Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary black elite. Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in the South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Tuskegee University, formerly known as the Tuskegee Institute, is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on Independence Day in 1881 by the state legislature.
Theodore Sedgwick Wright (1797–1847), sometimes Theodore Sedgewick Wright, was an African-American abolitionist and minister who was active in New York City, where he led the First Colored Presbyterian Church as its second pastor. He was the first African American to attend Princeton Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1828 or 1829. In 1833 he became a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, an interracial group that included Samuel Cornish, a Black Presbyterian, and many Congregationalists, and served on its executive committee until 1840.
The Black Cabinet, or Federal Council of Negro Affairs or Black Brain Trust, was the informal term for a group of African Americans who served as public policy advisors to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in his terms in office from 1933 to 1945. Despite its name, it was not an official organization. The term was coined in 1936 by Mary McLeod Bethune and was occasionally used in the press. By mid-1935, there were 45 African Americans working in federal executive departments and New Deal agencies.
Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson was an American physician. She was the first black woman, as well as woman of any race, to be licensed as a physician in Alabama.
Victoria Earle Matthews was an American author, essayist, newspaperwoman, settlement worker, and activist. She was born into slavery in Fort Valley, Georgia and moved to New York City with her family after emancipation. There, she briefly attended school and worked as a domestic servant to help her family.
William Henry Hunt (1869–1951) was an African-American diplomat, one of the few black people in the United States diplomatic corps during the 19th century.
Maria Cole was an American jazz singer and the wife of singer Nat King Cole; mother of the singer Natalie Cole.
Myra Adele Logan is known as the first African American female physician, surgeon, and anatomist to perform a successful open-heart surgery. Following this accomplishment, Logan focused her work on children's heart surgery and was involved in the development of the antibiotic Aureomycin which treated bacterial, viral, and rickettsial diseases with the majority of her medical practice done at the Harlem Hospital in New York. Logan attended medical school during the pre–Civil Rights era. The majority of black female physicians in this time period were forced to attend segregated schools. Earning a medical degree as an African American woman during this time period was extremely difficult.
Ruth Logan Roberts was a suffragist, activist, YWCA leader, and host of a salon in Harlem, New York City.
Cecelia Cabaniss Saunders sometimes written as Cecilia Cabaniss Saunders, was an African-American civil rights leader, and executive director of the Harlem, New York YWCA. She is best known for working against racial discrimination in wartime employment during World War II, for broader work training and opportunities for African-American women, and against police violence in Harlem.
Adele Smith Simmons is an American academic, business director, philanthropist, academic administrator, the third president of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts from 1977 to 1989 and the second president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation from 1989 to 1999. Simmons also served as the dean of student affairs at Princeton University, from 1972 to 1977, where she was the first female dean.
Bess Bolden Walcott (1886-1988) was an American educator, librarian, museum curator and activist who helped establish the historical significance of the Tuskegee University. Recruited by Booker T. Washington to help him coordinate his library and teach science, she remained at the institute until 1962, but continued her service into the 1970s. Throughout her fifty-four year career at Tuskegee, she organized Washington's library, taught science and English at the institute, served as founder and editor of two of the major campus publications, directed public relations, established the Red Cross chapter, curated the George Washington Carver collection and museum and assisted in Tuskegee being placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Ida Alexander Gibbs Hunt was an advocate of racial and gender equality and co-founded one of the first YWCAs in Washington, D.C., for African-Americans in 1905. She was the daughter of Judge Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, the wife of William Henry Hunt, and a longtime friend of W. E. B. Du Bois. Along with Du Bois, she was a leader of the early Pan-African movement.
Adella Hunt Logan was an African-American writer, educator, administrator and suffragist. Born during the Civil War, she earned her teaching credentials at Atlanta University, an historically black college founded by the American Missionary Association. She became a teacher at the Tuskegee Institute and became an activist for education and suffrage for women of color. As part of her advocacy, she published articles in some of the most noted black periodicals of her time.
Sylvanie Francoz Williams was an American educator and clubwoman based in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.
Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe is an American photographer and activist. She is best known for her work in magazines, newspapers, and several photography books, and also as an AIDS activist.
Arthur C. Logan was a surgeon. The year after he died, the 1862-founded Knickerbocker Hospital was renamed in his memory; he had been a member of New York City's Health and Hospitals Corporation and was also described as a civic leader. In 1970, he was honored, with attendees including the Governor, a future governor, an ambassador, and many others.
Daria J. Willis is an American academic administrator and historian. She is the incoming president of Howard Community College. Willis was president of Everett Community College from 2019 to 2021. She is the first African American president at both institutions. Willis was an assistant professor of history in the Lone Star College System.
Adele Logan Alexander is history professor at George Washington University and an author. She is known for her work on family history, gender, and social issues in African American families.
