Enlightened Free Thinking Nubian Kings And Queens

Lucy Craft Laney, educator, school founder, and civil rights activist, was born on April 13, 1854 in Macon, Georgia to free parents Louisa and David Laney.   David Laney, a Presbyterian minister and skilled carpenter, had purchased his freedom approximately twenty years before Lucy Laney’s birth.  He purchased Louisa’s freedom shortly after they were married. Lucy Laney learned to read and write by the age of four and by the time she was twelve, she was able to translate difficult passages in Latin including Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War. Laney attended Lewis (later Ballard) High School in Macon, Georgia and in 1869, at the age of fifteen; she joined Atlanta University’s first class.  Four years later she graduated from the teacher’s training program at the University.  After teaching for ten years in Macon, Savannah, Milledgeville, and Augusta, she in 1883 opened her own school in the basement of Christ Presbyterian Church in...

Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. He published his first poem in 1921. He attended Columbia University, but left after one year to travel. His poetry was later promoted by Vachel Lindsay, and Hughes published his first book in 1926. He went on to write countless works of poetry, prose and plays, as well as a popular column for the   Chicago Defender . He died on May 22, 1967. James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents, James Hughes and Carrie Langston, separated soon after his birth, and his father moved to Mexico. While Hughes’s mother moved around during his youth, Hughes was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother, Mary, until she died in his early teens. From that point, he went to live with his mother, and they moved to several cities before eventually settling in Cleveland, Ohio. It was during this time that Hughes first began to write poetry, and that one of his teachers first introduc...