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Article

Achmat, Adurrazack  

Mandisa Mbali

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

antiapartheid, gay rights, AIDS, and human rights activist, was born in Johannesburg in South Africa. Adurrazack (“Zackie”) Achmat was of Cape Malay heritage. His father, Suleiman Achmat, was a member of the South African Communist Party and his mother, Mymoena, was a trade union shop steward. Achmat’s entry into politics began at the age of 14 with his participation in the 1976 student uprising. He was detained in 1977 for burning down his high school in Salt River to demonstrate his support for the uprising. Achmat obtained a bachelor of arts honors degree in English literature from the University of the Western Cape in 1992.

He spent much of the period between 1976 and 1980 in detention for his opposition to the apartheid system. It was also in this period that Achmat read the then-banned works of Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky and the progressive academic journal Work in ...

Article

Agboyibo, Yawovi Madji  

Jeremy Rich

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

human rights activist and politician, was born in the southern Togolese town of Kouvé on 31 December 1943. His father, Soklou Agboyibo, and his mother, Doafio, were both Catholics from the Mina ethnic community. After completing his primary and secondary studies in Togo, Agboyibo traveled abroad for his graduate education. He received degrees from institutions of higher learning in France, the Ivory Coast, and Senegal. He was a lawyer by training and chose to remain in Togo under the brutal dictatorship of Étienne Gnassingbé Eyadéma in the 1980s. Eyadéma’s regime nevertheless allowed Agboyibo to run for a seat in the Togolese parliament in 1985 as an independent, even though Togo was a one-party state at the time. Two years later, Agboyibo formed the Commission Nationale des Droits de l’Homme (CNDH), a human rights organization that condemned many of the human rights violations of the Eyadéma regime.

Agboyibo received international ...

Article

Ahmed, Suʿad Ibrahim  

Baqi<ayn>e Bedawi Muhammad

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

Sudanese educator and human rights activist for women’s rights and an advocate for freedom and democracy, was born on 30 May 1935 in Omdurman one of three cities that constitute the capital of Sudan Khartoum Khartoum North and Omdurman Her parents were originally from the Nubian region in northern Sudan Ahmed was the only female among her three siblings She grew up in an environment that helped shape her future life as a liberal and progressive individual Her father Ibrahim Ahmed was an engineer who worked as a teacher in Gordon Memorial College Sudan He played an active role in Sudan s independence movement and served as the first Sudanese Deputy to the Vice Chancellor of the University of Khartoum the first chairman of the University of Khartoum Senate a member of the Executive Council the first Sudanese Parliament and founder and president of Mutamar a l Khiregeen Graduates ...

Article

Albasini, João dos Santos  

Rosemary Elizabeth Galli

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

nationalist, journalist and indigenous rights advocate, was born in Magul, Mozambique, on 2 November 1876. His father, Francisco Albasini, married the granddaughter of the head of Maxacuene clan in the Portuguese colony’s capital; her name is not recorded. João dos Santos was also known by his Ronga nickname, Wadzinguele. His grandfather João Albasini, a Portuguese trader, later established himself and a second family in the republic of the Transvaal where he became the vice-consul of Portugal. João dos Santos Albasini received a limited education at the Catholic Mission of Saint José Lhenguene; secondary education was not available in Mozambique. However, he was a keen reader especially of political tracts and gained great facility in writing both Portuguese and Ronga. Sometime around 1897 Albasini married Bertha Carolina Heitor Mwatilo but the marriage was unhappy and they divorced in 1917. They had two children.

As Albasini reached adulthood Portugal defeated ...

Article

Alfonsín, Raúl Ricardo  

María de Lourdes Ghidoli

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

Alfonsín was born on 12 March 1927 in the city of Chascomús, Buenos Aires Province, with Spanish and German heritage on his father’s side and British on his mother’s. He was the eldest of Ana María Foulkes and Serafín Raúl Alfonsín’s six children. He married María Lorenza Barreneche on 4 February 1949, and they also had six children: Raúl Felipe, Ana María, Ricardo Luis, Marcela, María Inés, and Javier Ignacio. Only Ricardo followed in his father’s footsteps, though he entered politics in the 1990s, after his father’s presidency.

Alfonsín spent his childhood in Chascomús, where he attended primary school. As an adolescent, he entered the Liceo Militar General San Martín (General San Martín Military High School), located in Villa Ballester (Greater Buenos Aires). From there, he graduated in 1945 at the level of second lieutenant of the reserve Later he studied at the law school of the Universidad ...

Article

Alvarez Casildo, Celeo  

Glenn Chambers

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

dedicated to Afro-Honduran and indigenous causes, was born in the remote Garífuna village of Plaplaya, Gracias a Diós in the La Mosquitia region of Honduras. Little is known about his family and early life. Beginning in the 1990s he established an international reputation as one of the most vocal and visible advocates for the rights of the population of African descent in his home country of Honduras and the larger Central American region. His efforts at the national and international level to expose the plight of the Garífuna people in Honduras developed into the clearest strategy for addressing the economic disparities and the ethnic and racial discrimination that has hindered the advancement of the Afro-descended population for generations.

Alvarez moved to the Caribbean coastal town of La Ceiba at an early age with his family in search of better opportunities La Ceiba had long been a commercial center in Honduras ...

Article

Álvarez Nazareno, Carlos  

Viviana Parody

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

founding member of the Instituto afrodescendiente para el Estudio, la Investigación y el Desarrollo (AFRODES, Afro-descendant Institute for Studies, Research, and Development), activist for human rights, popular educator, and student of sociology, was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, to Gladis Nazareno and Carlos Humberto Álvarez. He was raised in the Barrio Palermo, more specifically on Calles Tacuarembó and later on Isla de Flores, off the coast of the city. He completed his primary education at the nearby Alicia Viera School and later began study at José Pedro Varela High School to complete his studies in the vicinity of Parque Rodó, where his father worked as a mechanic and automobile painter, and his mother worked as a factory and domestic worker.

Álvarez Nazareno s first experiences in the field of popular education occurred at the Espacio Multi Diversidad Franciscana Franciscan Multi Diversity Center part of the Christian Church of Montevideo on Calles ...

Article

Andaiye  

Joanne Collins-Gonsalves

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
24 October 2022

was born Sandra Williams on 11 September 1942 in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), to Frank and Hazel Williams. Her father was a medical doctor and her mother a nurse. During the 1970s Black Power rebellion in the Caribbean region, she changed her name to Andaiye, meaning “a daughter comes home.” She attended the Bishops’ High School, Georgetown, from 1961 to 1964 and then the University College of the West Indies (UCWI) at Mona, Jamaica, completing a B.A. with honors in French and Spanish. While at UCWI, she served as the secretary of the Guyana Society. Deciding against an academic career, she returned to Guyana in 1965 to prepare to join Guyana’s diplomatic service at independence in 1966, but a brief diplomatic training program led her to change her career course and pursue a future in education.

It was during this period that Andaiye engaged in discussions with the ...

Article

Antchouey, Laurent-Cyr  

Jeremy Rich

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 September 2015

human rights activist, was born in Libreville, Gabon in 1897 to a Mpongwe family. The small Mpongwe ethnic community residing in the Gabonese capital of Libreville had benefited from early access to missionary education. French colonial officials had annexed Mpongwe territory in the 1840s, which also marked the establishment of rival French Catholic and American Presbyterian schools in Libreville. Antchouey, like most Mpongwe, thus could attend the best schools in Gabon. Few details are available about his family. According to a French police report from the early 1920s, Antchouey's mother was still alive at that time. No information about his father is available. Like most Mpongwe in the 1890s, Antchouey attended Catholic primary school before eventually transferring to the city's École Monfort secondary school. There he attended classes with his cousin Louis Bigmann and the future French military hero Charles N Tchoréré During World War I Antchouey enlisted ...

Article

Araújo, Ubiratan Castro de  

Robert J. Cottrol

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

was born in Salvador, Bahia, on 22 December 1948. His scholarship chronicled Afro-Brazilian life, especially the experiences of people of African descent in his native Bahia, a state in northeastern Brazil with a strong Afro-Brazilian presence. Araújo’s political activism began with acts of resistance against Brazil’s military rulers in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while he was a university student, and would continue into the twenty-first century with his advocacy for measures such as affirmative action and reparations designed to eliminate the often striking racial inequalities in the South American nation.

Araújo’s curiosity about slavery and race developed early in his childhood, due in part to the presence of his great aunt Zefinha, who had been born a slave. In her eighties in the 1950s when Araújo was a child, Zefinha was in her teens when Brazil abolished slavery in 1888 The great aunt fascinated the future ...

Article

Asmal, Kader  

Thiven Reddy

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

South African academic, human rights campaigner, and respected veteran of the African National Congress (ANC) in exile, was born in Stanger, a small rural town in what is now KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Asmal was a founder of the British and Irish antiapartheid movements. He was also an academic, who taught law for almost three decades at Trinity College Dublin, during his exile from South Africa.

In the broad array of constituencies and opinions that has historically constituted the ANC, Asmal has consistently stood for liberal constitutionalism and human rights. This position was most strongly associated with the ANC during the latter days of apartheid, when the international solidarity movement, based largely in Western countries, was at its height.

A key member of the ANC s Constitutional Committee during the post apartheid negotiations period Asmal directly influenced the content of the democratic constitution which was hailed internationally as a truly progressive ...

Article

Atehortúa, Walter Nilson  

Sharon Ahcar

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

for the preservation of Afro-Colombian culture, was born Walter Nilson Aterhotúa Castillo on 9 June 1966 in Tumaco, in the department Nariño in the Southwest of Colombia’s Pacific Region. He is the son of Justo Atehortúa and Carolina Castillo. His parents separated when he was 4 years old, so he grew up between two cultures on the Pacific coast, the paisa culture of the department of Antioquia and the tumaqueña of Tumaco, which allowed him to have a unique perspective on life.

As an adolescent he moved to the city of Pasto (capital of Nariño), where he studied dance and theater at the Universidad de Nariño. He graduated from the Universidad Central in the late 1980s with a degree in social communications and journalism, where his thesis “El movimiento social afrocolombiano” (The Social Afro-Colombian Movement) highlighted his early thinking about issues of race.

Atehortúa then returned to Tumaco to work ...

Article

Báez, Cristian  

Juan Navarrete

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

was born in Arica, Chile, to an Afro-Chilean family that traces its roots to the slave community in the Azapa Valley. His early education took place in the public schools of Arica, and he later studied business administration at the Corporación Santo Tomás in the same city. Báez has received numerous postgraduate certificates in community organization, leadership, and human rights in Chile and abroad. He has been one of the most outstanding leaders and organizers of the black community of Arica, particularly through his rediscovery and promotion of the African roots of this northern Chilean city.

In 2003 Báez formed Lumbanga a community group that derives its name from a neighborhood on the northern fringes of the city and the scene for much of the culture and many of the customs of the Afro Chilean population which include dress styles dances and music reminiscent of Africa Lumbanga holds weekly ...

Article

Bailey, Amy Beckford  

Juanita de Barros

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

was born on 27 November to a middle-class family. Both of her parents (William Frederick Bailey and Anna Bailey) were trained as teachers and her father was the head of the Jamaica Union of Teachers. Bailey and most of her sisters followed their parents’ example; this was not surprising as teaching was one of the few “respectable” positions available to women of their class. After attending a technical college in Jamaica, Bailey found a position teaching secretarial skills, a job she held from 1919 to 1958 The senior Baileys also inspired their children to devote themselves to civic service For Amy Bailey the political turbulence of the 1930s played an important role in this respect As she noted in an interview with Jamaican writer Erna Brodber many years later they inspired her activism and political engagement Something of this may be seen in her many writings from the 1930s ...

Article

Baraka, Ajamu  

Gerardo Del Guercio

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 September 2018

was born Michael Elliot Ball in Plymouth, Indiana, the oldest of five children of Raymond and Beverly Ball. His father worked odd jobs until he ultimately retired as a post office worker; his mother was a domestic and a nurse in senior citizen homes. During Baraka’s early childhood, his family enjoyed a middle class existence on the South Side of Chicago until his parents separated in 1963 Baraka and his siblings moved with their mother to Woodlawn an area known as one of the worst slums on Chicago s South Side After his mother became financially unable to care for her children they were sent to live with their father at Chatham Park an area considered one of Chicago s most desirable middle class neighborhoods Baraka and his siblings began to feel the blows of class discrimination when his father became barely able to make ends meet Baraka wedded ...

Article

Barbour-James, John Alexander  

Jeffrey Green

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

was born in the Berbice-Courantyne region of British Guiana on 5 June 1867, the son of Bethune James, a farmer, and Elizabeth Dunn, both of African descent. A basic education at the Congregational School in Hope Town, Bath School, and Rodborough House School in Berbice enabled him to teach younger children, and fitted him for employment as a clerk in the colony’s postal service from around 1892. He studied telegraphy and started a law course by correspondence. At the age of 20 he was a postmaster in Georgetown. As district postmaster at Belfield, he organized self-help projects and was active in the Anglican Church. He married Caroline Louisa Ethelena Spooner (c. 1873–1917) on 1 August 1894; they had eight children, the third named in honor of Governor Walter Sendall, who encouraged black endeavors. From 1896 Barbour James s Victoria Belfield Agricultural Society involved planters peasant ...

Article

Barrow Noad, Alberto Silvestre  

Yohan Lee

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

was born in Panama City, Panama, on 24 February 1952, to Barbadian descendants. He attended the Instituto Fermin Naudeau in Panama City and in 1973 went on to the University of Panama, graduating in 1980 with a degree in law and political science and certification to practice before the Supreme Court of Panama.

Barrow began his career as a practicing labor attorney and later went on to work at several nongovernmental organizations including the World University Service SUM Panama Workshop of Labor and Social Studies the Latin American Regional Office of the International Federation of Building and Wood Workers based in Geneva Switzerland and the regional offices of the Union Network International He served in various capacities in the Ministry of Education as a legal assistance attorney and as the director of copyrights for the Republic of Panama He also served in the Office of Equal Opportunity for the ...

Article

Belton, Sharon Sayles  

Theresa W. Bennett-Wilkes

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
09 February 2009
Published online:
01 December 2009

politician and human relations advocate. In November 1993 Sayles Belton made history as the first African American and first female elected mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota. A native of Minneapolis, she was born Sharon Sayles, the daughter of Bill Sayles, the city's first African American car salesman, and Marian Sayles. After her parents divorced, Sayles Belton lived briefly with her mother. Marian Sayles moved to Cleveland, and Sayles Belton then lived with her father and stepmother. During her high school years she volunteered as a candy striper, that is, a nurse's assistant, an experience that exposed her to human suffering.

Sayles Belton attended Macalester College in Saint Paul Minnesota She continued to do volunteer work registering African Americans to vote in Jackson Mississippi She became pregnant during her senior year and her daughter was born with brain damage Unmarried and unemployed Sayles Belton dropped out of school and was ...

Article

Burns, Haywood  

Joseph Wilson and David Addams

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
09 February 2009
Published online:
01 December 2009

a central figure in the civil rights and human rights movement in the United States as an activist, attorney, and scholar. Born in New York City in 1940, William Haywood Burns helped integrate the swimming pool in Peekskill, New York, at fifteen years of age and was a leader in the struggle for human rights and civil rights over the next four decades. He graduated from Harvard College in 1962. As a law student at Yale University, he participated in the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi. He already had authored The Voices of Negro Protest (1963), which critiqued the leadership and mass character of the civil rights movement, and throughout his career he contributed chapters to other books. He was assistant counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in the late 1960s. Later he served as general counsel to Martin Luther King Jr.'s ...

Article

Cameron, Edwin  

Graeme Reid

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

South African human rights lawyer, Rhodes Scholar, and a Justice of South Africa’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on 15 February 1953, to Kenneth Hughson Cameron, an electrician, and Salome Schoeman Cameron. He completed his schooling at Pretoria Boys’ High School and obtained a BA Law and an Honors degree in Latin, both cum laude, at Stellenbosch University. He lectured in Latin and Classical Studies before studying at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. At Oxford he obtained a BA in Jurisprudence and the Bachelor of Civil Law, earning first-class honors and the top law prizes. Cameron received his LLB from the University of South Africa, and won the medal for the best law graduate.

Cameron practiced at the Johannesburg Bar from 1983 to 1994. From 1986 he was a human rights lawyer based at the University of the Witwatersrand s Centre ...