Raymond Schuyler & Four of His Children c. 1904 in Worcester, MA. Portrait made by photographer William Bullard. Mr. Schuyler was an active member of All Saints Episcopal Church, the Masons, the Knights of Pythias, & the NAACP.

"They pulled her out of Clinton High and moved to Los Angeles at the urging of an uncle of hers who lived there. After finishing school, she began a long career as a pediatric nurse in California."

#tdih 1521: enslaved Africans on a Santo Domingo sugar plantation owned by Christopher Columbus's son attempted to free themselves and take over the land. This was the earliest recorded slave uprising in the Americas. ⬇️🧵 www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/en...

On Christmas Eve 1855 enslaved teenagers from Loudon County, Virginia fended off slave patrollers as they made their escape to freedom in Philadelphia. This image, “A Bold Stroke for Freedom,” is housed in the Library of Congress.

"There is no royal flower-strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it for if I have accomplished anything in life it is because I have been willing to work hard." Madam C. J. Walker, born on this day in 1867

“She began working as a park ranger at age 85, educating visitors about the women and people of color who served on the home front in World War II, herself among them.” Betty Reid Soskin, Nation’s Oldest Park Ranger, Dies at 104 www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/u...

Josephine Washington, gifted writer & Frederick Douglass’ clerk, was born 1861 to Augustus Turpin & Maria Crump. “Augustus was the son of an enslaved African woman named Mary & Edwin Durock Turpin, who owned & later married her. He was a grandson of Mary Jefferson Turpin - aunt to Thomas Jefferson.”

“Let our fear of losing our children be more powerful than our fear of our next-door neighbor.” www.newsweek.com/2025/07/18/f...

Horace Pippin turned to painting to address the physical & psychic injuries he sustained as a WWI soldier as well as reflect on American culture & history. His Holy Mountain series endeavored to envision “peace in the land” of a troubled world. This is Pippin’s Holy Mountain III which he made 1945.

While researching a Revolutionary War ancestor, Jane Woolsey Gropp learned about the Marbleheaders, a diverse group of fishermen & sailors, inc free African Americans & Native Americans, from Marblehead, MA, who played a crucial role in key military operations. thebedfordcitizen.org/event/a-jour...

Coralie Cook, descendent of the Hemings family enslaved by Thomas Jefferson, was born enslaved in 1861. She was an advocate for women’s rights & a professor who served on DC's board of ed, a founder of the National Association of Colored Women, & president of the Washington Artists Association.

"If your Constitution does not guarantee freedom for all, it is not a Constitution I can ascribe to. If your flag is stained by the blood of a brother held in bondage, I repudiate it in the name of God." William Lloyd Garrison

“over the 400 years since the first English ships arrived in Barbados, empire engineered a system of wealth extraction that shapes the tourism economies of today” HT @hofrench.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/news/2025/de...

Per the Library of Virginia: "Jane Minor was emancipated as a result of her healing skills during an epidemic in Petersburg in 1825. Her medical skills allowed her to prosper & over the course of 2 decades she purchased & emancipated at least 15 women & children." She freed Phebe Jackson here:

Dr. Harriet Rice, the 1st Black woman alum of Wellesley College, earned her MD in 1891. She worked with Jane Addams at Hull House & was a researcher at Columbia University Medical Center. During WWI she served in France as a military physician & was awarded a medal by the French government.

On December 7, 1942, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dorie Miller manned anti-aircraft artillery & tended to the wounded under heavy fire; he was awarded the Navy Cross, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. Navy at the time. This American hero of Pearl Harbor was killed in action 2 years later.

Navy sailor Neil Daniel Frye was killed in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. He was buried with full military honors. His decorations include the Purple Heart, Combat Action Ribbon, American Defense Service Medal & the Bronze Star Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal. www.fayobserver.com/story/news/m...

Black US soldiers were the first park rangers in our country's national parks. www.nps.gov/chyo/learn/h...

US Army Colonel Charles Young became a National Park Superintendent in 1903. After leading troops with distinction abroad, he supervised the build & protection of Yosemite & Sequoia national parks. Young's father had fled enslavement to join the US Army & fight for freedom during the Civil War.

“After five years in Paris, Hemings brought his new skills back to the US and served as Jefferson's head chef at Monticello, as well as in New York and Philadelphia, until he was able to negotiate his own freedom in 1796.” www.bbc.com/travel/artic...

William Freehling shows that 200,000 white Southerners in border states joined the Union. As did 100,000 white Southerners from Confederate states, incl future US pres Andrew Johnson. Majority of the 200,000 Black Americans who served were southern. Anti-Confederate Southerners preserved the nation.

"Regardless of their personal loyalties, every enslaved person, including Hawley, fought for the literal promise of liberty"

NYC native Ira Aldridge “travelled farther, was seen by more people in more nations, & won a greater number of prestigious honors, decorations & awards than any other actor in the 19th century” When a Black family in Baltimore was captured after fleeing slavery, he sent funds to buy their freedom.

James Hewlett, Shakespearian actor & principal performer in NYC’s African Grove Theater, a Black theater company founded by playwright William Brown in the 1820s. His Drama of King Shotaway, based on the historic 1796 anti-colonial resistance in St. Vincent, played to audiences in Greenwich Village.

Great book about New York theater manager William Brown who celebrated the multicultural realities of the 1820s US by cultivating theaters with mixed race performers & audiences. The book title is from a sign that Brown posted in response to rioters who endeavored to destroy his American Theater.

“Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” —James Baldwin

"Think in terms of images and words. They can be mighty powerful when they are fitted together properly." Gordon Parks, born on this day in 1912

Gertrude Mossell (c. 1890 with their daughters) she was a journalist, educator, & the partner of Dr. Mossell. Her great grandfather, Cyrus Bustill, served with Washington’s troops during the American Revolution & helped found Philadelphia’s Free African Society. Her sister was Paul Robeson’s mother.

Dr. Nathan Mossell, whose great-great-grandfather survived the Middle Passage, was a highly accomplished surgeon who founded a hospital in Philadelphia in 1895. archives.upenn.edu/exhibits/pen...

Sarah & Benjamin Tanner met at Avery College. He became a minister & educator who edited the largest Black-owned US newspaper in 1868. Henry Ossawa Tanner, standing behind his father, was an award-winning painter. Halle (seated left of her father) was the 1st woman to pass the AL state medical exam.

I knew of Elizabeth Jennings Graham because @prisonculture.bsky.social took us here ⤵️ during one of her walking tours. It's near where she was thrown off the streetcar. Miriam Sicherman's class of 3rd- and 4th-grade students had the idea for the street sign: www.miriamsicherman.com/elizabeth-je...

In 1855 Elizabeth Jennings Graham brought a suit that initiated the desegregation of NYC transit. Raised by politically active parents (her was mother formerly enslaved, her entrepreneur father was awarded a patent in 1821) Ms. Graham was a teacher, organist, & kindergarten founder.

And a piece on Augustus Tolton whose "story is an invitation to learn about all 7 Black Catholic candidates for sainthood" Augustus Tolton, Pierre Toussaint, Henreitte Delille, Mary Lange, Julia Greeley, Thea Bowman & Martin de Porres Ward. See M. Heinlein, Black Catholics on the Road to Sainthood.

Prince Hall & his collaborators twice endeavored to pass legislation in the Massachusetts state senate to end slavery. In a 1777 petition they argued for “the Natural Right of all Men” & against “the inconsistency of [people] acting themselves the part which they condemn and oppose in others . . .”

Very talented father & daughter…

Several African American soldiers & sailors received Medals of Honor for bravery in the Spanish American War. Among them was Captain Edward Baker who rescued a drowning soldier under heavy fire. Baker was the grandfather of the legendary musician Dexter Gordon.

Rebecca Protten, born in 1718 in Antigua, made her way out of enslavement to become ordained in St. Thomas in the 1730s. Her career as a teacher & missionary in the Caribbean, Europe, & West Africa helped to shape the development of Christianity & education in the 18th century.

James Armistead of Virginia was a double agent during the American Revolution. The intelligence he gathered from British troops abetted the Patriot victory at Yorktown. Having risked his life - among thousands of Black Patriots - for the founding of the US, he petitioned for his freedom.

Taylor was a sergeant. As a newspaper correspondent, he detailed Black soldiers’ experiences & protested racial injustice. A delegate to the VA Constitutional Convention, he championed Black voting & civil rights. He supported the Readjuster Party, a biracial coalition that invested in public ed.

Thanks for a fascinating mini bio which connects enslavement, which many view as distant, and access to Madison Square Garden, an institution which is part of our modern lives. All are connected and part of our current reality.

Judge Raymond Alexander was an alum of Wharton & Harvard. In 1921 he sued Madison Square Garden for denying him entrance, he fought school segregation in the courts in the 1930s, & he consulted on the 1954 Brown case. Both of his parents were born enslaved.

Neil Daniel Frye, US sailor who died in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, was recently identified, returned home to North Carolina, & buried with full military honors. He earned the Purple Heart, Combat Action Ribbon, American Defense Service Medal, & the Bronze Star Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal.

Honoring 10 Black Veterans in U.S. History Who Redefined Courage and Patriotism theblackwallsttimes.com/2025/11/11/1... #veteransday

"Rather than retreat from the horrors of slavery as was happening in Central and South America, Southern states in America committed to a new era of harsher conditions, dehumanizing control, and brutal punishment of enslaved people."

This Veterans Day I want to acknowledge the Black veterans of WWII who fought fascism and nazism and came home to fight for civil rights and democracy here. New research shows Black veterans were critical in securing the voting rights currently under attack. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Corporal Waverly Woodson, a medic from Philadelphia (where his father was a postal carrier) tended to hundreds of wounded soldiers under heavy fire at Normandy on D-Day despite being wounded himself.

1/ The US Government has quietly removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, South Limburg. The move follows a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission. ⬇️

Born enslaved in North Carolina, Anna Julia Cooper earned a master’s degree in mathematics from Oberlin in 1887 & a PhD from the Sorbonne. She observed, “The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class - it is the cause of human kind, the very birthright of humanity.”

Little Rock, Arkansas, 1959. Rally at state capitol protesting the integration of Central High School. Protesters carry US flags & signs reading "Race Mixing is Communism" & "Stop the Race Mixing March of the Anti-Christ.” Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division