George Edwin Taylor
Born in the pre-Civil War South to a mother who was free and a father who was enslaved, George Edwin Taylor became the first African...
Category : Politics
Dr. Carolyn L. Robertson Payton
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Dr. Carolyn L. Robertson Payton, born May 13, 1925, in Norfolk, Virginia, was a trailblazer as the first African American and first woman to serve...
Joseph Hayne Rainey
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In 1870 Republican Joseph Hayne Rainey became the first African American to be elected to the United States House of Representatives and take his seat. ...
Crystal Bird Fauset
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Crystal Dreda Bird Fauset was a trailblazing civil rights activist, social worker, educator, and politician, renowned as the first African American woman elected to a...
Pierre Caliste Landry
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Pierre Caliste Landry, a former slave turned educator and minister, is noted as the first African American to be elected mayor of a town in...
Ralph Bunche
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Ralph Bunche was an influential figure in the field of international relations and diplomacy. Born in 1904 in Detroit, Michigan, Bunche went on to become...
The Freedmen’s Bureau
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The Freedmen’s Bureau, formally known as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, was a groundbreaking federal agency established in the aftermath of the...
John Mercer Langston
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John Mercer Langston, the youngest of four children, was born a free black in Louisa County, Virginia in 1829. Langston gained distinction as an abolitionist,...
Matthias de Sousa
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Matthias de Sousa, an indentured servant, was the only black person to serve in the colonial Maryland legislature. As such he is the first African...
Carol Moseley Braun
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Carol Moseley Braun is a trailblazer in American politics. She made history in 1992 when she became the first African American woman elected to the...