A00101 - George Washington Carver, Peanut Prophet and Agricultural Scientist

George Washington Carver,  (b. 1861?, near Diamond Grove, Missouri, — d. January 5, 1943, Tuskegee, Alabama), American agricultural chemist, agronomist, and experimenter whose development of new products derived from peanuts (groundnuts), sweet potatoes, and soybeans helped revolutionize the agricultural economy of the South. For most of his career he taught and conducted research at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Tuskegee, Alabama.

Carver was born into slavery, the son of a slave woman named Mary, owned by Moses Carver. During the American Civil War, the Carver farm was raided, and infant George and his mother were kidnapped and taken to Arkansas to be sold. Moses Carver was eventually able to track down young George but was unable to find Mary. Frail and sick, the motherless child was returned to his master’s home and nursed back to health. With the complete abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, George was no longer a slave. Nevertheless, he remained on the Carver plantation until he was about 10 or 12 years old, when he left to acquire an education. He spent some time wandering about, working with his hands and developing his keen interest in plants and animals. He learned to draw, and later in life he devoted considerable time to painting flowers, plants, and landscapes.

By both books and experience, George acquired a fragmentary education while doing whatever work came to hand in order to subsist. He supported himself by varied occupations that included general household worker, hotel cook, laundryman, farm laborer, and homesteader. In his late 20s, he managed to obtain a high school education in Minneapolis, Kansas, while working as a farmhand. After a university in Kansas refused to admit him because he was black, Carver matriculated at Simpson College, Indianola, Iowa, where he studied piano and art, subsequently transferring to Iowa State Agricultural College (Ames, Iowa), where he received a bachelor’s degree in agricultural science in 1894 and a master of science degree in 1896.

Carver left Iowa for Alabama in the fall of 1896 to direct the newly organized department of agriculture at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, a school headed by noted black American educator Booker T. Washington. At Tuskegee, Washington was trying to improve the lot of African Americans through education and the acquisition of useful skills rather than through political agitation. Washington stressed conciliation, compromise, and economic development as the paths for black advancement in American society. Despite many offers elsewhere, Carver would remain at Tuskegee for the rest of his life.

After becoming the institute’s director of agricultural research in 1896, Carver devoted his time to research projects aimed at helping Southern agriculture, demonstrating ways in which farmers could improve their economic situation. He conducted experiments in soil management and crop production and directed an experimental farm. At this time agriculture in the Deep South was in steep decline because the unremitting single-crop cultivation of cotton had left the soil of many fields exhausted and worthless, and erosion had then taken its toll on areas that could no longer sustain any plant cover. As a remedy, Carver urged Southern farmers to plant peanuts (Arachis hypogaea) and soybeans (Glycine max). As members of the legume family (Fabaceae), these plants could restore nitrogen to the soil while also providing the protein so badly needed in the diet of many Southerners. Carver found that Alabama’s soils were particularly well-suited to growing peanuts and sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas), but when the state’s farmers began cultivating these crops instead of cotton, they found little demand for them on the market. In response to this problem, Carver set about enlarging the commercial possibilities of the peanut and sweet potato through a long and ingenious program of laboratory research. He ultimately developed 300 derivative products from peanuts—among them milk, flour, ink, dyes, plastics, wood stains, soap, linoleum, medicinal oils, and cosmetics — and 118 from sweet potatoes, including flour, vinegar, molasses, ink, a synthetic rubber, and postage stamp glue.

In 1914, at a time when the boll weevil had almost ruined cotton growers, Carver revealed his experiments to the public, and increasing numbers of the South’s farmers began to turn to peanuts, sweet potatoes, and their derivatives for income. Much exhausted land was renewed, and the South became a major new supplier of agricultural products. When Carver arrived at Tuskegee in 1896, the peanut had not even been recognized as a crop, but within the next half century it became one of the six leading crops throughout the United States and, in the South, the second cash crop (after cotton) by 1940. In 1942 the U.S. government allotted 2,023,428 hectares (5,000,000 acres) of peanuts to farmers. Carver’s efforts had finally helped liberate the South from its excessive dependence on cotton.

Among Carver’s many honors were his election to Britain’s Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (London) in 1916 and his receipt of the Spingarn Medal in 1923. Late in his career he declined an invitation to work for Thomas A. Edison at a salary of more than $100,000 a year. Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Franklin D. Roosevelt visited him, and his friends included Henry Ford and Mohandas K. Gandhi. Foreign governments requested his counsel on agricultural matters: Joseph Stalin, for example, in 1931 invited him to superintend cotton plantations in southern Russia and to make a tour of the Soviet Union, but Carver refused.

In 1940 Carver donated his life savings to the establishment of the Carver Research Foundation at Tuskegee for continuing research in agriculture. During World War II, he worked to replace the textile dyes formerly imported from Europe, and in all he produced dyes of 500 different shades.

Many scientists thought of Carver more as a concoctionist than as a contributor to scientific knowledge. Many of his fellow African Americans were critical of what they regarded as his subservience. Certainly, this small, mild, soft-spoken, innately modest man, eccentric in dress and mannerism, seemed unbelievably heedless of the conventional pleasures and rewards of this life. But these qualities endeared Carver to many European Americans, who were almost invariably charmed by his humble demeanor and his quiet work in self-imposed segregation at Tuskegee. As a result of his accommodation to the mores of the South, European Americans came to regard him with a sort of patronizing adulation.

Carver thus increasingly came to stand for much of white America as a kind of saintly and comfortable symbol of the intellectual achievements of African Americans. Carver was evidently uninterested in the role his image played in the racial politics of the time. His great desire in later life was simply to serve humanity; and his work, which began for the sake of the poorest of the African American sharecroppers, paved the way for a better life for the entire South. His efforts brought about a significant advance in agricultural training in an era when agriculture was the largest single occupation of Americans, and he extended Tuskegee’s influence throughout the South by encouraging improved farm methods, crop diversification, and soil conservation.

A00100 - "Little Richard" Penniman, The Architect of Rock and Roll

Little Richard, original name Richard Wayne Penniman   (b. December 5, 1932, Macon, Georgia), flamboyant American singer and pianist whose hit songs of the mid-1950s were defining moments in the development of rock and roll.  

Born into a family of 12 children, Penniman learned gospel music in Pentecostal churches churches of the Deep South. As a teenager he left home to perform rhythm and blues in medicine shows and nightclubs, where he took the name “Little Richard,” achieving notoriety for high-energy onstage antics. His first recordings in the early 1950s, produced in the soothing jump-blues style of Roy Brown, showed none of the soaring vocal reach that would mark his later singing. His breakthrough came in September 1955 at a recording session at J&M Studio in New Orleans, Louisiana, where Little Richard, backed by a solid rhythm-and-blues band, howled “Tutti Frutti,” with its unforgettable exhortation, “A wop bop a loo bop, a lop bam boom!” In the year and a half that followed, he released a string of songs on Specialty Records that sold well among both African American and European American audiences: “Rip It Up,” “Long Tall Sally,” “Ready Teddy,” “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” and “Send Me Some Lovin’,” among others. Blessed with a phenomenal voice able to generate croons, wails, and screams unprecedented in popular music, Little Richard scored hits that combined childishly amusing lyrics with sexually suggestive undertones. Along with Elvis Presley's records for the Sun label in the mid-1950s, Little Richard’s sessions from the same period offer models of singing and musicianship that have inspired rock musicians ever since.

As his success grew, Little Richard appeared in some of the earliest rock-and-roll movies: Don’t Knock the Rock and The Girl Can’t Help It (both 1956) and Mr. Rock and Roll (1957). In the latter he stands at the piano belting out songs with a dark intensity that, in the bland Eisenhower years, seemed excessive, an impression amplified by his bizarre six-inch pompadour, eyeliner, and pancake makeup. At the very peak of his fame, however, he concluded that rock and roll was the Devil’s work; he abandoned the music business, enrolled in Bible college, and became a traveling Evangelical preacher. When the Beatles skyrocketed onto the music scene in 1964, they sang several of his classic songs and openly acknowledged their debt to their great forebear. This renewed attention inspired Little Richard to return to the stage and the recording studio for another shot at stardom. Although a new song, “Bama Lama Bama Loo” (1964), invoked the fun and vitality of his heyday, record-buying youngsters were not impressed. A major recording contract in the early 1970s produced three albums for Reprise Records — The Rill Thing, King of Rock ’n’ Roll, and Second Coming—collections that showed Little Richard in fine voice but somewhat out of his element in the hard rock styles of the period.

In the late 1990s Little Richard continued to appear at concerts and festivals, performing songs that had become cherished international standards. He remained a frequent guest on television talk shows and children’s programs, but his madcap mannerisms, so threatening to parents in the 1950s, had come to seem amusingly safe. Having weathered a career marked by extraordinary changes in direction, Little Richard survived not only as the self-proclaimed “architect of rock and roll” but also as a living treasure of 20th-century American culture.

A00099 - Dick Gregory, Comedian and Civil Rights Activist

Dick Gregory, byname of Richard Claxton Gregory    (b. October 12, 1932, St. Louis, Missouri), African-American comedian, civil rights activist, and spokesman for health issues, who became nationally recognized in the 1960s for a biting brand of comedy that attacked racial prejudice. By addressing his hard-hitting satire to white audiences, he gave a comedic voice to the rising Civil Rights Movement.  In the 1980s his nutrition business venture targeted unhealthy diets of black Americans.

Reared in poverty in St. Louis, Gregory began working at an early age to help support his family. He was involved in sports and social causes in high school, and he entered Southern Illinois University on an athletic scholarship in 1951, excelling as a middle-distance runner. He was named the university’s outstanding student athlete in 1953, the same year he left college to join the U.S. Army, where he hosted and performed comedy routines in military shows.

After a brief return to his alma mater in 1955-56, Gregory sought entrance to the national comedy circuit in Chicago. His breakthrough came in 1961, when a one-nighter at the Chicago Playboy Club turned into a six-week stint that earned him a profile in Time magazine and a television appearance on “The Jack Paar Show.” In his numerous subsequent television, nightclub, and concert routines, he targeted poverty, segregation, and racial discrimination. Active in the Civil Rights Movement, he participated in numerous demonstrations and was arrested for civil disobedience several times. In 1963 he was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama. His activism spurred him to run for mayor of Chicago in 1966 and for president of the United States in 1968.

In the early 1970s Gregory abandoned comedy to focus on his political interests, which widened from race relations to include such issues as violence, world hunger, capital punishment, drug abuse, and poor health care. He generated particular attention for his many hunger fasts. At this time he became a vegetarian, a marathon runner, and an expert on nutrition. He soon began a successful business venture with his nutritional product, the “Bahamian Diet,” around which he built Dick Gregory Health Enterprises, Inc. Through his company, he targeted the lower life expectancy of African Americans, which he attributed to poor nutrition and drug and alcohol abuse.

Gregory wrote many books, including Nigger: An Autobiography (1964) and No More Lies: The Myth and the Reality of American History (1971). He made a brief return to the comedy circuit in the mid-1990s.

A00098 - Leonard Harmon, Navy Cross Recipient

Leonard Roy Harmon (January 21, 1917–November 13, 1942) was an African American sailor who died in action during World War II and was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his valor.

Harmon, born in Cuero, Texas, was 22 years of age when he enlisted in the United States Navy in June 1939. He trained as a Mess Attendant, one of the few jobs available to African American men in the Navy at that time. The basic job description consisted of serving food to officers and crew aboard ship. However, like all members of a ship’s crew they were also trained in damage control and had stations to report to during general quarters. 

During his service he became a Mess Attendant First Class and was serving aboard the USS San Francisco (CA-38) when on November 12, 1942 he was killed in action. During the course of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, he was assigned to assist pharmacist's mate Lyndford Bondsteel in caring for the wounded. While doing so he deliberately interposed himself between Bondsteel and enemy gunfire in order to protect his shipmate. This action resulted in his death.

Harmon was awarded the Navy Cross. Two ships were named in his honor. The HMS Aylmer had been provisionally named USS Harmon (DE-72) but was transferred to the Royal Navy prior to completion. The second ship, the USS Harmon (DE-678) served from 1943 to 1947 and remained in the Reserve Fleet until 1967; it was the first United States warship to be named after an African American. 

The citation issued for Leonard Roy Harmon's Navy Cross read:

The President of the United States of America takes pride in presenting the Navy Cross (Posthumously) to Mess Attendant First Class Leonard Roy Harmon, United States Navy, for extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty in action against the enemy while serving on board the Heavy Cruiser U.S.S. SAN FRANCISCO (CA-38), during action against enemy Japanese naval forces near Savo Island in the Solomon Islands on the night of on 12–13 November 1942. With persistent disregard of his own personal safety, Mess Attendant First Class Harmon rendered invaluable assistance in caring for the wounded and assisting them to a dressing station. In addition to displaying unusual loyalty in behalf of the injured Executive Officer, he deliberately exposed himself to hostile gunfire in order to protect a shipmate and, as a result of this courageous deed, was killed in action. His heroic spirit of self-sacrifice, maintained above and beyond the call of duty, was in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

A00097 - Marcus Garvey, Charismatic African Jamaican Leader

Marcus Garvey, in full Marcus Moziah Garvey   (b. August 17, 1887, St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica —d. June 10, 1940, London, England), was a charismatic African Jamaican leader who organized the first important American black nationalist movement (1919–26), based in New York City’s Harlem. 

Largely self-taught, Garvey attended school in Jamaica until he was 14. After traveling in Central America and living in London from 1912 to 1914, he returned to Jamaica, where, with a group of friends, he founded, on August 1, 1914, the Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities League, usually called the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which sought, among other things, to build in Africa a black-governed nation.

Failing to attract a following in Jamaica, Garvey went to the United States in 1916 and soon established branches of the UNIA in Harlem and the other principal urban areas of the North. By 1919, the rising “Black Moses” claimed a following of about 2,000,000, although the exact number of association members was never clear. From the platform of the Association’s Liberty Hall in Harlem, Garvey spoke of a “new Negro,” proud of being black. His newspaper, Negro World, told of the exploits of heroes of the race and of the splendors of African culture. Garvey taught that blacks would be respected only when they were economically strong, and he preached an independent black economy within the framework of white capitalism. To forward these ends, he established the Negro Factories Corporation and the Black Star Line (1919), as well as a chain of restaurants and grocery stores, laundries, a hotel, and a printing press.

Garvey reached the height of his power in 1920, when he presided at an international convention in Liberty Hall, with delegates present from 25 countries. The affair was climaxed by a parade of 50,000 through the streets of Harlem, led by Garvey in flamboyant array. His slipshod business methods, however, and his doctrine of racial purity and separatism (he even approved of the white racist Ku Klux Klan because it sought to separate the races) brought him bitter enemies among established African American leaders, including labor leader A. Philip Randolph and W. E. B. Du Bois, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Garvey’s influence declined rapidly when he and other UNIA members were indicted for mail fraud in 1922 in connection with the sale of stock for the Black Star Line. He served two years of a five-year prison term, but in 1927 his sentence was commuted by President Calvin Coolidge, and he was deported as an undesirable alien. He was never able to revive the movement abroad, and he died in virtual obscurity.

A00096 - Archie Alleyne, African Canadian Jazz Musician

Archie Alleyne (January 7, 1933 – June 8, 2015) was a Canadian jazz drummer. Best known as a drummer for influential jazz musicians such as Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster, he was also prominent as a recording artist on his own and with Canadian jazz musicians such as Oliver Jones, Cy McLean and Brian Browne. 

Born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Alleyne became the house drummer at the Town Tavern jazz club in his 20s.

Involved in a serious car accident in 1967, he stepped away from music for a number of years, becoming a partner in a soul food restaurant in Toronto. He returned to music in the early 1980s with Jones' band.

In later life,, he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada, established the Archie Alleyne Scholarship Fund to provide bursaries to music students, and wrote Colour Me Jazz: The Archie Alleyne Story, an autobiography.

A00095 - Jean Alfred, Haitian Canadian Politician in Quebec

Jean Alfred (March 10, 1940–July 20, 2015) was a politician in Quebec, Canada. He was a member of the National Assembly of Quebec  as a member of the Parti Quebecois from 1976 to 1981.

Alfred was born in Ouanaminthe, Haiti,to Oracius Alfred and Prunelie Occean. He completed his college studies and some university courses at Port-au-Prince before moving to Ottawa where he obtained a degree in philosophy from the University of Ottawa. He also received a master's degree in psycho-pedagogy as well as a doctorate in education.

Prior to his entry into politics, he taught for several years in Haiti and in the Outaouais region. He taught again after his political career and was a school board commissioner for the Commission Scolaire des Draveurs. 

In 1975, he was elected as a councillor for the city of Gatineau and later entered provincial politics where he was elected in Papineau as a Parti Québécois candidate, becoming the first Black person to be elected to the National Assembly o Quebec. He served a full term as a PQ and Independent member but was defeated in the newly formed riding of Chapleau which portions were split from Gatineau and Papineau. He was a candidate again in 1989, but lost to the Liberal, John Kehoe. He made a brief attempt at federal politics but failed to become a Bloc Quebecois prior to the 1997 elections. 

A00094 - Julian Bond, Charismatic Civil Rights Leader

Julian Bond, in full Horace Julian Bond   (b. January 14, 1940, Nashville, Tennessee - August 15, 2015, Fort Walton Beach, Florida), legislator and civil rights leader, best known for his fight to take his duly elected seat in the Georgia House of Representatives. 

The son of prominent educators, Bond attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he helped found a civil rights group and led a sit-in movement intended to desegregate Atlanta lunch counters. In 1960 he joined in creating the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and he later served as communications director for the group. In 1965 he won a seat in the Georgia state legislature, but his endorsement of a SNCC statement accusing the United States of violating international law in Vietnam prompted the legislature to refuse to admit him. The voters in his district twice re-elected him, but the legislature barred him each time. Finally, in December 1966, the United States Supreme Court ruled the exclusion unconstitutional, and Bond was sworn in on January 9, 1967.

At the Democratic National Convention in 1968, Bond led an insurgent group of delegates that won half of Georgia’s seats. He seconded the nomination of Eugene McCarthy and became the first African American man to have his name placed in nomination for the vice presidential candidacy of a major party. Younger than the minimum age required for the position under the Constitution, however, Bond withdrew his name.

Bond served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1967 to 1975 and in the Georgia Senate from 1975 to 1987. In 1986 he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives against his fellow civil rights activist, John Lewis. 

In addition to his legislative activities, Bond served as president of the Southern Poverty Law Center and as executive chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  Bond became the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1971. He served until 1979, remaining a board member and president emeritus for the rest of his life.

In 1998, Bond was selected as chairman of the NAACP. In November 2008, he announced that he would not seek another term as chairman. Bond agreed to stay on in the position through 2009, as the organization celebrated its 100th anniversary. Roslyn M. Brock was chosen as Bond's successor on February 20, 2010.

A00093 - Yanga Municipality

Yanga Municipality is a municipality located in the southern area of the State of Veracruz, Mexico, about 80 km from the state capital of Xalapa. It was formerly known as San Lorenzo de los Negros (after a colony of cimarrones in the early 17th century) or San Lorenzo de Cerralvo (after a 17th-century Spanish colonial priest). In 1932 it was renamed after Yanga, the cimarron leader who in 1609 resisted an attack by Spanish forces trying to regain control of the area. Captured in the area of present-day Guinea in West Africa before 1570, he was a chief of the Yang-Bara tribe before being sold into slavery.

Gaspar Yanga had been in the highlands since leading escape by a band of slaves in 1570. After fighting off the Spanish forces in 1609, and having a series of bloody skirmishers over nearly a decade, in 1618, he finally obtained an agreement with Spanish officials to grant freedom to the fugitive slaves and independence to their village, a few kilometers from the city of Cordoba, Veracruz. It became known as San Lorenzo de los Negros (named after the cimarrones) or San Lorenzo de Cerralvo (named after Juan Laurencio, a Jesuit friar who had accompanied the 1609 expedition sent by the Viceroy). 

The inhabitants of African descent of San Lorenzo proclaimed their loyalty to the Church and the King of Spain, but refused to pay tribute to the Spanish government. They also agreed to capture fugitive slaves and return them to their masters in return for a fee. They were among the many free blacks of Mexico, which had the second-highest slave population of the Americas after Brazil. 

A00092 - Zanana Akande, African Canadian Politician

Zanana L. Akande (b. 1937) is a former politician in Ontario, Canada. She was a New Democratic member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1990 to 1994 who represented the downtown Toronto riding (electoral district) of St. Andrew - St. Patrick. She served as a cabinet minister in the government of Bob Rae. She was the first woman of African descent elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, and the first woman of African descent to serve as a cabinet minister in Canada.

A daughter of immigrants from the Caribbean, she became a teacher and school principal in the Toronto public school system. After her election in 1990, she was appointed to cabinet as Minister of Community and Social Services but resigned because her private financial arrangements appeared to violate cabinet guidelines. A subsequent review cleared her of any wrongdoing. In 1992, she was named parliamentary assistant to Premier Bob Rae. In 1994 she quit politics after a dispute over the handling of an investigation and firing of Ontario civil servant Carlton Masters.

After retirement, Akande continued to be involved in the community, serving as a volunteer on boards and committees of local organizations including the YWCA and Centennial College. 

Akande was born in downtown Toronto in the Kensington Market district. Her parents came from St. Lucia and Barbados, where they had worked as teachers. They were prevented from continuing their careers in Canada because, at the time, people of African descent were not allowed to hold teaching positions. She attended Harbord Collegiate before studying at the University of Toronto.  There she received Bachelor of Arts and Master of Education degrees. She also attended the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. She was a longtime member of the Federation of Women Teachers' Associations of Ontario. Following in her parents footsteps, she worked as a teacher and a school principal for the Toronto District School Board. During her educational career she designed programs for students with special needs.

Akande was a co-founder of Tiger Lily, a newspaper for visible minority women, and once co-hosted a Toronto Arts Against Apartheid Festival. She was a member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation in her youth and was friends with future New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Stephen Lewis and his siblings, and was a longtime member of its successor, the New Democratic Party. 

Akande was married to Isaac who died of cancer in 1991. She has a daughter, Aderonke.

Akande was elected for the NDP in the Toronto riding of St. Andrew—St. Patrick in the 1990 election. Akande won the riding in a tight three-way race between incumbent Liberal Ron Kanter and Conservative candidate Nancy Jackman. The NDP won a majority government and Akande was named Minister of Community and Social Services in Bob Rae's first cabinet on October 1, 1990.  As minister, Akande presided over an increase in welfare benefits to Ontarians at the lowest income level. She raised the social assistance rate from 5% to 7% and increased the shelter allowance from 5% to 10%. She also announced $1 million in funding for food banks in an apparent contradiction to NDP policy against supporting such agencies. She recognized that the realities of the time meant the food banks were a necessity.

In 1991, Akande was caught in an apparent conflict of interest situation. In December 1990, Rae announced strict guidelines which prohibited cabinet ministers from owning rental properties which included Akande. However, in February 1991, Rae wrote a private memo which softened the guidelines because he felt that a sell-off of these properties during tough economic times may cause undue hardship to ministers.

On October 10, 1991, Akande resigned as minister due to an accusation of rent-gouging in properties she owned in Toronto. The charges were eventually dismissed in 1993.

On May 4, 1992, the so-called "Yonge Street Riot" occurred in Toronto due to media reports surrounding a celebrated court case in the United States about the beating of Rodney King by police and the ensuing riots in Los Angeles. While the damage along Yonge Street was relatively minor, it was a major event for Toronto. In order to manage the fallout from this episode, Rae appointed Akande as his parliamentary assistant. One of her accomplishments was the creation of the Jobs Ontario Youth Program which created summer employment for youth from 1991 to 1994.

Akande continued as a parliamentary assistant until August 31, 1994, when she resigned from the Legislature in protest against Rae's handling of the Carlton Masters controversy. After resigning from the government she returned to her former job as school principal. 

A00091 - Wayne Adams, African Canadian Provincial Politician

Wayne Adams, (b. 1943) is a former Canadian provincial politician who was the first African Canadian member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly and cabinet minister.

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Adams was first elected to the Halifax Municipal Council in 1979 and was re-elected five times. He was Deputy Mayor from 1982 to 1983.

A Nova Scotia Liberal, Adams was elected in the 1993 Nova Scotia general election in the riding of Preston. He was the Minister of the Environment, the Minister responsible for the Emergency Measures Act, and the Minister responsible for the Nova Scotia Boxing Authority in the governments of first John Savage (1993–1997) and then Russell MacLellan (1997–1998). He was defeated in 1998 by the NDP candidate, Yvonne Atwell. 

In 2003, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada, Canada's highest civilian honor.

In 2011, he was invested as a member of the Order of Nova Scotia. 

A00090 - Leonel Maciel, Afro-Mexican Artist

Leonel Maciel (born March 21, 1939), an Afro-Mexican artist, member of the Salon de la Plastica Mexicana, from the coast of the state of Guerrero. Although from a rural area and farming family, he studied art at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabaco "La Esmeralda" and has traveled extensively in Europe and Asia, which has influenced his work. His art has changed styles from generally contains multiple elements and saturated colors.

Maciel was born in the small village of La Soledad de Maciel, located in the municipality of Petatlan, Guerrero on Mexico’s Pacific coast.  He was born to a farm working family, in a palapa near the ocean. His family is of mixed African, Asian and indigenous roots, not uncommon for that region, the Costa Grande of Guerrero. He is a tall thin man, from family of tall people, stating that his great-grandparents were two meters tall or taller. One of these was Margarita Romero, called Negra Margarita who was African-indigenous ethnicity.

Maciel spent his early childhood on beaches and among mangroves. He began to draw and paint early, with his father encouraging him even though the region does not have a strong artistic tradition. His father also taught him to appreciate literature and he became fond of Hispanic-American literature and authors such as Alejo Carpentier, Pablo Neruda and Miguel Angel Asturias, which affected his artistry.

Maciel attended primary school for four years and at age ten went to Mexico City where he attended more classes up to high school but he did not study art although he had been drawing since he was a young child. Instead he worked odd jobs and sold some works that he drew or painted. These came to the attention of the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda". He received a scholarship, studying there from 1958 to 1962.

Maciel believed that it is necessary for artists to see as much of the world as possible and be exposed to the work of other artists. His first journeys outside of Mexico included New York and Iceland, where he experienced an aurora borealis. He also spent three years in Europe, but did not use the time to visit museums and other artists. In 1995, he made an eight month journey through Asia in countries such as India, Bali, Thailand, China and Malaysia as well as the various Pacific islands. Elements of what he saw during this trip were then included into his work.

In 2007 Maciel worked on a project to document the cuisine of his native region which inspired a number of paintings.

Maciel lived in Tepoztlan from the 1980s into the 1990s when he began living in his native Guerrero state.

Maciel has had over forty individual and collective exhibitions of his work in countries such as Brazil, France, the United States and Portugal as well as Mexico. His first individual exhibition was as the Galería Excélsior in 1964.  His important collective exhibitions include “Art-Expo” in New York, Erótica ’82 at the Galería José Clemente Orozco and Contemporary Mexican Painters at the Picasso Museum in Antibes, France. He participated in the Myth and Magic of Latin America Biennal in Rio de Janeiro in 1979. Recognitions for Maciel's work include membership in the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana, retrospectives at the Museo del Carmen in Mexico City (2001) and the Museo de la Ciudad de México (2003) . In 2007 his home municipality had a ceremony to honor him.               

A00089 - Julia Lopez, Afro-Mexican Painter

Julia López (b. 1936) is a self-taught Mexican painter whose works depict her childhood home in the Costa Chica region of Guerrero state.  She was born in a small farming village but left early for Acapulco and Mexico City to find a better life. In the capital, she was hired as a model for artists at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda" and as such became part of the circle of notable artists of that time. Their influenced encouraged her to draw and paint, with Carlos Orozco Romero discouraging her from formal instruction as to not destroy her style. She began exhibiting in 1958 and exhibited individually and collectively in Mexico, the United States and Europe. Her work was recognized with awards and membership in the Salon de la Plastica Mexicana.  

López was born in 1936 in a small village near the town of Ometepec on the Costa Chica of Guerrero. She was one of eight daughters born to African and Amuzgo heritage parents. The parents were farmers, raising cotton, chili peppers, tobacco, sesame seed, bananas and other crops.

She has stated that she was blessed to have the childhood that she did, which would not have been possible in a big city. However, she wanted more in life and began her journey by going to Ometepec to work in a hotel called Casa Verde when she was only thirteen years old. In 1951, she moved again, this time to Acapulco, where she worked in a hotel kitchen. During this time she did not attend school but rather taught herself to read and do basic math.

Her final move was to Mexico City, finding initial employment modeling bridal and other formal dresses. This job allowed her to meet a number of people, especially from Coyoacan including a muralist that introduced her to Frida Kahlo in 1952. She gave her a card to present herself to Antonio M. Ruiz, then director of La Esmeralda. Her professionalism in her work allowed her to model for most of the well-known artists of the mid-20th century such as Jose Chavez Morado, Vlady and even Diego Rivera  at La Esmeralda and at the Academy of San Carlos.  

While doing this, she listened carefully to teachers’ comments to students and integrated herself with this artistic community. She initially remained very poor, along with her artist friends, which included Alberto Gironella, Hector Javier, Lauro Lopez, Vlady and Jose Luis Cuevas sharing accommodations, food and work. She began sketching on old bread wrappers images of saints, horses, seahorses and other familiar elements. She showed her work to Carlos Orozco Romero, who encouraged her novel style. She suggested an exchange whereby she would pose and he would teach her to paint. However, Orozco Romero convinced her that the classes would take away her spontaneity.

López developed her art career while continuing to pose in order to earn money for materials. She began exhibiting in 1958 and since then her work has been shown in various parts of Mexico, the United States and in Europe.  Her work can be found in the collections of over forty museums and galleries, but most of her work is in private collections in Mexico and abroad.

Her work was first recognized with a first place prize at a competition held at the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana. Later she received the New Vales Prize from the Fine Art Gallery of California. She is a member of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.

Three books have been written about her life and work Los colores mágicos de Julia López (1995), Fiori e Canti, Nella Pittura di Julia López (1996, in Italian) and Dueña de la luz (1998).

A00088 - Johnny Laboriel, Afro-Mexican Rock and Roll Singer

Johnny Laboriel (born Juan José Laboriel López, July 9, 1942 – September 18, 2013) was a Mexican rock and roll singer. His career started in 1958, when at 16 years old he joined the rock and roll group "Los Rebeldes del Rock". 

Laboriel died on September 18, 2013 from prostate cancer. 

Laboriel was the son of actor and composer Juan Jose Laboriel and actress Francisca Lopez de Laboriel. His parents were Honduran immigrants to Mexico from the Garifuna coast. He was the brother of bassist Abraham Laboriel and singer Ela Laboriel. 

In 2004, Laboriel was invited by Alex Lora to participate in the 36th anniversary of his band El Tri. The concert was presented at the Auditorio Nacional and was made into a CD and a DVD entitled 35 Años y lo que falta todavía

In 2006, Johnny Laboriel was invited by Luis Álvarez "El Haragán" to participate in the 16th anniversary of his band, El Haragán y Compañía. The concert was presented on November 3, 2006, also at Mexico City's Teatro Metropolitan. 

Johnny Laboriel died on 18 September 2013, in Mexico City, from prostate cancer. He was survived by his wife Viviane Thirion, and sons Juan Francisco and Emmanuel.

A00087 - Mari Evans, Poet

Mari Evans (b. July 16, 1923) grew up in Toledo, Ohio. She attended the University of Toledo.

Born in Toledo, Ohio, Evans was 10 years old when her mother died, and she was subsequently encouraged in her writing by her father, as she recalls in her essay "My Father's Passage" (1984). She attended local public schools before going on to the University of Toledo, where she majored in fashion design in 1939, though left without a degree. She began a series of teaching appointments in American universities in 1969. During 1969–70, she served as writer in residence at Indiana University-Purdue, where she taught courses in African-American Literature. The next year, she accepted a position as writer in residence at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.  From 1968 to 1973, Mari Evans produced, wrote and directed the television program The Black Experience for WTTV in Indianapolis. She received an honorary degree from Marian College in 1975. Evans continued her teaching career at Purdue (1978–80), at Washington University in Saint Louis (1980), at Cornell University (1981–85), and the State University of New York at Albany (1985–86).

Among her books of poetry are A Dark and Splendid Mass (1992), Nightstar: 1973-1978 (1981), I Am a Black Woman (1970), and Where Is All the Music? (1968). Her books for children include Dear Corinne, Tell Somebody! Love, Annie: A Book about Secrets (1999), Singing Black: Alternative Nursery Rhymes for Children (1998, illustrated by Ramon Price) Jim Flying High (1979, illustrated by Ashley Bryan), Rap Stories (1974), and J.D. (1973, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney).

She is also the author of the plays Eye (a 1979 adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God) and River of My Song (first produced in 1977).

She is a contributor to and an editor of the volume Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation (1984), and has taught at colleges and universities including Spelman College, Purdue University, and Cornell University.

Among her honors are fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Hay Whitney Fellowship. In 1997, she was celebrated with her photo on a Ugandan postage stamp.

A00086 - Elbert Williams, Civil Rights Activist

Elbert Williams is the first known member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to be murdered for his civil rights activities.  Williams was born on October 15, 1908 in rural Haywood County, Tennessee, the son of farmer Albert Williams and wife Mary Green Williams.

In 1929, Williams married Annie Mitchell. After trying farming, the couple moved in the early 1930s to Brownsville, the county seat, where they worked for a laundry until Williams’ murder in 1940.

In 1939, the Williamses became charter members of Brownsville’s NAACP Branch.

On May 6, 1940, five members of Brownsville’s NAACP Branch unsuccessfully attempted to register to vote. No African American had been allowed to register to vote in Haywood County during the 20^th Century. The next day, the threats began.

Early on the morning of June 16, would-be registrant Elisha Davis was abducted from home by a white mob led by Brownsville policemen Tip Hunter and Charles Read, taken to a nearby swamp, surrounded, and threatened with death unless he named members of the Brownsville NAACP. After naming some, Davis was forced to immediately leave the county, under threat of death should he ever return. Many African American families fled. The Williamses did not.

Late on the night of June 20, policemen Hunter and Read, and a third man, Ed Lee, manager of the local Coca-Cola bottling company, took Williams from his home and jailed him.  There they questioned him about an NAACP meeting he was suspected of planning. Hunter claimed that he released Williams who never returned home, and was never again seen alive.

Three days later, Williams’ corpse was found floating in the nearby Hatchie River.  Annie Williams identified her husband’s body, and saw two bullet-like holes in his chest. The Coroner ordered no medical examination, and held his inquest on the riverbank that same morning.  The Coroner’s jury’s verdict was "Cause of death:   unknown." The Coroner ordered an immediate burial and Williams was buried the same day in an unmarked grave.

A local grand jury found that Williams’ death was caused by “foul violence at the hands of parties unknown.”

Under pressure from the NAACP National Office, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate, and promised a broad inquiry.

NAACP Special Counsel Thurgood Marshall, later a United States Supreme Court Justice, monitored the DOJ/FBI investigation, and travelled to Brownsville to collect evidence.

The DOJ ordered the United States Attorney in Memphis to present the case to a Federal Grand Jury, but then reversed its decision and closed the case, citing insufficient evidence. Thurgood Marshall was livid, but unable to get the case reopened.

Elbert Williams’ murderer was never prosecuted. 

A00085 - Yvonne Braithwaite Burke, Congressperson from Los Angeles

Yvonne Brathwaite Burke (b. October 5, 1932) was a politician from Los Angeles, California, United States. She was the first African-American woman to represent the West Coast in Congress. She served in congress from 1973 until the end of 1978. She was the Los Angeles County Supervisor representing the 2nd District (1992–2008). She served as the Chair of the Board of Supervisors three times (1993–94, 1997–98, 2002–03).

Born Perle Yvonne Watson on October 5, 1932, in Los Angeles to James A. Watson and the former Lola Moore. She married William A. Burke in Los Angeles on June 14, 1972. To this union was born a daughter, Autumn Roxanne on November 23, 1973.

Burke attended the University of California at Berkeley from 1949 to 1951; and the University of California at Los Angeles from 1951 to 1953 where she received a bachelor's degree;  She then attended the University of Southern California Law School and received a juris doctor degree in 1956

A00084 - Daniel Hale Williams, 19th Surgeon Who Performed Heart Surgery

Daniel Hale Williams,  (b. January 18, 1858, Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania — d. August 4, 1931, Idlewild, Michigan), American physician and founder of Provident Hospital in Chicago, credited with the first successful heart surgery.

Williams graduated from Chicago Medical College in 1883. He served as surgeon for the South Side Dispensary (1884–92) and physician for the Protestant Orphan Asylum (1884–93). In response to the lack of opportunity for African Americans in the medical professions, he founded (in 1891) the nation’s first interracial hospital, Provident, to provide training for black interns and the first school for black nurses in the United States. He was a surgeon at Provident (1892–93, 1898–1912) and surgeon in chief of Freedmen’s Hospital, Washington, D.C. (1894–98), where he established another school for African American nurses.

It was at Provident Hospital that Williams performed daring heart surgery on July 10, 1893. Although contemporary medical opinion disapproved of surgical treatment of heart wounds, Williams opened the patient’s thoracic cavity without aid of blood transfusions or modern anesthetics and antibiotics. During the surgery he examined the heart, sutured a wound of the pericardium (the sac surrounding the heart), and closed the chest. The patient lived at least 20 years following the surgery. Williams’ procedure is cited as the first recorded repair of the pericardium; some sources, however, cite a similar operation performed by H.C. Dalton of St. Louis in 1891.

Williams later served on the staffs of Cook County Hospital (1903–09) and St. Luke’s Hospital (1912–31), both in Chicago. From 1899 he was professor of clinical surgery at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, and was a member of the Illinois State Board of Health (1889–91). He published several articles on surgery in medical journals. Williams became the only African American charter member of the American College of Surgeons in 1913.

A00083 - Edwin Harleston, Artist and Civil Rights Leader

Edwin A. Harleston (b. 1882, Charleston, South Carolina - d. 1931)  was one of the most distinguished artists and civil rights leaders of his generation.  Born in 1882, in Charleston, South Carolina, he graduated from Avery Institute in 1900 and Atlanta University in 1904.  He studied at Howard University with the intention of becoming a physician, but instead set his sights on art.  From 1906 to 1912, he attended the School Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

In 1913, Harleston returned to Charleston to help with the family funeral business.  He soon became an active artist, businessman, and civil rights leader.  Harleston founded the Charleston NAACP in 1916 and was successful in its efforts toward educational reform for Black schools, teachers and principals.  He was a firm believer in civil rights for all Americans.  By the 1920's Harleston's reputation as an artist had flourished.  An active participant in the Harlem Renaissance, he received portrait commissions from all over the United States.  Even though his primary mode of art was portraiture, his work also showed the people and culture of the era.

In 1931, Harleston joined the Harmon Foundation at International House in New York.  The House had presented the first all African American exhibition in the United States.  Harleston created sensitive humanistic portraits of mostly African American civic leaders, businessmen, and their families.  He always captured the strength and depth of his subjects' personalities.  The Gibbes Museum and Art Gallery and the Avery Institute in his native Charleston co-hosted an exhibition of his work, Edwin Harleston: Painter of An Era, on the 101st anniversary of his birth.

Among the portraits displayed was his painting of Aaron Douglas, one of the most significant African-American artists of the 20th century.  This portrait was purchased by the Gibbes Museum. Many of Harleston's famous works, including "Mending Sock" and "The Old Servant" are in anthologies of African American Art.  Edwin Harleston died in 1931 at the age of 49.