from bondage. Her courage and shrewdness were widely known and all the more remarkable given the blackouts she suffered throughout her life as a result of being struck on the head with a two-pound weight by an overseer. During the Civil War she served as a nurse, spy, and scout for groups of raiders penetrating Confederate lines. In her later years Tubman worked for black education and social betterment, women sufferage, and other causes.

23. Malcolm Malik El-Shabazza.k.a. Malcolm X(1925-1965) • One of the most compelling human rights activists of modern America, Malcolm X was an ideological heir to Marcus Garvey and others who regarded black self-hatred as the most insidious product of racial oppression - and the most fundamental obstable to black self-realization. In the now-classic Autobiography of Malcolm X (with Alex Haley, 1964) he recounted his own journey from troubled you to exponent of black power as an adherent of the Nation of Islam. Born Malcolm Little, he replaced his surname with the designation “X” (for the unknown African tribe of his origin) in the early 1950s and articulated a political vision more concerned with challenging white domination than racial segregation per se, using rhetoric that was distinctly harsher and more separatist thean that of the mainstream civil rights movement. With an ever-searching intellect, Malcolm X also had the courage to revise his ideas as his thought evolved, holding up his transformations as useful examples for others. Though assassinated in 1965, Malcolm X remains a powerful symbol of unbowed black dignity and possibility.

24. Claude McCay(1889-1948) • One of the most prominent voices of the Harlem Renaissance, poet and novelist Claude McKay wrote of the sweet experience of his early years in Jamaica, of life in Harlem, of his travels in Europe and the Soviet Union. But the core of his work was his rage at the injustice of racial prejudice. The white man is a tiger at my throat/Drinking my blood as my life ebbs away/ And muttering that his terrible striped coat/ Is Freedom’s and portends the Light of Dy (“Tiger”). A gentle man of acute intellect, McKay held many jobs throughout his peripatetic life to support the literary work that was his true vocation. His dedication gained him respect and readers, both white and black. It also brought him honors. In 1912, he became the first black islander to receive the medal of the Jamaican Institute of Arts and Sciences. Sixteen years later, his Home to Harlem became the first novel by a black writer to reach the commercial best-seller lists, It was reprinted five time in two months.

25. Paul Robeson(1898-1976) • In his stormy life, Paul Robeson was many things: star athlete, scholar, singer, and actor; law school graduate, social activist; and author. Valedictorian of his class at Rutgers University as well as an All-American in football (and letterman in three other varsity sports), Roberson was prophesied by his class to become “the leader of the colored race in America.” He did rise to be among the most prominent and respected African American men of the 1930s and 1940s, primarily through his achievements and imposing presence on the stage as an actor and singer. Gradually devoting himself entirely to singing, Roberson became an international star, and his desire to break down barriers of ignorance, he learned to speak more than twenty languages. Always outspoken on racism, Roberson also came to embrace a political worldview increasingly at odds with that of mainstream America, particularly in his support of Soviet Russia, whose egalitarian ideals he admired. Blacklisted and denounced, Roberson and his career declined. Today he is remembered as a figure of prodigious achievement and conviction who fully embodied the complexities of his time.

26. Frederick Douglass(1817-1895) • “For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder….The feeling of the nation must be roused.” Born into slavery, abolitionist, autor, orator, and editor Frederick Douglass dopted his last name from literature (the hero of Scott’s Lady of the Lake) and used the power of words thereafter to prod his country toward racial equality. He spoke eloquently before audiences in America and abroad, edited an antislavery journal from 1847 to 1860, helped organize two regiments of Massachusetts Negroes during the Civil War, saw two of his sons serve in the Union Army during the war, and kept pushing for true civil rights when the war was over. Canny in his judgments, practical in his persistence, Douglass remained an influential and respected spokesman for his cause throughout his life. “Power,” he said, “concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

27. William Edward Burghardt DuBois(1868-1963) • “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others….One feels his twoness - an American, a Negro; two sould, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alsone keeps it from being torn asunder.” W.E.B. Du Bois was an impassioned scholar, an intellectual warrior on behalf of true citizenship for African Americans. Educated at Fisk and Harvard Universities, Du Bois wrote histories, sociological studies, informed sketches of Negro life, and an autobiography. Editor, teacher, and organizer as well s write, Du Bois organized the First International Congress of Colored People and was a founder of the NAACP. He was often at the center of controversy and, toward the end of his life, grew discouraged with his struggles in the United States. In 1961 he moved to Ghana, becoming a citizen there the year of his death.

28. Marcus Garvey(1887-1940) • Marcus Garvey articulated a powerful vision of self-determination for peoples of African descent that, though ahead of its time, has inspired and informed movements for black economic and political power up to the present day. A native of Jamica trained as a printer, Garvey had his first taste of political activism as a union organizer. Travels he made starting in 1910 furthered his interest in black history and black nationalist thought - and in actualizing the ideals they contained. In 1914 Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which at its peak I the mid-1920s had some 8 million followers, making it the largest international movement of African peoples in history. Though his efforts to launch a modern back-to-Africa movement - based on the view that blacks would never truly prosper in societies where they were in a minority - did not ultimately succeed, Garvey’s legacy of black pride and independence was profound and lasting. And the red, black, and green flag of African liberation that he made famous remains a beacon of black power and pan-African unity.

29. Josephine Baker(1906-1975) • From the time she was a little girl, Josephine Baker was drawn to the glamour of the theater. Despite living in the slums of St. Louis and being pulled out of school before she turned ten, she found the courage - and had enough talent - to follow her dreams. Baker danced in vaudeville houses and joined a traveling dance troupe when shw was sixteen. In 1923, she landed a chorus line spot in the Broadway show Shuffle Along. But it was in Paris two years later that she stepped fully into the spotlight, in LaRevue Negre. Baker fell in love with Paris, and the city responded in kind. She was irreverent and exotic, known for her magnetic stage presence, lush body, deep red lipstick, and outrageous promotonal antics, including her famous walk with a leopard down the Champs Elysees. A politically courageous woman, Baker spoke and acted against racism throughout her life and was a member of the French Resistance in World War II, for which she earned both the Medal of the Resistance and later, the Legion of Honor.

30. George Washington Carver(1864-1943) • A world-renowned agricultural chemist whose advice was sought by scientists around the world, George Washington Carver was also, in the words of Nobel laureate ralph Bunch, “the least imposing celebrity the world has ever known.” Born amidst the bloody struggle over slavery in Missouri - and orphaned by it - Carver grew up in various parts of the Midwest, working at odd jobs as he gained a high school and college education. Though gifted in both music and art (one of his paintings was exhitibed at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition), Carver ultimately chose to pursue his lifelong fascination with plants, earning a master’s degree in science at the Iowa State College of Agriculture. Subsequently he was invited by Booker T. Washington to join the faculty of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. There for many years he conducted the research that would make him almost as well known as his friend Luther Burbank - extracting from soil and crops such as the peanut and sweet potato an unprecedented array of dyes, foods, and other useful products.

31. Joseph CinqueAfrican Activist in America • Born in Africa, Prince Joseph Cinque was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Havana, Cuba, in 1839. He and thirty-eight other captives were put aboard the schooner Armistad. Cinque led a revolt of the slaves, killing all but the owners who were directed to steer the ship for Africa. By trickery, the ship landed in New York and all were taken prisoner. The U.S. Justice Department fought the freeing of the slaves, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court level. However, John Quincy Adams defended the Armistad Revolution and the U.S. Supremem court ruled in favor of Cinque and the other Africans, declaring them free to return to Africa.

32. Harriet TubmanAfrican American Activist • Harriet Tubman was born in slavery in Bucktown, Maryland in 1820, escaped from bondage in 1849; spent the years between 1850 and 1857 guiding more than 300 slaves to freedom in the North and in Canada; served the Union Army as a nurse and spy in 1862-1863, led 300 soldiers in a raid up the Combahee River in South Carolina to rescue 800 slaves in June of 1863; established the Harriet Tubman Home at Auburn, New York after the Civil War; received a medal from Queen Victoria.

33. Frances Ellen Watkins HarperAfrican American Activist • Frances Elen Watkins Harper, a writer of verse, was born free in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1825. Her first volume of poetry was published in 1845 and she later wrote the novel "lola Leroy, or the Shadows Uplifted." Later, in Philadelphia, scenes of slaves escaping, being caught and returned to slavery led her into the anto slavery conflict. In 1854 she became an antoslavery lecturer and toured the North and Canada for six years. Miss Watkins married Fenton Harper of Cincinnati and as a teacher, lecturer and writer, became one of the most popular women of her time. She is remembered for the following poems: "Eliza Harris," "The Slave Moter," "Bible," "Defense of Slavery," "The Freedom Bell" and "Bury Me in a Free Land."

34. Anthony BurnsAfrican American Activist • Typical of the 75,000 slaves who sought their freedom in the decade before the Civil War, Anthony Burns bacame one of the most renown when his capture and return to slavery caused the Boston Slave Riot in 1854. As a trusted slave in Virginia, Burns had learned to read and write and his freedom of movement enabled him to escape by boat. On May 24, 1854, he was arrested and held in chains at the Boston courthouse, guarded by a posse of known thugs. When aroused citizens attempted to free him by force, one man was killed before military reinforcements arrived. Ordered to be returned, Burns was escorted to the ship by the police and twenty-two military units, including one cannon.

35. Crispus AttucksAfrican American Activist • Crispus Attucks was born in slavery about 1723, 1750 escaped from bondage; became a seaman and earned his living on the ships and docks around Boston, Massachusetts; he opposed the taxation and oppression of the British; on March 5, 1770 he ws one of the band of colonists in rebellion against the "Redcoats" in the Boston Massacre, and was the first of five men to be shot down by the British soldiers; his name leads the list on the monument erected in Boston Commons commemorating this event; his bravery inspired 5,000 Negroes to fight with the colonists in the American Revolution.

36. Ida B. WellsAfrican American Activist • Miss Wells was born in Holly Springs, Arkansas, in 1869. She taught in the schools of Arkansas and for six years in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1889 she was secretary to the National Afro-American Press Convention. In 1892, her paper, The Memphis Free Speech, exposed people in a lynching and was destroyed. She compiled the first statistical pamphlet on lynching, A Red Record, in 1895. Miss Wells married Ferdinand Barnett, a militant race leader, in Chicago. She became chairman of the ANti-Lynching Bureau of the National Afro-American Council, and a famous speaker at home and abroad on Negro rights.

37. Henry H. GarnetAfrican American Activist • Born in Delaware on December 23, 1815, Henry Highland Garnet attended the African Free School in New York, the New Canaan, Connecticut, school for Negro youth, and Oneida Institute. In 1842 he was licensed as a Presbyterian minister and began work at Troy Liberty Street, Presbyterian Church. He was one of the most influential Negroes of his era until he advocated a slave strike and revolt at the Buffalo Convention of Colored Citizens in 1843. Though his public influence lessened because of his radical views, he remained active in the Underground Railroad. After the Civil War he returned to public life, serving as Recorder of Deeds and in 1881 as Minister to Liberia.

38. Harriet TubmanAfrican American Activist • Harriet Tubman was born in slavery in Bucktown, Maryland in 1820, escaped from bondage in 1849; spent the years between 1850 and 1857 guiding more than 300 slaves to freedom in the North and in Canada; served the Union Army as a nurse and spy in 1862-1863, led 300 soldiers in a raid up the Combahee River in South Carolina to rescue 800 slaves in June of 1863; established the Harriet Tubman Home at Auburn, New York after the Civil War; received a medal from Queen Victoria.

39. Nat TurnerAfrican American Activist • Leader of a major slave revolt, Nat Turner was born a slae in Virginia on October 2, 1800. In May of 1828 Turner interpreted visions he experienced to mean that he was to lead a black army of liberation against slavery. On August 21, 1831, Turner started the revolt with a half-dozen men; the number soon grew to sixty, and the group moved from one house of whites in Southampton County to another, killing everyone in sight. In 48 hours 55 persons were dead. Further efforts met with white posse action and the group fled. All slaves became suspect; hundreds were shot down and seventeen of he captured insurrectionists, including Turner, were hanged on Nov. 11, 1831.

40. Josephine St. Pierre RuffinAfrican American Activist • Mrs. Ruffin was a pioneer organizer of women. Born before the Civil War, in 1843, she made the ost of opportunities which post-war freedom gave. In 1880 she organized one of the first Negro women's clubs, the Women's Era Club, in Boston, and issued the first conference of Negro women to meet in Boston in 1895 for national organization. She was the first Negro delegate from the (white) Massachusetts Federation of Women's Clubs, and pioneered in the organization of the National Association of Colored Women.

41. Mary E. PleasantAfrican American Activist • Reported to have given John Brown thirty thousand dollars to finance the raid on Harpers Ferry, mysterious Mary Ellen Pleasant began life as a slave in Georgia, but in 1849 settled in San Francisco, California. In 1864 she brought suit against a street car company for rude treatment and won a favorable judgement. She aided in the rescue of slaves who were being held illegally and in 1863 won for Negroes the Right of Testimony. For a period "Mammy Pleasant" led an eventful life in San Francisco, acting as financial advisor to distinguished white gentlemen, and securing a Negro monopoly on domestic jobs in the state.

42. Martin Luther King, Jr.African American Activist • Born in Atlanta on Jan. 18, 1929, Martin Luther King earned degrees from Morehouse College, Cozier Theological Seminary in Chester, Pa. and Boston University. At 26 he became the leader of the revolution against social injustice with the successful boycott against Montgomery's segregated buses. In spite of being arrested 14 times, stabbed, stoned and having his home bombed three times he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for consistently asserting the principle of nonviolence. In the cities of the North and South he preached and marched for open housinh and jobs for the poor. He words deeply touched America's conscience with his famous "I have a dream" speech delivered during the 1969 March on Washington.

43. Rev. Henry McNealChristian African American • Rev. McNeal was born February 1, 1833. Appointed U.S. chaplain by President Lincoln in 1863; re-commissioned in the regular army and detailed to work in the Freedman's Bureau in 1865; elected member of the Georgia Legislature in 1868; re-elected to Georgia Legislature in 1870, expelled from the Legislature because of color; appointed Postmaster of Macon, Georgia in 1869; Chancellor of Morris Brown University in Atlanta, Georgia; appointed Coast Inspector of customs and U.S. government detective.

44. Father DivineChristian African American • Revered as God by many of his followers, Father Divine emerged from relative obscurity when he established his Peace Mission Movement in Sayville, Long Island in the early 1920s. Records indicate that he was born George Baker about 1874 in Georgia and practiced in the South and in Harlem before his multi-million dollar, biracial cult became famous for its preechments of brotherhood and peace. During the Depression his hundreds of "peace missions" offered meals, lodging and services, including job placement, to the needy at no cost. Although he died virtually penniless, his "kingdom" controlled properties woth $30,000,000 and he was mourned by an estimated twenty million members of missions all over the world.

45. Francis K. Grimke’Christian African American • Born on November 4, 1850, in Charleston, South Carolina, Francis James Grimke' graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1870 and Princeton Theological Seminary in 1878. A student of law, a scholarly minister, and an otspoken defender of the rights of Negroes, Grimke' preached sermons denouncing segregation in CHristian churches. Through pamphlets which he printed and distributed to both white and black clergymen, he urged support of a true Christian ethic. When Hampton and Tuskegee Institute committed themselves exclusively to "special training" for the Negro, Grimke' lessened his support of these institutions.

46. James Augustine HealeyChristian African American • The first Catholic Bishop of African descent in the U.S., James A, Healy was born in Macon, Georgia, but educated at the Franklin Park Quaker School in Burlington, New York, and Holy Cross College, Worchester, Massachusetts. He also studied abroad. For 25 years, Bishop Healy presided over the diocese of Main and New Hampshire. In recognition of his work he was made Assistant to the Papal Throne. He also served as assistant to Bishop Fitzpatrick of Boston and was pastor of St. James Church in Boston. Under Bishop Healy, 68 mission stations, 18 parochial schools and 50 church buildings were erected and Catholics of Massachusetts, Main and New Hampshire came to revere him.

47. Elijah MuhammedAfrican American Clergyman • Leader of the Black Muslims founded in 1930, Elijah Muhammad "prophet and messenger of a black Allah," was born Elijah Poole on Oct. 10, 1897 in Sanderville, Georgia, and began his career as a disciple of an "Arab Savior" named D.W. Fard. His movement, which may number of 100,000 is dedicated to freedom, justice, equality of opportunity, and the establishment of a separate territory to be subsidized by "former slave masters," until blacks can produce and supply their own needs. The Muslims publish a weekly newspaper "Muhammad Speaks", and in 1969 invested $6,000,000 in their own businesses in Chicago, Cleveland, and other cities, while operating 47 schools across the country, including the 37-year old University of Islam in Washington.

48. Charlotte FortenChristian African American • Sensitive member of a distinguished family, Charlotte Forten of Massachusetts enlisted in the anti-slavery fight as a volunteer teacher with the Freedmen's Aid Society. Earlier she served as a correspondent for the National ANti-Slavery Standard and wrote for the Atlantic Monthly. Her witty and penetrating comments were often extracted to appear in other publications. An accomplished poet, she wrote of interracial conflict out of a deepened resentment against the prejudice of the white world. In Washington, D.C., where she settled, Charlotte Forten was a force in supplying high culture, ideals, and intellectual power to the advancement of Negroes and their survival against prejudice.

49. Richard AllenChristian African American • Richard Allen, born February 14, 1760, in Philadelphia, Pa., was a slave during the Revolutionary War who managed to purchase his freedom at the age of 23. On April 12, 1787, he and several other Negroes formed the Free African Society, a group dedicated to the improvement of social and economic conditions of free Negroes. That same year, Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the result of a rebellion against the restriction of segregation in Philadelphia's leading Methodist church. In 1816, Allen was instrumental in organizing into one group sixteen independent Negro Methodist congregations from different states. He was elected first bishop of this new denomination, a church which has endured to this day.

50. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.Christian African American • One of sixteen children, born May 5, 1865, in a one-room log cabin in Virginia, Adam Powell, Sr. built the Abyssinian Baptist Church of New York City to a position of significant power and size. Entering Virginia Union College in 1888, he worked his way through that institution as a janitor and waiter, continuing his studies at Yale University School of Divinity, Powell became pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Curch of New York in 1908, a time when its membership numbered 1600 and the church owed $146,354. In the twenty-nine years of Powell's leadersip the church was moved to a $350,000 structure, acquired assets of $400,000, a membership of 14,000 and served as the seat of power for a U.S. Congressman.