Enlightened Free Thinking Nubian Kings And Queens

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...

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...

Fannie Jackson was born a slave in Washington D.C. on October 15, 1837.  She gained her freedom when her aunt was able to purchase her at the age of twelve.  Through her teen years Jackson worked as a servant for the author George Henry Calvert and in 1860 she enrolled at Oberlin College in Ohio.  Oberlin College was the first college in the United States to accepted both black and female students. While attending Oberlin College Jackson enrolled and excelled in the men’s course of studies.  She was elected to the highly respected Young Ladies Literary Society and was the first African American student to be appointed in the College’s preparatory department.  As the Civil War came to an end she established a night school in Oberlin in order to educate freed slaves. Upon her graduation in 1865, Jackson became a high school teacher at the Institute for Colored Youth, (ICY) a high school for African American students in Philadelphia.  Within a year she ...

Birth Name: Joe Barrow Birth:  May 13, 1914 Lafayette Chambers County Alabama, USA Death:  Apr. 12, 1981 Paradise Clark County Nevada, USA Widely considered one of the greatest and most beloved boxers in the sport's history, Joseph Louis Barrow was born May 13, 1914 in the cotton-field country near Lafayette, Alabama. The son of a sharecropper, and the great-grandson of a slave, he was eighth child of Munn and Lilly Barrow. Louis's family life was shaped by financial struggle. The Louis kids slept three to a bed and Louis' father was committed to a state hospital when he was just two years old. Louis had little schooling and as a teen took on odd jobs in order to help out his mother and siblings. The family eventually relocated to Detroit where Louis found work as a laborer at the River Rouge Plant of the Ford Motor Company. For a time Louis set his sights on a career in cabinet making....

Sarah Hemings was an enslaved woman of mixed race owned by  President   Thomas Jefferson  and who is believed to have had a long-term relationship and six children with him, of whom four survived and all were given freedom by Jefferson. Hemings was the youngest of six siblings by the planter  John Wayles  and his mixed-race slave  Betty Hemings ; Sally was three-quarters European and a half-sister of Jefferson's wife,  Martha Wayles Skelton . In 1787, Hemings, at the age of 14, accompanied Jefferson's youngest daughter  Mary  (Polly) to London and then to Paris, where the widowed Jefferson, 44 years old at the time, was serving as the  United States Minister to France . Hemings spent two years there. It is believed by most historians that Jefferson began a sexual relationship with Hemings either in France or soon after their return to Monticello. Hemings had six children of record born into slavery; four survived to ad...

Black Caesar was allegedly a 19th-century  Haitian  revolutionary and pirate. Efforts to find historical evidence of his existence have been unsuccessful. According to works of fiction, he was a participant in the  Haitian Revolution  under  Dutty Boukman  and  Toussaint Louverture  as well as active in piracy for nearly a 30-year period during the early 19th century. Henri Caesar was allegedly born to a slave family kept by a French plantation owner known as Arnaut. He worked as a houseboy on the estate and, as a young man, worked in the lumberyard. He was apparently mistreated by the supervisor and later killed the man during the  slave insurrection , torturing him with a  saw . Joining the rebel forces led by Dutty Boukman  and  Toussaint Louverture , he remained with the revolution until its independence from  France  in 1804, when he left to try his luck at sea. Based in  Port-de-Paix , he captured ...

  He was a  free African American   almanac   author,   surveyor ,   naturalist   and  farmer . Born in   Baltimore County, Maryland , to a free   African American   woman and a former   slave , Banneker had little formal education and was largely self-taught. He is known for being part of a group led by   Major Andrew Ellicott   that surveyed the borders of the original   District of Columbia , the federal capital district of the   United States . Banneker's knowledge of  astronomy  helped him author a commercially successful series of almanacs. He corresponded with  Thomas Jefferson ,  drafter  of the  United States Declaration of Independence , on the topics of  slavery  and  racial equality .  Abolitionists  and advocates of racial equality promoted and praised his works. Although a fire on the day of Banneker's funeral destroyed many of his...

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable,  a frontier trader, trapper and farmer is regarded as the first permanent resident of what became Chicago, Illinois.  There is very little definite information on DuSable’s early years. He was born free around 1745 in St. Marc, Saint-Dominique (Haiti). His mother was an African slave, his father a French mariner. DuSable traveled with his father to France, where he embarked on a fruitful education. It was through this and the work that he performed for his father on his ships, that he learned several languages including French, Spanish, English, and many Indian dialects. DuSable arrived in New Orleans in 1765 whereupon he learned the colony had become a Spanish possession. Having lost his identification papers and been injured on the voyage to New Orleans, DuSable was almost enslaved. French Jesuit priests protected him until he was healthy enough to travel. DuSable migrated north, up the Mississippi river, later settling in an area near pre...

(1814? - December 13, 1875) He was an African-American  fugitive slave  from Virginia who escaped in 1850 and reached Boston. He is known for being freed from a courtroom in Boston after being captured by United States marshals under the  Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 . White and black members of the  Boston Vigilance Committee  freed and hid him, helping him get to Canada via the  Underground Railroad . Minkins settled in  Montreal  where he raised a family. Two men were prosecuted in Boston for helping free him, but they were acquitted by the jury. Minkins was born into slavery about 1814 in  Norfolk, Virginia .  He escaped from slavery as a young man in 1850 and reached  Boston, Massachusetts , where he became a waiter.   Later that year, Congress enacted the   Fugitive Slave Law , which allowed federal agents to seize escaped slaves living in   free states   and return them to their owners. It required la...

(died November 1791)  Dutty Boukman  was a  Jamaican -born  Haitian  slave who was one of the most visible early leaders of the  Haitian Revolution . According to some contemporary accounts, Boukman may have conducted a religious ceremony in which a freedom covenant was affirmed;  this ceremony would have been a catalyst to the slave uprising that marked the beginning of the  Haïtian Revolution . Dutty Boukman may have been a self-educated slave born on the island of  Jamaica . Some sources indicate that he was later sold by his British master to a French  plantation  owner after he attempted to teach other Jamaican slaves to read, who put him to work as a  commandeur  (slave driver) and, later, a coach driver. His French name came from his English  nickname ,  "Book Man,"  which some scholars, despite accounts suggesting that he was a Vodou  houngan , have interpreted as meaning that he may have ...

Paul Robeson was a famous African-American athlete, singer, actor, and advocate for the civil rights of people around the world. He rose to prominence in a time when segregation was legal in the United States, and Black people were being lynched by racist mobs, especially in the South. Born on April 9, 1898 in Princeton, New Jersey, Paul Robeson was the youngest of five children. His father was a runaway slave who went on to graduate from Lincoln University, and his mother came from an abolitionist Quaker family. Robeson's family knew both hardship and the determination to rise above it. His own life was no less challenging. In 1915, Paul Robeson won a four-year academic scholarship to Rutgers University. Despite violence and racism from teammates, he won 15 varsity letters in sports (baseball, basketball, track) and was twice named to the All-American Football Team. He received the Phi Beta Kappa key in his junior year, belonged to the Cap & Skull Honor Society, and gradu...

Legislation was passed in several colonies, beginning in 1667 in Virginia, stipulating that baptism would not change slaves’ legal status.  This led to an increase in missionary activities to slaves because conversion did not imply emancipation. Short lived do to slave revolts. Slave owners regarded the substantial time required for religious instruction as uneconomical Slave owners argued that slaves were intellectually incapable of understanding the subtleties of Christian doctrine Slave owners were uncomfortable with the concept of spiritual equality between master and slave Spiritual equality would call into question the enslavement of fellow Christians Slave owners feared that conversion would make slaves more difficult to control and perhaps precipitate insurrection Some missionaries attempted to counter this fear by arguing that conversion would make slaves more docile and industrious. This was short lived after the enslaved revolts.