Enlightened Free Thinking Nubian Kings And Queens

Born Leroy Nicholas Barnes on October 15, 1933, in Harlem, New York was one of the most powerful New York drug dealers of the 1970s.  His career as a drug lord began in 1965 when he was imprisoned for heroin consumption. While in New York Green Haven Penitentiary he met the Italian mafia leader “Crazy” Joe Gallo.  After both were released, Gallo helped Barnes form a mass drug-dealing organization. Despite “Crazy” Joe Gallo’s murder on April 7, 1972, Leroy “Nicky” Barnes continued to expand his business. During this period Barnes acquired the nicknamed “Mr. Untouchable” as New York City police attempts to charge him for his crimes always failed because of absence of evidence or unreliable witnesses.  By 1973, Barnes gather together the main drug kingpins in New York City to form for the first time a city-wide organization called “the Council.” Modeled on the similar Italian mafia organizations, the aim of this council was to bring order to the drug dealing market by r...

Contemporary gospel's preeminent group, the Mighty Clouds Of Joy carried the torch for the traditional quartet vocal style throughout an era dominated by solo acts and choirs; pioneering a distinctively funky sound that over time gained grudging acceptance even among purists, they pushed spiritual music in new and unexpected directions, even scoring a major disco hit entitled, "Mighty High".  More importantly, they were the first group to add bass, drums, and keyboards to the standard quartet accompaniment of solo guitar, resulting in a sound that horrified traditionalists but appealed to younger listeners -- so much so, in fact, that the Mighty Clouds became the first gospel act ever to appear on television's Soul Train. Joe Ligon formed the group in 1955 during his high school days in Los Angeles, CA. He spent his childhood in Alabama, then moved west to live with his uncle. He found several other young men from the South in his Watts neighborhood, including, ...

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Annie Turnbo Malone was born to Robert Turnbo and Isabella Cook in Metropolis, Illinois on August 9, 1869.  Her parents were former slaves and her father joined the Union Army during the Civil War. Turnbo attended school in Peoria, Illinois, but she never finished high school.  Instead, she practiced hairdressing with her sister.  When she and her family moved to Lovejoy, Illinois, Annie decided she wanted to become a "beauty doctor."  At the age of 20 she had already developed her own shampoo and scalp treatment to grow and straighten hair.  Taking her creation to the streets, she went around in a buggy making speeches to demonstrate and promote the new shampoo. By 1902, Annie Turnbo's home shampoo venture thrived and she moved to St. Louis, Missouri, home of the nation's fourth-largest African American population, to expand her business.  She was largely successful and she trademarked her beauty products under the name "...

Michael Anthony Donald was a nineteen-year-old African American man who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1981 in Mobile, Alabama. His killing was one of the last known lynchings in the United States. Donald was born on July 24, 1961, in Mobile to Beullah Mae Donald and David Donald. He was the youngest of six children. In 1981, Josephus Anderson, an African American, was charged with the murder of a white police officer in Birmingham, Alabama while committing a robbery. Anderson’s case was moved from Birmingham to Mobile, Alabama in a change of venue. While the jury was struggling to reach a verdict on Anderson, members of the United Klan of America complained that the jury had not convicted Anderson because it had African American members.  One Klansman, Bennie Jack Hays, announced to his fellow Klan members that “if a black man can get away with killing a white man, we ought to be able to get away with killing a black man.” On March 20, 1981, a mistrial was declared in An...

Alexander Crummell, an Episcopalian priest, missionary, scholar, and teacher.  Crummell earned his degree from the University of Cambridge in 1853, becoming the first black student to graduate from the institution. He spent much of his life addressing the conditions of African Americans while urging an educated black elite to aspire to the highest intellectual attainments as a refutation of the theory of black inferiority. Alexander Crummell was born in New York City on March 3, 1819, to Charity Hicks and Boston Crummell. Both his mother and father were free, with Boston having been taken from Timannee, West Africa, and forced into bondage in the North, but eventually refusing servitude. With his parents believing in education for their children, Alexander began his education at an integrated school in New Hampshire. He later transferred to an abolitionist institute in Whitesboro, New York where he learned both the classics and manual labor skills. However, after being denied ...

Of the 167 enlisted black soldiers of the 25th Infantry discharged from the U.S. Army “without honor” by order of President Theodore Roosevelt after the shooting in Brownsville, Texas in 1906, Pvt. Dorsie Willis was the only to live long enough to see justice. According to census records, Willis was born in Mississippi in 1886. His parents, Corsey and Dochie Willis were free born.  Willis joined Company D, 25th Infantry of the U.S. Army on January 5, 1905.  In July 1906 Willis’s battalion was sent to Fort Brown in Brownsville on the American bank of the Rio Grande and near its mouth.  His battalion replaced the white 26th Infantry.  The local residents, mostly Mexican and about 20% white, were not happy with the prospect of African American soldiers being stationed there, and the soldiers of the 25th Infantry immediately encountered harassment. Less than  three weeks later , between 12 and 20 men shot up Brownsville, killing one civilian and badly wounding...

Andre Watts is the subject of one of the more memorable stories in American music. In 1963, the 16 year old high school student won a piano competition to play in the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concert at Lincoln Center, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.  Within weeks of the contest the renowned conductor tapped Watts to substitute for the eminent but ailing pianist Glenn Gould, for a regular performance with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. The performance was televised nationally, with Watts playing Liszt’s E-flat Concerto, and his career was launched. From this storied beginning, Watts went on to become the first internationally famous black concert pianist. Watts was born in Nuremburg, Germany on June 20, 1946 to an African American soldier, Herman Watts, who was stationed in Germany, and a piano-playing Hungarian refugee mother, Maria Alexandra Gusmits. His early childhood was spent on military bases, until at the age of eight his family moved to Philadelphia....

Harriet  Ann Jacobs, daughter of Delilah, a slave, and Daniel Jacobs, a slave who was born in Edenton, North Carolina, on February 11, 1813.  Until she was six years old Harriet was unaware that she was the property of Margaret Horniblow. Before her death in 1825, Harriet's relatively kind mistress taught her slave to read and sew. In her will, Margaret Horniblow bequeathed eleven-year-old Harriet to a niece, Mary Matilda Norcom. Since Mary Norcom was only three years old when Harriet Jacobs became her slave, Mary's father, Dr. James Norcom, an Edenton physician, became Jacobs's de facto master. Under the regime of James and Maria Norcom, Jacobs was introduced to the harsh realities of slavery. Though barely a teenager, Jacobs soon realized that her master was a sexual threat. Around the time Harriet turned 15, Norcom began his relentless efforts to bend the slave girl's will. To get Harriet away from his wife, who was suspicious of her husband's intentions, he...

Teacher, writer, and women’s activist Hallie Quinn Brown was born on March 10, 1850 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the daughter of former slaves who in 1864 migrated to Canada. she grew up in Chatham, Ontario, Canada.  The Brown family returned to the United States in 1870, settling in Wilberforce, Ohio.  Brown attended Wilberforce College and received a degree in 1873.  She then taught in freedman’s schools in Mississippi before moving to Columbia, South Carolina in 1875 where she served briefly as an instructor in the city’s public schools.  By September 1875 she joined the faculty at Allen University.  Brown taught at Allen between 1875 and 1885 and then for the next two years (1885-1887) served as Dean of the University.  Brown also served as Dean of Women at Tuskegee Institute during the 1892-1893 school year before returning to Ohio where she taught in the Dayton public schools.     Brown had since childhood held an interest in ...

Painter and educator Laura Wheeler Waring was born on May 16, 1887, in Hartford, Connecticut.  The fourth child of six born to Reverend Robert Foster and Mary Wheeler, Laura was unusual in some respects because she had the advantage of a superior education and middle and upper class associations. Her father studied Theology at Howard University and received his diploma ten years before Laura’s birth. Laura’s education was exemplary.  She graduated from Hartford High School in 1906 with honors and went on to study for another six years at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, one of the leading art institutes in the United States. In 1914, she received the A. William Emlen Cresson Memorial Travel Scholarship that allowed her to continue her studies of arts in major cities of Europe for a period of time. On that first trip she spent much time in the Louvre where she studied the works of several master painters.   While in Europe she produced her first paintings, ...

Ada Overton Walker, buck-and-wing, cakewalk virtuoso and choreographer regarded as one of the first African American choreographers on the American stage was born Ada Wilmon Overton on February 14, 1880 in Greenwich Village, New York City, the second child of Pauline Whitfield, a seamstress, and Moses Overton, a waiter. She was a child who seemed to have danced before she walked, fond of dancing in the streets with a hurdy-gurdy, until her parents decided she would receive formal dance training. Around 1897, after graduating from Thorp's Dance School, she toured briefly then an opportunity came when a girlfriend invited her to model for vaudeville advertisement at New York's Music Hall. She eventually the cast of  Williams and Walker's Octoroons, in which once critic declared of her performance, "I have just observed the greatest girl dancer." In 1899 Overton married George Walker and they became the leading cake-walking couple of the new century; in the cake...

The Burke family was an attractive looking, talented Black family. Father Clarence Sr. and mother Betty had 6 children. The Five Stairsteps consisted of 6 kids...sweet Alohe, (born in 1948), charismatic Clarence Newton Jr. (born 1948), sincere James Marcellus (born 1950), vibrant Dennis (born 1952), smooth Kenneth (born 1953), and charming Cubie (born 1964). They were born and raised in Chicago by their parents Clarence and Betty Burke they attended Bennett and Harlan High School. You could say they were born into music, music was in their blood. Before they could walk they belted out melodies even if the words weren't understood. The 5 were singing together as young kids. They would line up on the couch singing to TV commercial or records on the record player; they would out-sing the TV and records...loud and clear. Their father was a detective/cop and mother watched the kids. Alohe, Clarence, James, Dennis, Kenneth, and Cubie were brought up in a household full of love, encou...

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 ...