An African American is a citizen or resident of the United States who has origins in any of the black populations of Africa. African American-related topics include:
Edward Franklin Frazier, was an American sociologist and author, publishing as E. Franklin Frazier. His 1932 Ph.D. dissertation was published as a book titled The Negro Family in the United States (1939); it analyzed the historical forces that influenced the development of the African-American family from the time of slavery to the mid-1930s. The book was awarded the 1940 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for the most significant work in the field of race relations. It was among the first sociological works on Black people researched and written by a black person.
The American Missionary Association (AMA) was a Protestant-based abolitionist group founded on September 3, 1846 in Albany, New York. The main purpose of the organization was abolition of slavery, education of African Americans, promotion of racial equality, and spreading Christian values. Its members and leaders were of both races; The Association was chiefly sponsored by the Congregationalist churches in New England. The main goals were to abolish slavery, provide education to African Americans, and promote racial equality for free Blacks. The AMA played a significant role in several key historical events and movements, including the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement.
Horace Mann Bond was an American historian, college administrator, social science researcher and the father of civil-rights leader Julian Bond. He earned graduate and doctoral degrees from University of Chicago at a time when only a small percentage of any young adults attended any college. He was an influential leader at several historically black colleges and was appointed the first president of Fort Valley State University in Georgia in 1939, where he managed its growth in programs and revenue. In 1945, he became the first African-American president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
Erastus Milo Cravath (1833–1900) was a pastor and American Missionary Association (AMA) official who after the American Civil War, helped found Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and numerous other historically black colleges in Georgia and Tennessee for the education of freedmen. He also served as president of Fisk University for more than 20 years.
Hugh Black was a Scottish-American theologian and author.
Henry Alexander Hunt was an American educator who led efforts to reach blacks in rural areas of Georgia. He was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as the Harmon Prize. In addition, he was recruited in the 1930s by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to join the president's Black Cabinet, an informal group of more than 40 prominent African Americans appointed to positions in the executive agencies.
Henry McNeal Turner was an American minister, politician, and the 12th elected and consecrated bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). After the American Civil War, he worked to establish new A.M.E. congregations among African Americans in Georgia. Born free in South Carolina, Turner had learned to read and write and became a Methodist preacher. He joined the AME Church in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1858, where he became a minister. Founded by free blacks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the early 19th century, the A.M.E. Church was the first independent black denomination in the United States. Later Turner had pastorates in Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, DC.
Grace Towns Hamilton was an American politician who was the first African-American woman elected to the Georgia General Assembly. As executive director of the Atlanta Urban League from 1943 to 1960, Hamilton was involved in issues of housing, health care, schools and voter registration within the black community. She was 1964 co-founder of the bi-racial Partners for Progress to help government and the private sector effect compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1973, Hamilton became a principal architect for the revision of the Atlanta City Charter. She was advisor to the United States Civil Rights Commission from 1985 to 1987.
First Congregational Church is a United Church of Christ church located in downtown Atlanta at the corner of Courtland Street and John Wesley Dobbs Avenue. It is notable for being the favored church of the city's black elite including Alonzo Herndon and Andrew Young, for its famous minister Henry H. Proctor, and for President Taft having visited in 1898.
Dock Jackson Jordan was an American lawyer, author, politician, educator, historian and civil rights activist. On July 14, 1917, a letter that Jordan wrote criticizing President Woodrow Wilson's segregationist policies and condemning the administration for the East St. Louis Riot was published in the Raleigh Independent. The letter was subsequently published in many African-American newspapers and caused North Carolina governor Thomas Bickett to fear increased anger among African-Americans. He asked United States Attorney General Thomas Watt Gregory to investigate Jordan, and proceeded to carry out a campaign of harassment and intimidation of prominent black leaders in the state who did not denounce the educator's remarks.
William H. Crogman was a pioneering African American educator and classicist at Clark University of Atlanta in the United States. The William H Crogman School in Atlanta is named for him.
Silas Xavier Floyd was an African-American educator, preacher, and journalist. Active in Augusta, Georgia, he was a writer and editor at the Augusta Sentinel and later wrote for the Augusta Chronicle. In 1892 he co-founded the Negro Press Association of Georgia. He was pastor at Augusta's Tabernacle Baptist Church and was a prominent agent of the International Sunday School Convention. He was also a public school principal and an officer of the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools.
James Griswold Merrill was an American Congregational minister and university administrator. He was the second president of Fisk University, a historically black university in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1901 to 1908.
George Augustus Gates was an American Congregational minister and university administrator. He was the president of Grinnell College from 1887 to 1900, Pomona College from 1902 to 1909, and Fisk University from 1909 to 1912.
Bazoline Estelle Usher was an American educator known for her work in the Atlanta Public Schools. As director of education for African-American children in the district prior to integration, she was the first African American to have an office at Atlanta City Hall. She founded the first Girl Scout troop for African-American girls in Atlanta in 1943. Her career as an educator lasted over 50 years, over 40 of which were in the Atlanta schools. A school in Atlanta is named for her, and in 2014 she was posthumously named a Georgia Woman of Achievement.
Helen Appo Cook was a wealthy, prominent African-American community activist in Washington, D.C., and a leader in the women's club movement. Cook was a founder and president of the Colored Women's League, which consolidated with another organization in 1896 to become the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), an organization still active in the 21st century. Cook supported voting rights and was a member of the Niagara Movement, which opposed racial segregation and African American disenfranchisement. In 1898, Cook publicly rebuked Susan B. Anthony, president of the National Woman's Suffrage Association, and requested she support universal suffrage following Anthony's speech at a U.S. Congress House Committee on Judiciary hearing.
Alice Vassar LaCour was an American educator and singer.
Kathleen Redding Adams was a teacher both in Atlanta Public Schools and at the Carrie Steele Pitts Home, which was a home for orphans, as well as a prominent member of the First Congregational Church in Atlanta.
Henry Proctor Slaughter was an American journalist, printer, and bibliographer. Slaughter collected resources that documented African American history, with a special focus on the subjects of slavery, the abolitionist movement, and correspondence from African American leaders throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His collection of over 10,000 books and other materials now forms the Henry P. Slaughter collection at the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library.
