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Article

Baker, Frankie  

John Garst

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

the inspiration for the “Frankie and Johnny” song, was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents were Cedric Baker and his wife Margaret (maiden name unknown), and she had three brothers: Charles, Arthur, and James. Charles, who was younger than Frankie, lived with her on Targee Street in 1900. In 1899 Baker shot and killed her seventeen-year-old “mack” (pimp), Allen “Al” Britt. St. Louis pianists and singers were soon thumping and belting out what would become one of America's most famous folk ballads and popular songs, “Frankie and Johnny,” also known as “Frankie and Albert,” “Frankie Baker,” and “Frankie.”

At age sixteen or seventeen Baker fell in love with a man who, unknown to her, was living off the earnings of a prostitute (this kind of man was known as an “easy rider,” a term made famous by W. C. Handy in his ...

Article

Booker, Cicero B., Jr.  

Mason R. Hazzard

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 May 2015

police officer, civil rights activist, and litigant, was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, to Cicero B. Booker Sr., the first African American police officer in the town of Waterbury, and Addie Booker, a homemaker.

Booker attended and graduated from the local public schools before going on to further his education, earning an associate's degree in Police Science and Administration from Mattatuck Community College, now known as Naugatuck Valley Community College, in Waterbury in 1978. He also attended Western Connecticut State University. In 1955, at the age of seventeen, Booker enrolled in the US Marine Corps as a private, remaining on active duty for three years until he left the military in 1958 at the rank of corporal.

Booker then joined the police department in his hometown of Waterbury in 1961. He quickly ascended to the rank of patrol officer, but by 1985 his ...

Article

Brown, Kate  

Brian Tong and Theodore Lin

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
29 February 2012

retiring room attendant, activist, most renowned for winning the 1873 Supreme Court Case Railroad Company v. Brown, was born Katherine Brown in Virginia. There are many variations of her name; in some documents, she is referred to as “Catherine Brown,” “Katherine Brown,” “Kate Brown,” or “Kate Dodson.” In the New York Times article “Washington, Affairs at the National Capital,” her name appears as “Kate Dostie.” Very few records of Brown's life survive today; as a result, much of her childhood and personal life remains unknown.

Kate Brown's recorded personal life begins with her marriage to Jacob Dodson. Jacob Dodson had a colorful past. Born in 1825, Dodson was a freeman. He spent most of his early life as a servant for the Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, but in 1843 Dodson began to accompany John C. Fremont, son-in-law of Senator Benton ...

Article

Calderón, Luisa  

Kit Candlin

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
31 May 2017

freewoman of color and the star witness in the trial of Thomas Picton, the governor of British Trinidad, for torture. Calderón was born in Trinidad in 1786 to Maria del Rosario Calderón, a freewoman of color, originally from Venezuela. She had two half-sisters, Catalina and Benancia, who were 10 years older than she. Both Calderón and her mother were employed at the house of a Spanish trader, Pedro Ruiz, as domestics.

In December 1801, when she was 14, she was arrested for complicity in a robbery at the house of her employer. It was alleged that her boyfriend—a man in his thirties known as Carlos Gonzales—was given access to the house by Calderón to rob 2,000 Spanish dollars that her employer kept in a strongbox in the kitchen.

Looking for evidence to convict Gonzales Ruiz took Calderón into custody for questioning The governor became interested in the case because ...

Article

Clamorgan, Cyprian  

Julie Winch

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

writer, adventurer, and perennial litigant, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the grandson of Jacques Clamorgan, a French entrepreneur and land speculator. Jacques died in 1814, leaving as his heirs the four children he had fathered with his various slaves whom he then emancipated. One of those children, Apoline, was Cyprian Clamorgan's mother. Apoline never married. Instead, she lived with a series of white “protectors.” A Catholic by upbringing in a deeply Catholic community, she presented each of her children for baptism at the Old Cathedral and revealed to the priest the name of the father so it could be entered in the baptismal register. However, she did not live long enough to have Cyprian baptized, and the identity of his father died with her.

Clamorgan and his siblings, Louis, Henry, and Louise, were left in the care of a white neighbor, Charles Collins ...

Article

Díaz, María Chiquinquirá  

María Eugenia Chaves Maldonado

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
31 May 2017

was born near the city of Guayaquil, on the Pacific coast of present-day Ecuador, but then part of the Royal Audience of Quito, in the Viceroyalty of Peru. When María Chiquinquirá was around 45, she decided to legally claim her own and her daughter’s freedom in a major legal battle that lasted nearly five years, from 1794 to 1798. She was the daughter of an African woman brought as a slave to Guayaquil, presumably in 1730 Named María Antonia she was one of the many slaves belonging to the Cepeda family among the most influential and richest in Guayaquil Some years before Díaz was born María Antonia had become infected with leprosy Expelled from the family house she finally died abandoned in a miserable hut by the Baba River in the mountainous outskirts of the city Her illness did not prevent her from becoming pregnant with several offspring ...

Article

Doner, Sam  

Karen E. Sutton

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

one of about 635 African American males involved in the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis (TSUS), was the son of Wiley West and Mae Burke, born in Tuskegee, Macon County, Alabama. His parents put him up for adoption at an early age, and Sam's adoptive parents raised him. Sam had at least one sibling, Willie Doner A lifelong resident of Macon County Doner attended Cooper Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church most of his life His favorite adult pastime was serving there as a deacon until he became too ill to attend services Local churches served as recruiting centers for the Tuskegee study Doner worked as a school bus driver and a farmer and owned over ten acres of land He married Emily Chambliss Though there were no children born to that union they adopted a son Willie M Doner After his wife died Doner developed a relationship ...

Article

Dupuy, Charlotte  

Carla J. Jones

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

slave litigant, was born Charlotte Stanley on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the daughter of Rachel and George Stanley. Charlotte, commonly known as Lotty, spent her childhood enslaved, along with her mother and two siblings, by Daniel Parker in Dorchester County, Maryland. Whether George Stanley was born a slave is uncertain, but he was free by 1792 when he purchased Rachel and Charlotte's siblings Leah and Jonathan. He immediately manumitted his wife and stipulated the freedom of the two children upon their reaching the legal age. Charlotte, for reasons that are still unclear, remained enslaved in Parker's household until age nine, when she was sold to James Condon for one hundred dollars Condon was a tradesman who lived nearby with his wife and at least one other slave Rachel paid her daughter frequent visits and the Condons may have promised Charlotte eventual freedom Condon s ...

Article

Ellington, Arthur “Yank”  

Steven J. Niven

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

lynching survivor and litigant, was born in Noxubee County, Mississippi, to parents whose names are unknown. Nothing is known of his early life, but around 1932 he married a woman named Kate, with whom he had two children. They moved a few miles south of Noxubee, to Scooba in Kemper County, where he began working as a farm laborer for Raymond Stuart, a prominent white planter. Ellington's new home county, known since Reconstruction as “Bloody Kemper” because of its reputation for racial violence, had witnessed fourteen lynchings between 1883 and 1930, all of them of African Americans. Indeed, whites in Kemper lynched blacks at twice the rate of other counties in Mississippi, the state with the nation's worst record for lynching.

On 30 March 1934 Ellington nearly became the fifteenth black man lynched in Bloody Kemper following the discovery of his employer s dead body Raymond ...

Article

Fisher, Ada Lois Sipuel  

Paul Finkelman

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

civil rights pioneer, lawyer, and educator, was born Ada Louis Sipuel in Chickasha, Oklahoma, the daughter of Travis B. Sipuel, a minister and later bishop of the Church of Christ in God, one of the largest black Pentecostal churches in the United States, and Martha Bell Smith, the child of a former slave. Her parents moved to Chickasaw, Oklahoma, shortly after the Tulsa race riot of 1921.Ada s brother Lemuel had initially planned to challenge the segregationist policies of the University of Oklahoma After returning from service in World War II however he went to Howard University Law School because he did not want to delay his career with protracted litigation Ada who was younger and had been in college during the war was willing to delay her legal career for the opportunity to challenge segregation She entered Arkansas A M College on ...

Article

Fisher, Ada Lois Sipuel  

Paul Finkelman

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
21 January 1999
Published online:
01 December 2006

Fisher, Ada Lois Sipuel (08 February 1924–18 October 1995), civil rights pioneer, lawyer, and educator, was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma, the daughter of Travis B. Sipuel, a minister and later bishop of the Church of Christ in God, one of the largest black Pentecostal churches in the United States, and Martha Bell Smith, the child of a former slave. Her parents moved to Chickasaw, Oklahoma, shortly after the Tulsa race riot of 1921.

Her brother Lemuel had initially planned to challenge the segregationist policies of the University of Oklahoma After returning from service in World War II he went to Howard University Law School instead because he did not want to delay his career with protracted litigation Ada who was younger and had been in college during the war was willing to delay her legal career for the opportunity to challenge segregation She entered Arkansas A M ...

Article

Fisher, Ada Lois Sipuel  

Paul Finkelman

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
19 May 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

The daughter of a minister, Ada Lois Sipuel was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma. Her brother had planned to challenge the segregationist policies of the University of Oklahoma but instead went to Howard University Law School, in part because he did not want to delay his career, having already been delayed by serving in World War II. Ada, who was younger and who had been in college during the war, was willing to delay her legal career in order to challenge segregation.

In 1946 Fisher applied for admission to the University of Oklahoma Law School but was denied because of her race. A lengthy court battle ensued. In 1948 the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Oklahoma must provide instruction for blacks equal to that given whites Unfortunately since this decision did not invalidate segregated education the regents created the Langston University School of Law located at the ...

Article

Freeman, Elizabeth  

Xiomara Santamarina

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

civil rights litigant, known as Mum Bett, was born a slave in Claverack, New York, most likely to African parents. Mum Bett and her sister were owned by the Dutch Hogeboom family in Claverack. At an uncertain date, the sisters were sold to the family of John Ashley, a judge in the Massachusetts Court of Common Pleas and a prominent citizen of Sheffield, Massachusetts. Little is known about Mum Bett's life with the Ashleys, but it probably resembled the life of many northern slaves during the eighteenth century. Most slaves lived in small households in close proximity to their owners and performed a wide range of tasks to support the North's diversified economy.

Mum Bett's decision to sue for freedom was sparked by an incident of cruelty that is prominent in accounts of her life. When her mistress, Hannah Ashley struck Mum Bett s sister in ...

Article

Freeman, Elizabeth  

Taunya Lovell Banks

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
19 May 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

in Massachusetts in 1781. “I heard that paper read yesterday that says, ‘all men are born equal, and that every man has a right to freedom.’ I am not a dumb critter; won’t the law give me my freedom?” According to Catherine Sedgewick, Elizabeth Freeman said this to Theodore Sedgewick, a young Massachusetts lawyer who was Catherine’s father.

Elizabeth Freeman, an enslaved black woman also known as Mum Bett (or Mumbet), was born in Claverack, New York, and sold to Colonel John Ashley of Sheffield Massachusetts She approached Theodore Sedgewick after hearing the Declaration of Independence read at the village meetinghouse in Sheffield Another account claims that Freeman overheard talk about the Massachusetts state constitutional provision while waiting on tables There is at least one possible explanation for the conflict over the legal source of Freeman s claim She may have asked about the Declaration of ...

Article

Freeman, Elizabeth (Mumbet, Mum Bett)  

Bethany K. Dumas

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Elizabeth Freeman was born either in New York or Massachusetts, the daughter of parents probably born in Africa. She apparently became the slave of Pieter Hogeboom of New York quite early. The only trace of her parents is Freeman's bequest to her daughter of two articles of clothing—a black silk gown given to Freeman by her father as a gift, and another gown that supposedly belonged to Freeman's mother. During her lifetime and even after her death, she was known as “Mum Bett” or “Mumbet,” a name derived from “Elizabeth.” Lacking a surname for most of her life, she sued for freedom under the name “Bett” and adopted the name “Elizabeth Freeman” after winning her lawsuit in 1781.

The proposed dates for her birth, which range from 1732 to 1744 are derived from an estimate carved on her tombstone suggesting that she was about eighty five ...

Article

Graweere, John  

Steven J. Niven

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

servant and legal pioneer, was born Joao Geaween in Africa, probably in Angola, and was among the first generation of Africans captured and brought to the English colony of Virginia in the late 1620s and early 1630s. At that time, indentured servants from the British Isles vastly outnumbered the few hundred Africans in the colony. Graweere worked as a servant near James City for a white colonist, William Evans It is not clear whether Graweere was a servant for life or for a fixed term but like most early Virginia settlers white and black he probably helped to cultivate and harvest his master s tobacco which became the colony s staple export commodity in the 1620s Court records show however that Evans also allowed his servant Graweere to keep hogs and make the best benefit thereof to himself provided that Evans might have half the increase of any ...

Article

Green, Marlon D.  

Flint Whitlock

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

the first African American commercial passenger airline pilot, was born in El Dorado, Arkansas, the son of McKinley Green, a domestic servant for a wealthy El Dorado dentist and oilman, and Lucy Longmyre. In 1944, due to the influence of a charismatic priest, the five Green siblings, with the exception of one brother, converted from Baptism to Roman Catholicism. Green later earned a scholarship to complete his senior year of high school at the Xavier Preparatory School, affiliated with Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

At Xavier Prep Green did well academically graduating at the top of his class His goal was to attend Epiphany Apostolic College a Josephite seminary in Newburgh on the Hudson New York and study for the priesthood However during his first semester he was wrongly diagnosed with a medical condition and was dismissed from the school Seeking a new direction for his ...

Article

Hawkins, Connie  

Steven B. Jacobson

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

basketball player, was born Cornelius Hawkins in Brooklyn, New York, the fifth of six children of Isaiah Hawkins, a sometime railroad employee, and Dorothy Hawkins, a nursery school cook. When many affluent residents of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant section moved to the suburbs after World War II, Hawkins's family stayed behind in a coldwater flat. His father left the family when Hawkins was nine years old, and his mother was stricken with blindness during Hawkins's teenage years. Hawkins typically had only one shirt, one pair of pants, and taped-together shoes with cardboard covering holes in the soles, until basketball boosters began providing him with clothes and spending money during his sophomore year of high school—a common occurrence at the time.

Hawkins learned basketball on the highly competitive playgrounds of Brooklyn and adjacent Queens Known for spectacular individual play he could jump high enough to dunk by age eleven and ...

Article

Hawkins, Virgil Darnell  

Kristal L. Enter

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

activist and lawyer, was born in Leesburg, Florida, and graduated from high school in 1930. He then attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, but soon left because of the hardships of the Great Depression. Hawkins married Ida (maiden name unknown) and returned to Florida to sell insurance, and sometimes took on teaching positions. Hawkins was later a resident of Daytona Beach, Florida, and received his bachelor's degree from Bethune-Cookman College in 1952.

Seeking a law degree, Hawkins applied to, and was rejected from, the University of Florida Law School. At this time, the University of Florida in Gainesville, like other Southern universities, was segregated and barred African Americans from being admitted. After his application was rejected, Hawkins then filed a lawsuit against the law school in 1949 along with five other black applicants with the help of the attorneys of the National Association for the Advancement of ...

Article

Hylas, John, and Hylas, Mary  

Leila Kamali

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
19 March 2007
Published online:
30 September 2008

Former slaves whose kidnapping case was fought by the 18th‐century abolitionist Granville Sharp. John Hylas and his wife, Mary, were both born in Barbados. In the year 1754 they were each brought to England—John by his mistress, Judith Aleyne, and Mary by her master and mistress, Mr and Mrs Newton. They met in England, and married with the consent of their owners in 1758. After their marriage John Hylas was set free, and the couple lived happily together until, in 1766, Mary was kidnapped by her former owners and sent to the West Indies to be sold as a slave.

Having heard of Granville Sharp's fight for the liberty of Jonathan Strong, in 1768 John Hylas approached Sharp, who prepared a memorandum enabling him to begin an action against Newton.

The court found in favour of Hylas, who was awarded 1s nominal ...