Enlightened Free Thinking Nubian Kings And Queens

Nikki Giovanni was born in  Knoxville, Tennessee ,   to Yolande Cornelia, Sr. and Jones "Gus" Giovanni. She grew up in  Lincoln Heights , a suburb of  Cincinnati, Ohio , though she returned to Knoxville to live with her grandparents in 1958, and attended the city's  Austin High School . In 1960, she began her studies at her grandfather's alma mater,  Fisk University  in  Nashville, Tennessee . She had a difficult time adjusting to college life and was subsequently expelled. However, she realized that she needed an education, drove back to Nashville, spoke with the Dean of Women, and was readmitted. In 1967, she graduated with honors with a B.A. in History. She returned to Cincinnati and established the city's first Black Arts Festival. Giovanni also began writing the poems that are included in her first self-published volume,  Black Feeling, Black Talk  (1968). Afterward she went on to attend graduate school at the  University o...

Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865 To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jordon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the ...

George Jordan was a Buffalo Soldier in the United States Army and a recipient of America's highest military decoration—the Medal of Honor—for his actions in the Indian Wars of the western United States. George Jordan, was born in 1849? in rural Williamson County in central Tennessee.  Enlisting in the 38th Infantry Regiment on 25 December 1866, the short and illiterate Jordan proved a good soldier.  In January 1870, he transferred to the 9th Cavalry’s K Troop, his home for the next twenty-six years.  Earning the trust of his troop commander, Captain Charles Parker, Jordan was promoted to corporal in 1874; by 1879, he wore the chevrons of a sergeant.  It was during these years that Jordan learned how to read and write, an accomplishment that certainly facilitated his advancement in the Army. On 14 May 1880, following a difficult forced march at night, a twenty-five man detachment under Jordan successfully repulsed a determined attack on old Fort Tularosa, New M...

Valaida was born in  Chattanooga ,  Tennessee . Raised on the road in a show-business family, she learned to play cello,  bass ,  banjo , violin, mandolin ,  harp ,  accordion ,  clarinet , trumpet, and saxophone at professional levels by the time she was 15. She also sang and dance. After focusing on the trumpet, she quickly became so famous at the instrument that she was named "Little Louis" after  Louis Armstrong , who used to call her the world's second best jazz trumpet player besides himself. She played concerts throughout the USA, Europe and China. From 1926 to 1929 she toured with Jack Carter's Serenaders in Shanghai, Singapore,  Calcutta  and  Jakarta . Her most successful period was in the 1930's when she became the toast of London and Paris. Around this time she recorded her hit song "High Hat, Trumpet, and Rhythm". She performed in the  Ethel Waters  show  Rhapsody in Black , in New York. I...

Educator, essayist, journalist, scholar, social critic, and activist W.E.B. DuBois, was born to Mary Sylvina Burghardt and Alfred Dubois on February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.   He excelled in the public schools, graduating valedictorian from his high school in 1884.  Four years later he received a B.A. from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1890 DuBois earned a second bachelor's degree from Harvard University.  DuBois began two years of graduate studies in History and Economics at the University of Berlin in Germany in 1892 and then returned to the United States to begin a two year stint teaching Greek and Latin at Wilberforce University in Ohio.  In 1895, DuBois became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard University.  His doctoral thesis,  "The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in America, " became the first book published by Harvard University Press in 1896.  Later that year Du...

"Father of the Exodus": Benjamin "Pap" Singleton (1809-1892) Benjamin Singleton was born in Nashville, Tennessee. Enslaved, Singleton was sold several times, b ut always managed to escape. Eventually, he fled to Canada, then settled in Detroit, Michigan, where he ran a boardinghouse that also sheltered black runaways. After the Civil War, Singleton returned to Tennessee and began organizing an effort to buy up Tennessee farmland for blacks; his plan failed because white landowners refused to sell at fair prices. Between 1877 and 1879, Singleton and his partner, Columbus Johnson, formed a company that helped hundreds of black Tennesseans move to Kansas. Those who moved to Kansas became known as "Exodusters." Singleton was described as the "Father of the Exodus." By 1879, some 50,000 blacks had fled to freedom in Kansas, Missouri, Indiana and Illinois, while thousands more had been turned back by whites patrolling the rivers and roads...