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Article

Abiola, Moshood Kashimawo Olawale  

Okey Ndibe

Article

Publication History:

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

On June 12 1993, the popular businessman Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola won a long-awaited presidential election in Nigeria, only to have the country's military leader, Ibrahim Babangida, annul the election results. When Abiola declared himself the country's legitimate leader a year later, Babangida's successor, General Sani Abacha, jailed him for treason. As a political prisoner, Abiola became the rallying symbol for Nigerians’ democratic aspirations.

Abiola was born into a poor, polygamous household of Yoruba-speaking Muslims in the ancient town of Abeokuta None of his parents first twenty two children had survived past infancy so Abiola the twenty third was given the middle name Kashimawo meaning Let s see if he will survive He began his education at the Islamic Nawar Ud Deen School and then transferred to the Christian run African Central School As an indigent student at the Baptist Boys High School Abiola ...

Article

Brown, Ronald H.  

Alonford James Robinson

Article

Publication History:

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

Born in Washington, D.C., Ron Brown grew up in Harlem, New York. He graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont in 1962, after becoming the first black student to pledge a fraternity there. He enlisted in the United States Army. After his service, Brown worked for the National Urban League in New York while earning his law degree at night from St. John's University in 1970. He held several positions in the Urban League from 1968 to 1979, including general counsel, chief Washington spokesperson, deputy executive director, and vice president of Washington operations.

In Washington, D.C., Brown became active in the Democratic Party, and in 1979 he served as deputy manager of U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy's presidential campaign. A year later Kennedy appointed him the chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 1982 Brown resigned from the senate committee to become deputy ...

Article

Butler, Tubal Uriah  

Lorraine Anastasia Lezama

Article

Publication History:

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

Though born in Grenada, Tubal Uriah Butler would eventually develop his career as a labor organizer and politician in Trinidad. In Grenada, Butler was affiliated with the Grenada Representative Government Movement, and served as a volunteer in the first contingent of the West Indies during World War I. In 1921 he migrated to Trinidad, where he settled in Fyzabad, a southern industrial town populated by workers from the dominant petroleum industry. He held a variety of positions in the oilfields—pipe fitter, rig man, and pump man—until 1929, when he was seriously injured.

Butler was a charismatic speaker, and he quickly became influential in the Trinidad Labour Party (TLP), an organization committed to expanding the voting franchise and to lobbying for constitutional change. His ascent was matched by his growing disillusionment with the TLP and its leader, Captain Arthur Andrew Cipriani Butler believed that the TLP was both ...

Article

Chambas, Mohammed Ibn  

Ntewusu Aniegye

Article

Publication History:

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

Ghanaian lawyer, diplomat, politician, was born on 7 December 1950 in Bimbilla in the Northern Region of Ghana. His father, Alhaji Alhassan Chambas, was a district commissioner in Kwame Nkrumah’s government from the 1950s to mid-1960s. He was educated at Mfantispim School, Cape Coast (the former Wesleyan High School whose alumni include John Mensah Sarbah, Dr. K. A. Busia, and Kofi Annan), and Tamale Secondary School, Tamale. He is a graduate from the University of Ghana, where he read political science, obtaining his BA in 1973. He then travelled to the United States, where he obtained his MA and PhD degrees at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, in 1977 and 1980, respectively. He later earned a law degree from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.

Having briefly taught and practiced law in America he returned to Ghana where he became a school administrator He later joined the military ...

Article

Jarrett, Valerie June Bowman  

Crystal Renée Sanders

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 May 2016

lawyer, businesswoman, and political advisor to US President Barack Obama, was born in Shiraz, Iran, the daughter of James E. Bowman Jr, a pathologist, geneticist, and children's hospital administrator, and Barbara Taylor Bowman, an early childhood education expert and author. Her father worked in Iran as part of a program that sent American physicians to developing countries. The family consistently broke racial barriers. Robert Robinson Taylor, the first black student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the first academically trained black architect in the United States, was one of Jarrett's maternal great-grandfathers. Her father was the first black tenured professor in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Chicago. When she was five Jarrett's family moved to London for one year before settling in Chicago.

Jarrett received her elementary education at the Chicago Laboratory Schools After graduating from Northfield Mount Hermon a boarding ...

Article

Jordan, Vernon  

Alexis D. McCoy

Article

Publication History:

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

lawyer, civil rights activist, and political powerbroker. In his lifetime Jordan has assumed many roles, the most famous being adviser to President Bill Clinton. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Vernon Eulion Jordan Jr. was the second of three sons of Vernon Eulion Jordan, a postal clerk, and Mary Griggs Jordan, a successful caterer. The family lived in public housing until they purchased a house when Vernon was thirteen. Jordan graduated from David T. Howard High School with honors in 1953. After graduation he attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, one of five blacks in the entire student body. Graduating from DePauw in 1957 with a BA, Jordan attended Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C., graduating with his law degree in 1960.

While at Howard Law, Jordan met and married Shirley Yarbrough on 13 December 1958 The couple returned to Georgia where ...

Article

Jordan, Vernon Eulion, Jr.  

Kate Tuttle

Article

Publication History:

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

One of the most powerful, well-connected lawyers in the United States, Vernon Eulion Jordan Jr. has had a long, sometimes contradictory career. Few civil rights spokespeople of his generation have attained the kind of corporate and political influence Jordan has, an achievement that was enhanced by his position as a top adviser to and close friend of President Bill Clinton. Yet some critics charged that the former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) field secretary and Urban League president lost touch with his original goals: to improve the economic lives of African Americans.

Jordan was born in Atlanta, Georgia The middle son of a postal clerk and his wife a caterer he was deeply influenced by his mother s drive and business sense As a child he sometimes accompanied her to catering jobs where he observed Atlanta s white establishment especially the Lawyer s Club ...

Article

McHenry, Donald F(ranchot)  

Article

Publication History:

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

The son of Limas and Dora Lee Brooks McHenry, Donald Franchot McHenry was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He grew up in poverty in East St. Louis, Illinois, where a public school is now named in his honor. McHenry received a B.S. degree from Illinois State University in 1957 and an M.S. degree from Southern Illinois University in 1959. As a student he was president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). McHenry was involved in negotiations to end segregation in area housing and restaurants.

McHenry then moved to Washington, D.C. He taught English at Howard University beginning in 1959 and entered the graduate program in international relations at Georgetown University. His public career began when he joined the U.S. Department of State in 1963. In 1968 he was made assistant to the secretary of state. From 1971 ...

Article

Ramaphosa, Matamela Cyril  

Anthony Butler

Article

Publication History:

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

South African lawyer, trade unionist, politician, and businessman, was born in the Western Native Township close to Johannesburg on 17 November 1952. His father, Samuel Mundzhedzi Ramaphosa (d. 1987), who hailed from eastern Venda, became a police sergeant in Soweto in the year Cyril was born. His mother, Erdmuthe Muti Ramaphosa (d. 2001), was raised in western Venda and became a Johannesburg domestic worker and later an administration clerk. Ramaphosa was preceded by a sister, Ivy (b. 1948), and followed by a brother, Douglas (b. 1957).

The Ramaphosa family was forcibly evicted under racial residence legislation in 1962 and relocated to the Tshiawelo area of Soweto. Ramaphosa’s parents were active in the community and in the Lutheran church in which Cyril was raised. He was educated at Tshilidzi primary school and Sekano-Ntoane high school, where he was increasingly influenced by black consciousness ideas. In 1969 he moved to ...

Article

Sutton, Percy Ellis  

Article

Publication History:

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

Percy Ellis Sutton was born in San Antonio, Texas. In the 1950s, after completing his education under the G.I. Bill, he opened a law firm in Harlem that specialized in civil rights cases. Sutton's political career began when he was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1964. He became president of the Manhattan Borough in 1966, a position he held through 1977. After an unsuccessful mayoral bid he retired from public office, but continued to be a prominent adviser to New York politicians, including United States Representative Charles Rangel and Mayor David Dinkins.

In 1971 Sutton began purchasing black-owned media businesses, becoming the owner and chairman of the Inner-City Broadcasting Company in 1977. Through this corporation he purchased and restored the Apollo Theater, a Harlem landmark. Sutton was awarded the Spingarn Medal for his work by the National Association for the ...