Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African American community.
Spirituals are generally Christian songs that were created by African Americans. Spirituals were originally an oral tradition that imparted Christian values while also describing the hardships of slavery. Although spirituals were originally unaccompanied monophonic (unison) songs, they are best known today in harmonized choral arrangements. This historic group of uniquely American songs is now recognized as a distinct genre of music.
Tuskegee University is a private, historically black university (HBCU) located in Tuskegee, Alabama, United States. It was established by Lewis Adams and Booker T. Washington. The campus is designated as the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site by the National Park Service and is the only one in the U.S. to have this designation. The university was home to scientist George Washington Carver and to World War II's Tuskegee Airmen.
Blanche Kelso Bruce was an African-American politician who represented Mississippi as a Republican in the United States Senate from 1875 to 1881; he was the first elected black senator to serve a full term. Hiram R. Revels, also of Mississippi, was the first African American to serve in the U.S. Senate but did not complete a full term.
Sterling Allen Brown was a black professor, folklorist, poet, literary critic, and first Poet Laureate of the District of Columbia. He chiefly studied black culture of the Southern United States and was a full professor at Howard University for most of his career. He was a visiting professor at several other notable institutions, including Vassar College, New York University (NYU), Atlanta University, and Yale University.
Aaron Douglas was an American painter, illustrator and visual arts educator. He was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He developed his art career painting murals and creating illustrations that addressed social issues around race and segregation in the United States by utilizing African-centric imagery. Douglas set the stage for young, African-American artists to enter public arts realm through his involvement with the Harlem Artists Guild. In 1944, he concluded his art career by founding the Art Department at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He taught visual art classes at Fisk until his retirement in 1966. Douglas is known as a prominent leader in modern African-American art whose work influenced artists for years to come.
John Wesley Work III was a composer, educator, choral director, musicologist and scholar of African-American folklore and music.
Lewis Wade Jones was a sociologist and teacher. He was born in Cuero, Texas, the son of Wade E. and Lucynthia McDade Jones. A member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, he received his A.B. degree from Fisk University in 1931, and followed it with postgraduate study as a Social Science Research Council Fellow at the University of Chicago in 1931-1932.
The Souls of Black Folk (1903) is a work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of sociology, and a cornerstone of African-American literature.
The Black Ivy League is a colloquial term that at times referred to the historically black colleges in the United States that attracted the majority of high-performing and affluent African American students prior to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Similar groups include: Public Ivies, Southern Ivies, and the Little Ivies, among others, none of which have canonical definitions. Generally, these schools have avoided using the term "Black Ivy League" to describe themselves.
Isaac Fisher (1877–1957) was an African American educator.
John Wesley Work Jr. was the first African-American collector of folk songs and spirituals, and also a choral director, educationalist and songwriter. He is now sometimes known as John Wesley Work II, to distinguish him from his son, John Wesley Work III.
The Exhibit of American Negroes was a sociological display within the Palace of Social Economy at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. The exhibit was a joint effort between Daniel Murray, the Assistant Librarian of Congress, Thomas J. Calloway, a lawyer and the primary organizer of the exhibit, and W.E.B. Du Bois. The goal of the exhibition was to demonstrate progress and commemorate the lives of African Americans at the turn of the century.
John Angelo Lester was an American educator, physician and administrator in Nashville, Tennessee between 1895 and 1934. He was a professor of physiology at Meharry Medical College and was named Professor Emeritus in 1930. Lester served as an executive officer in the National Medical Association and various state and regional medical associations throughout Tennessee, a mecca for Negro physicians since Reconstruction.
Alrutheus Ambush Taylor (1893–1955) was an African-American historian from Washington D.C.. He was a specialist in the history of blacks and segregation, especially during the Reconstruction Era. The Crisis cited him as a "painstaking scholar and authority on Negro history". A teacher at Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama and at the West Virginia Collegiate Institute in West Virginia, following a grant from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund, Taylor began heavily researching the role of African Americans in the South during Reconstruction. He authored books such as The Negro in South Carolina During the Reconstruction, The Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia and The Negro in Tennessee, 1865-1880 in 1941.
Nathaniel Clark Smith was an important African-American musician, composer, and music educator in the United States during the early decades of the 1900s. Born on the Army base at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Smith began his music education very early organizing bands in Wichita starting in 1893. His strict military style leadership led to prominence and over the next 30 years he would lead bands in Chicago, Wichita, Kansas City, the Tuskegee Institute, and in St. Louis. He was an important educator for many of the prominent early Jazz musicians from Kansas City, Chicago, and St. Louis. He died in 1935 as the result of a stroke. Many primary documents about Smith's life have been lost as a result of a fire that destroyed most of his personal documents.
Nathaniel Oglesby Calloway (1907–1979) was an American chemist and physician. Calloway was the first African American to receive an academic doctorate from an institute west of the Mississippi and the first African American to receive a PhD in chemistry from Iowa State University (ISU).
Jennie Jackson was an American singer and voice teacher. She was one of the original members of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, an African-American a cappella ensemble. She toured with the group from 1871 to 1877. In 1891 she formed her own sextet, the Jennie Jackson Concert Company.
