Enlightened Free Thinking Nubian Kings And Queens

San Diego businessman and community leader George Ramsey was born in Pasadena, California, one of eight children of George S. Ramsey, a railroad porter and barber, and Eva M. Ramsey. Most sources say that he arrived in San Diego in 1913 as the valet of a prominent amusement park developer, but Ramsey himself recalled selling newspapers on the streets of the city in 1904. And at one time a stowaway, and a hobo. Among other jobs he claimed to have tried were ranch hand, boxing manager, bootblack, and salesman. By 1916 Ramsey resided in downtown San Diego and had started a career managing bars, cafes, hotels, and boarding houses that catered mainly to African Americans, sometimes in partnership with other businesspersons.  During the early 1920s, he was prosperous enough to indulge his passion for breeding and racing horses and betting on them at Tijuana, Mexico’s Caliente Race Track. Most successful and significant was Ramsey’s partnership with the married couple Robert and Mabel ...

Samuel George Davis Jr. was born on December 8, 1925 in Harlem, New York. His parents, Sammy Davis Sr., an African American, and Elvera Sanchez, a Cuban American, were both vaudeville dancers.  They separated when young Davis was three years old and his father took him on tour with a dance troupe led by Will Mastin. Davis joined the act at a young age and they became known as the Will Mastin Trio. It was with this trio that Davis began a lucrative career as a dancer, singer, comedian, actor, and a multi-instrumentalist. During World War II Davis joined the army, he joined an integrated entertainment Special Services unit, and found that while performing the crowd often forgot the color of the man on stage. After his discharge from the army Davis rejoined the Will Mastin Trio and soon became known in Las Vegas as the kid in the middle.  On November 19, 1954, with the act in Las Vegas finally getting off the ground, he was involved in a serious car accident on a trip from L...

Chubby Checker, the man credited with inventing “The Twist,” was born Ernest Evans on October 3, 1941, in Spring Gully, South Carolina. He was raised in the projects of South Philadelphia, where he lived with his parents, Raymond and Eartle Evans, and two brothers. By the age eight Evans had formed a street-corner harmony group, and by the time he entered South Philadelphia High School, he had taken piano lessons at Settlement Music School. After school Evans would entertain customers at his various jobs, by performing vocal impressions of popular entertainers of the day, such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Fats Domino. Evans eventually caught a small break after graduating from high school by making novelty records that were impressions of singers like Elvis Presley and Fats Domino.   Kal Mann, who worked as a songwriter for Cameo-Parkway Records, arranged for young Chubby to do a private recording for American Bandstand host Dick Clark. Evans' career took off when he ...

Josiah Thomas Walls was born a slave in Winchester, Virginia on December 30, 1842.  He was conscripted by the Confederate Army and captured in Yorktown by Union forces in 1862.  Walls then enlisted in the U.S. Colored Troops Infantry Regiment in 1863 where he rose in rank to First Sergeant.  Prior to his discharge from the Army in 1865, Walls married Helen Ferguson of Newnansville, Florida. After leaving the U.S. Army, Walls settled in Alachua County, Florida and became active in local politics.  After passage of the U.S. Military Reconstruction Act of 1867, Walls joined the newly formed Republican Party in Florida.  He was an elected delegate to the 1868 state constitutional conventions and shortly afterward was elected to the lower house of the State Legislature in 1868.  He advanced to the State Senate representing the 13th District, which was mostly Alachua County, in 1869.  First elected to the Congress in 1870, Josiah T. Walls became Florida...

Emlen Lewis Tunnell was the first African American named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1967. He was also the first pro football player to gain recognition as a defensive back, and set a record for career interceptions that would hold for two decades.  Tunnell was born to Elzie Tunnell and Catherine Adams Tunnell on March 29, 1925 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Tunnell’s mother was a domestic worker who principally raised him and his three siblings.  Tunnell grew up in Radnor, Pennsylvania, where he attended high school and played varsity football. He subsequently played on the football team at Toledo University where, during an early season game, he landed awkwardly and fractured his neck. The doctors told Tunnell that his football playing days were over. Tunnell, however, went on to make the university’s basketball team. In 1943 Tunnell volunteered to serve in World War II. Though his injuries disqualified him from enlistment in the Army, Tunnell was able to serve o...