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Article

Delia  

John Garst

Article

Publication History:

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

woman whose murder is described in the ballad “Delia,” also known as “Delia('s) Gone” and “One More Rounder Gone,” was born Delia Green in Savannah, Georgia. Nothing is known about her early life except that in 1900 she lived with her mother at 113 Ann Street. Moses “Cooney” (or “Mose”) Houston (pronounced “HOUSE-tun”) was also born in 1886. In 1900 he lived with his mother at 123 Farm Street, five blocks west of Delia's home. Two blocks southeast of her home was 509 Harrison Street, where Delia worked for Emma West. These addresses are all in Yamacraw, a famed African American neighborhood in Savannah.

By Christmas Eve 1900 Cooney and Delia had been seeing each other for about four months. Around 7 p.m. Cooney went to the West house looking for Delia Emma s husband Willie sent Cooney out to get beer and whiskey and to pick up ...

Article

Europe, James Reese  

Reid Badger

Article

Publication History:

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

music administrator, conductor, and composer, was born in Mobile, Alabama, the son of Henry J. Europe, an Internal Revenue Service employee and Baptist minister, and Lorraine Saxon. Following the loss of his position with the Port of Mobile at the end of the Reconstruction, Europe's father moved his family to Washington, D.C., in 1890 to accept a position with the U.S. Postal Service. Both of Europe's parents were musical, as were some of his siblings. Europe attended the elite M Street High School for blacks and studied violin, piano, and composition with Enrico Hurlei of the U.S. Marine Corps band and with Joseph Douglass, the grandson of Frederick Douglass.

Following the death of his father in 1900 Europe moved to New York City There he became associated with many of the leading figures in black musical theater which was then emerging from the ...

Article

Jackson, Andrew C.  

Charles Rosenberg

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 May 2018

described by William and Charles Mayo, the founders of the Mayo Clinic, as “the most able Negro surgeon in America” was murdered by a mob during the Tulsa, Oklahoma, riots of 1921. Jackson was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of Townsend (sometimes given as Talgris) and Sophronia Jackson, and grew up in Guthrie, Oklahoma. His middle name was either Christian or Chester.

Townsend Jackson, a police officer in Memphis, fled the city with his family as a mob targeted their home in 1889. Just in time for the Oklahoma land rush that year, he settled in Guthrie, where he was a justice of the peace, a barber, and a police officer. Townsend Jackson owned the family home. In 1900, Andrew Jackson and his older brother also named Townsend worked as porters while their older sister Minnie taught school The neighborhood where ...

Article

Leftwich, John C.  

Melissa Nicole Stuckey

Article

Publication History:

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

educator and newspaper editor, was born John Carter Leftwich in Forkland, Alabama, the eldest of the eight children of Frances Edge and Lloyd Leftwich. From 1872 to 1876 Lloyd Leftwich served as one of Alabama's last black state senators. John Leftwich and his siblings grew up on the 122-acre farm his parents purchased from Lloyd Leftwich's former owner. The former slaves instilled in their children the importance of religion and education. Not only did the couple learn to read and write after the Civil War but they also donated a portion of their property for the construction of Lloyd Chapel Baptist Church and Lloyd Elementary School. Remarkable for the time period, most of their eight children became college graduates.

In 1886 Leftwich entered Selma University in Selma, Alabama. Unhappy there, he wrote to Booker T. Washington for permission to transfer to Tuskegee Institute and he offered to ...

Article

Malcolm X  

Clayborne Carson

Article

Publication History:

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

Islamic minister and political leader, also known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, the fourth of five children of Earl Little and Louise (also Louisa) Norton, both activists in the Universal Negro Improvement Association established by Marcus Garvey. Earl Little, a Georgia-born itinerant Baptist preacher, encountered considerable racial harassment because of his black nationalist views. He moved his family several times before settling in Michigan, purchasing a home in 1929 on the outskirts of East Lansing, where Malcolm spent his childhood. Their previous home had been destroyed in a mysterious fire. In 1931 Earl Little s body was discovered on a train track Although police concluded that the death was accidental the victim s friends and relatives suspected that he had been murdered by a local white supremacist group Earl s death left the family in poverty and undoubtedly contributed ...

Article

Moore, Harry Tyson  

Jake C. Miller

Article

Publication History:

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

civil rights martyr and educator, was born in Houston, Florida, the son of S. Johnny Moore, a farmer and store owner, and Rosalea A. Tyson, an insurance agent. Harry spent most of his early life in Suwannee County, attending school, performing chores on the farm, riding horses, and fishing. Living with aunts where he could obtain a better education, he received portions of his schooling in Daytona Beach and Jacksonville prior to attending and graduating in 1925 from high school at Florida Normal Institute in Live Oak (later Florida Memorial University in Miami). Later, while teaching in Brevard County, he received his AA (1936) and BS (1951) degrees from Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach. Harry married Harriette V. Sims, a teacher, and the couple had two daughters, Annie Rosalea and Juanita Evangeline The Moore family made its home in the small ...

Article

Sanusi, Muhammad al-  

Richard A. Bradshaw

Article

Publication History:

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

ruler of Dar al-Kuti, a Muslim state in what is now northeastern Central African Republic (CAR), was born in Wadai. Al-Sanusi was the son of Abu Bakr and a descendant of Umar Jugultum, who reputedly founded Dar al-Kuti in c. 1830. Umar, in turn, was the son of Aden Burgomanda, the mbang (ruler) of Baguirmi. Al-Sanussi’s mother was the daughter of Salih, a sultan (c. 1850–c. 1870) of Dar Runga. Al-Sanusi was named in honor of the Islamic Sanusiya brotherhood. While still young, he want sent to Sha, the capital of Dar al-Kuti, to live with his father’s brother Muhammad Kobur, a merchant leader of the Muslim community in the region.

Dar al Kuti was threatened in the 1880s by the slave raider Rabih a lieutenant of Zubayr Pasha who ruled the Bahr el Ghazal in southern Sudan Rabih raided into Dar al Kuti and attempted to draw Kobur ...

Article

Speed, Ella  

John Garst

Article

Publication History:

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

was probably born Ella Cherwiss in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was an African American woman whose death in New Orleans at age twenty-eight is the subject of the ballad “Ella Speed” (also known as “Alice B.” and “Po' Li'l Ella”). With her husband Willie Speed, she had a son and possibly other children.

For several years before her death, Ella Speed was a prostitute. In the spring of 1894, while an “inmate” at “Miss Lou” Prout's sporting house at 40 South Basin Street, a luxurious parlor house built nearly thirty years earlier for the renowned madam Kate Townsend, Speed met Louis “Bull” Martin, an Italian American born in July 1866. A short, stocky bully and small-time thug, Martin lived with his parents and worked as a bartender at Trauth's Saloon near the Dryades Street market. In August 1894 he was arrested for beating up ...

Article

Tinne, Alexandrine Petronella Francisca  

Robert Joost Willink

Article

Publication History:

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

Dutch traveler to Africa, was born on 17 October 1835, the only child of John Frederick Tinne and his second wife, Lady Henriette Maria Louise Van Capellen. Her father’s wealth came from sugar and coffee plantations in Demarara in Guiana in the West Indies (present-day Guyana and Suriname), and from his lucrative mercantile business in Liverpool, England. When he died at The Hague in 1844, he left an inheritance that increased enormously in the coming years, thanks to the continued success of his Liverpool company under the management of his son from his first marriage, John Abraham Tinne. Alexine Tinne, as she preferred to be called, used her father’s bequests to finance her later journeys.

Due to her frequent travels abroad Alexine Tinne was responsible for her own education In her writing and conversation she used both English and French She was especially interested in geography painting and ...

Article

Tinné, Alexandrine Pieternella Françoise  

Article

Publication History:

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

Alexandrine Tinné was born in The Hague, Netherlands, to a wealthy family. An unhappy love affair may have prompted her to leave home and embark on a voyage in search of the Nile River’s source. In 1862 Tinné hired a small fleet of boats in Cairo Egypt and left on her first expedition up the Nile Accompanying her were her mother her aunt several scientists and a number of assistants and servants Tinné ascended the Nile as far as Gondokoro in present day southern Sudan above which the river became unnavigable She planned to meet British explorer John Hanning Speke who was exploring the upper reaches of the Nile to the south When Speke s expedition failed to arrive when expected Tinné set off on her own to determine the source of the Nile Traveling overland she ventured into the watershed region between the Congo and Nile rivers in ...

Article

Turner, Jack  

Mamie E. Locke

Article

Publication History:

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

political activist, Republican party organizer, and lynching victim, was born a slave in Alabama. His parents' names are unknown. He lived on the Choctaw County farm of Beloved Love Turner, from whom he acquired his surname after emancipation. Jack Turner had no formal education but was described as articulate, perceptive, and courageous, with a commanding physical presence. He married Chloe (maiden name unknown) in the late 1860s, and they had four children. He remained in Choctaw County after being freed, working as a farm laborer around Mount Sterling and Tuscahoma.

After the Civil War, Turner became active in Reconstruction politics in Choctaw County. He was one of the organizers in 1867 of the county Republican Party which was composed of local blacks and a few whites including Turner s former owner Turner took an active role in helping former slaves make the transition from slavery to ...

Article

Turner, Jack  

Mamie E. Locke

Article

Publication History:

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

Turner, Jack (1840?–19 August 1882), political activist and party organizer, was born a slave in Alabama. His parents’ names are unknown. He lived on the Choctaw County farm of Beloved Love Turner, from whom he acquired his surname after emancipation. Turner had no formal education but was described as articulate, perceptive, and courageous, with a commanding physical presence. He married Chloe (maiden name unknown) in the late 1860s, and they had four children. He remained in Choctaw County after being freed, working as a farm laborer around Mount Sterling and Tuscahoma.

After the Civil War Turner became active in Reconstruction politics in Choctaw County He was one of the organizers in 1867 of the county Republican party which was composed of local blacks and a few whites including Turner s former owner Turner took an active role in helping former slaves make the transition from slavery to ...

Article

Williams, Eugene  

William M. Tuttle

Article

Publication History:

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

was the first victim of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919. Little is known of his parents or his early life, but his death spurred an important legal precedent when the city paid compensation to his mother, Luella Williams, for her loss.

In a 1968 interview, Eugene's friend John Turner Harris recalled the tragic events of almost fifty years earlier that led to the death of Eugene Williams and rocked the city of Chicago. As Harris recounted, it was approaching 90 degrees on Sunday, 27 July 1919 when the fourteen year old Harris and four other teenage African American boys including seventeen year old Eugene Williams decided to skip church and go swimming in Lake Michigan The boys were not headed for the black patronized Twenty fifth Street beach nor did they intend to swim at the white beach at Twenty ninth Street Instead they were going ...