Enlightened Free Thinking Nubian Kings And Queens

The Black Star Line and its successor, the Black Cross Navigation and Trading Company, was founded by Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (U.N.I.A.).  The Black Star Line was incorporated in Delaware on June 23, 1919, and operated between 1919 and 1922. The company was capitalized at a maximum of $500,000. Shares were valued at five dollars each, and individuals could purchase a maximum of two hundred shares. Black Star Line stock was sold at U.N.I.A. meetings and conventions, by traveling agents, by mailed circulars, and through advertisements in the Negro newspaper. The Black Star Line was envisioned to be the U.N.I.A.'s vehicle for promoting worldwide commerce among black communities. Black Star Line ships would transport manufactured goods, raw materials, and produce among black businesses in North America, the Caribbean, and Africa, and become the linchpin in a global black economy.  To the surprise of the critics, just three months after...

"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...

     Sue Bertha Coleman's mother was working as a cook for a Huntsville, Alabama family when she decided her daughter should have a college education, something few Alabama women received at the turn of the century.      Coleman graduated from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. She began her career as principal of a Tennessee Coal and Iron Company (TCI) school at Muscoda, a large ore mining camp near Bessemer, Alabama. At the end of her third year, she remained on the company's payroll to conduct social work, Coleman was designated as a community supervisor in charge of social services for black miners and their families. Initiative and dedication set her apart from her peers. In 1918, she borrowed $300 from a bank, left her husband in charge of their children, and went to Chicago to study with Jane Addams, the most noted social worker of the day.      On her return, Coleman took over a schedule of regular weekly duties at the "Co...