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born in Guaraçu, state of Espirito Santo, Brazil, on 28 July 1913 and known to family, friends, and acquaintances as “Rodrigues” or “Rodrigues Alves.” He lost his mother, Maria da Conceição Fernando Alves, at the age of 7 and went to work with his father, Hipólito Rodrigues Alves, farming one of his small plots of land. As a boy and youth, Rodrigues Alves worked rural jobs, driving cattle and running donkeys and burros. He worked for the state fire department and then enlisted in the army, where he rose to the rank of corporal.

In 1932 the neighboring state of São Paulo declared its Constitutionalist Revolution Rodrigues Alves was among the troops sent to quash the rebellion When federal forces prevailed Rodrigues Alves s unit moved to São Paulo He went to live at a Mrs Fortunata s boarding house where black activist Abdias Nascimento then also a young ...

and the first “First Lady” of independent Jamaica, was born Gladys Maud Longbridge on 8 March 1912 in Parson Reid, Westmoreland, Jamaica, to working-class parents, Rebecca Blackwood and Frank Longbridge. Lady Bustamante, in her Memoirs, identified the role of her family (including her extended family), the church, school, and the local community in molding her early years and inculcating the values of responsibility and giving back to others. She attended the Ashton Primary School, which was run by the Moravian Church. As an ambitious 18-year-old, she moved to Kingston, the island’s capital, to pursue further education at Tutorial Commercial College, where she studied to be a secretary. It was in Kingston that she began her journey to become associated with Jamaica’s early trade union movement and a contributor to the project of nation-building.

Bustamante described her early life in rural western Jamaica as happy and carefree She was involved ...

was born Freda Celeste Alexander to Frederick Alexander, a steward for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad Company and Eleanor Alexander, originally from Massachusetts, a nurse. She was the younger of two daughters. The much-traveled Alexander family considered Topeka home base at the time of DeKnight’s birth.

Because their mother performed traveling nurse duties at the time their father died, both sisters moved with their aunt to Mitchell, South Dakota, home to the state’s elaborate Corn Palace. They lived with their mother’s brother, Paul Scott, a regionally celebrated caterer, and his Mississippi-born wife, Mamie, whom the girls grew to call Mama Scott.

DeKnight credits growing up in Papa and Mama Scott’s hard-working, food-oriented household, where most ingredients were sourced from their farmland and smokehouse, as the prime inspiration for her recipe-centered future.

Due to the small population of Black students growing up in South Dakota during the early decades ...

was born in Humacao, Puerto Rico, on 19 September 1922 to Manuel Diaz Gomez, a printmaker, musician, and bodega owner, and Filomena Zoe Velazquez, a seamstress. With his family, Diaz migrated to New York City at the age of 5 in 1927. While training for the military during World War II in Biloxi, Mississippi, Diaz experienced Jim Crow racism for the first time in his life. After being denied service at a bar and a promotion in the military because of the color of his skin, Diaz came to develop a “kinship toward black people.” Upon returning home, Diaz earned a B.A. at the City College of New York (CCNY) in 1951 and an M.S. at Columbia University’s School of Social Work in 1953 Black activists whom Diaz met as a student heavily influenced his intellectual and political trajectory At CCNY he joined the campus chapter of the ...

was born in Dunlop, Kansas, the daughter of Andrew Gayden of Mississippi and Frances J. Johnson of Tennessee. Gayden had two brothers and two sisters and many relatives living throughout Morris County where Dunlop is situated. She had grandparents on either side who were compelled to move to Kansas in the exodus from the South by many African Americans after the Civil War during the period of Reconstruction.

Gayden attended Dunlop s only Black elementary school and enrolled in an integrated high school She later entered the teacher s college in Emporia Kansas After teaching for one year Gayden became unsatisfied with this career and the general limits placed on Black women with professional aspirations Inspired by her father s intellectual curiosity and visits by family friends who discussed politics religion and culture she imagined herself pursuing an exciting law career in Chicago after hearing from a cousin who lived ...

peace activist, social worker, women's rights advocate, and 2011Nobel Laureate, was born on 1 February 1972 in central Liberia and raised in the country's capital, Monrovia. Her father worked as the head radio technician and liaison to the United States for the government of Liberia's National Security Agency. Her father was hired under President William Tolbert, was arrested and jailed for nine months when Samuel Doe seized power in 1980, and was reinstated upon his release. He resigned with the election of Charles Taylor in 1997 and became head of security at St. Peters Catholic Church. Her mother was a dispensing pharmacist at several hospitals in Monrovia before the outbreak of war.

Gbowee graduated from B.W. Harris Episcopal High, one of Monrovia's best high schools. In March 1990 she began classes at the University of Liberia with the dream of becoming a doctor ...

for African Americans and Mexican Americans in the Bay Area of California, was born to two Afro-Cuban cigar workers (Ámparo and Antonio Grillo) in the Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa, Florida, on 14 June 1919. His memoir Black Cuban, Black American describes his evolving racial consciousness, from a young Afro-Cuban in Jim Crow Tampa to a fully realized identification as a “black American” by the time he was discharged from the army in 1945 The policy of racial uplift on the part of African American elites began Grillo s transformation mentored by Tampa s African American community Grillo graduated from the prestigious Dunbar High School in Washington D C Here Grillo was exposed to D C s intellectual elite who in turn facilitated his graduation from the historically black Xavier University in New Orleans His early life experiences provide us with a regional view of a complex set ...

George Edmund Haynes was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the son of Louis Haynes, an occasional laborer, and Mattie Sloan, a domestic servant. He was raised by devout, hard-working, poorly educated parents. His mother stressed that education and good character were paths to improvement. She moved with Haynes and his sister to Hot Springs, a city with better educational opportunities than Pine Bluff. Haynes attended Fisk University, completing his B.A. in 1903. His record at Fisk enabled him to go to Yale, where he earned an M.A. in sociology in 1904. He also won a scholarship to Yale's Divinity School but withdrew early in 1905 to help fund his sister's schooling.

In 1905 Haynes became secretary of the Colored Men's Department of the International (segregated) YMCA, traveling to African American colleges throughout the nation from 1905 to 1908 During this period he encountered ...

public servant and the first African American secretary of labor. Alexis Herman is among the few African American women who as a public servant rose to great heights through innovative and entrepreneurial skills. She was born in Mobile, Alabama, on 16 July 1947 and was educated at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin (1965–1967), Spring Hill College in Mobile (1967), Xavier University in New Orleans (1969), and the University of South Alabama (1970–1972 Inspired by the civil rights movements of the 1960s as well as by the women s and labor movements of the 1970s Herman worked strenuously to desegregate her old high school in Mobile During her childhood she looked on in awe when her father sued the Democratic Party to let African Americans vote he later became the first African American wardsman in Alabama As a proactive outreach worker in Pascagoula ...

As a community activist, businesswoman, and political manager, Alexis Herman has devoted her life to resolving labor issues and advocating for American workers. Throughout her thirty-five-year career, Herman has been successful in translating her experiences with workers into effective labor policy. Having dealt with both gender and racial discrimination herself, Herman has dedicated her life to exposing institutional barriers and developing policies based on “common sense ideas that improve the bottom line.”

Alexis Margaret Herman was born in Mobile, Alabama. After graduating from Heart of Mary High School in 1965, Herman moved to Wisconsin, where she attended Edgewood College. In 1967 she transferred to Spring Hill College in Mobile before going on to Xavier University in New Orleans, where in 1969 she received her BS. Herman later did graduate work at the University of South Alabama while pursuing a career in community activism.

Herman s early career provided ...

Campbell Carrington Johnson was born in Washington, D.C., on September 30, 1895, the son of clergyman William Henry and Ellen Berry (Lee) Johnson. His father served at different periods as pastor of Israel Baptist Church in Washington and Beulah and Liberty Baptist churches in Alexandria, Virginia. The young Johnson received his education in those cities. Following his graduation from Washington's M Street High School in 1913, he worked at various jobs to earn college tuition, enrolling in Howard University, Washington, D.C., in the fall of that year. When he was forced by lack of funds to withdraw before the school year was over, Johnson returned to work, but he reentered Howard in 1915. World War I (1914–1919) interrupted his education once again in 1917 He volunteered and entered the Officers Training Corps at Fort Des Moines Iowa receiving his commission as ...

teacher, social worker, and antiapartheid activist in South Africa, was born Helen Beatrice May Fennell in Sussex, England, on 8 April 1905. She grew up in London and graduated with a degree in English from King’s College, the University of London, in 1927. She taught at the Mahbubia School for girls in Hyderabad, India, from 1927 to 1930. After a serious horse-riding accident, she resigned and moved to South Africa in 1931 to take up a less demanding post at a school in Durban. Between 1942 and 1946 she worked full time as a Welfare and Information Officer in the South African Air Force, and during this period she learned a great deal about black South Africans’ extensive poverty. Consequently, after World War II, she trained as a social worker.

In 1951 Joseph became secretary of the Medical Aid Society of the Transvaal Clothing Industry In ...

was born in Mon Chagrin Street, San Fernando, in south Trinidad. Her father was a migrant to Trinidad from Grenada, while her mother was a native of the island. Lewis first attended St. Paul’s Primary Anglican School and later St. Gabriel’s Girls’ Roman Catholic School. Following her successful graduation from primary school, Lewis became a schoolteacher in training. She married in 1941, but two years later, that union was dissolved and she rejoined her parents and siblings, who had moved to the Mon Repos Housing Scheme, San Fernando. Her post-primary education included shorthand and typewriting lessons (Cummings, 2009 pp 25 and 30 After leaving school she became a secretary to the law practitioner Algernon Birkett While he was generally viewed by the Trinidad public as an unqualified grass roots lawyer his contacts opened the way for Lewis to become involved in issues affecting the masses and to ...

Jamaicanpoet, playwright, and journalist born in the county parish of St Elizabeth. As the daughter of a middle‐class Baptist minister, Marson's intellectual development took place within the context of a religious home and the conservative and colonial Hampton high school, where she had won a scholarship place. When Marson left school in 1922, she directed her studies at commerce and secretarial work, and her decision to work with the Salvation Army and the YMCA in Kingston was an early indication of her commitment to ideas of social justice. Her interests in journalism were also evident, and in 1928 she founded and edited her own monthly journal, The Cosmopolitan: A Monthly Magazine for the Business Youth of Jamaica and the Official Organ of the Stenographers' Association The editorial statement of this bold and defiantly modern publication with a strong emphasis on women s issues proclaimed This ...

In England, her adopted home for almost twenty years, Una M. Marson is remembered as “Britain's first black feminist.” Marson was born in a rural village in Jamaica in 1905, the daughter of a pastor. She received a scholarship to the prestigious Hampton School, a girls' boarding school, and after graduation moved to Kingston, where she supported herself as a social worker and began publishing poetry and plays.

In 1928 Marson founded and edited the magazine The Cosmopolitan, an early feminist publication that championed Jamaican women. It soon folded, but her writings continued to receive notice; in 1930 she received the Institute of Jamaica's Musgrave Medal for Tropic Reveries, her first collection of poetry. In 1932 Marson became one of the first of many twentieth-century Caribbean writers who emigrated to London, seeking wider horizons.

Marson continued publishing her plays and poetry in England and she also ...

and the first black woman elected to political office in Jamaica, was born Mary Lenora Morris in Newmarket, St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica in 1886. She later married Zechariah Knibb, a foreman. Raised in the Moravian Church, she had an impressive career as an educator and social activist, graduating from the venerable Shortwood Teachers’ College in Kingston, the Jamaican capital, in the early twentieth century. She then established the Morris-Knibb Preparatory School in the capital, in 1928, also serving as its first principal. In addition, she cofounded and served as president of the Women’s Liberal Club in 1936. She also founded the Shortwood Old Girls’ Association in 1937 and the following year in the wake of a series of labor disputes across the island Morris Knibb became a prominent member of the National Reform Association the forerunner of the People s National Party PNP alongside its future ...

Louis Reyes Rivera, born in New York, New York, was deeply influenced by the Black Power Movement in the Caribbean and by Black Power in the United States. His poems have been published in several collections of work by many artists, including Aloud Voices from the Nuyoricans Poets ...

and ambassador for the government of Trinidad and Tobago under the leadership of the People’s National Movement (PNM) at a time when few women participated in the country’s political affairs, was christened Isabel Ursula Cadogan at birth. She was born on 24 July 1911 in San Fernando Trinidad Her father Thomas was a tailor and her mother Maude was a housewife Teshea grew up in Princes Town in South Trinidad and attended the Princes Town Government Primary School Limited opportunities and the difficulties involved in accessing secondary education in early twentieth century Trinidad and Tobago were partly responsible for Teshea becoming a pupil teacher student teacher upon her completion of education at the primary level Her second major job was in the dairy branch of the Petit Morne Sugar Estate in Ste Madeleine she was later transferred to the sugar office to perform clerical duties When Teshea migrated from ...

educator and activist. Forrester B. Washington was born in about 1888 in Salem, Massachusetts. He attended many universities, including Columbia University, the University of Michigan, Tufts University—where he was the first African American to graduate, in 1909—and Harvard University, where he undertook graduate studies. He held a number of leadership positions in which he advocated for the rights of African American citizens and the responsibilities of the government.

In 1916 Washington was sent to Detroit Michigan to establish the city s chapter of the Urban League for which his background in social work was indispensable The Urban League s mission was to help people of color reach their full potentials and to help those migrating from rural areas acclimate to life in the city Washington helped the league organize in the areas of recreation education health services and welfare He even brought in housekeeping training programs to teach ...

social worker and president of the National Urban League whose negotiation and fundraising efforts garnered millions of dollars in support of civil rights and urban empowerment initiatives. Whitney M. Young Jr. was born in Lincoln Ridge, Kentucky, to Laura Ray Young, the country's second black postmistress, and Whitney M. Young Sr., president of Lincoln Institute, the local high school modeled after Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute. Young graduated valedictorian from the Institute and attended Kentucky State College for Negroes (later Kentucky State University). In 1944, he married Margaret Buckner, also a graduate of Kentucky State. Young served in the army during World War II, where Jim Crow policies prompted protests on the home front and heightened tensions between white officers and black soldiers abroad. Young proved an effective mediator, and this experience inspired him to pursue a career in social work and race relations. In 1946 ...