Enlightened Free Thinking Nubian Kings And Queens

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 ...

Lucile Berkeley Buchanan-Jones was the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Colorado.  Buchanan was born on June 13, 1884, on the second floor of the family’s mule and horse barn in the town of Barnum, southwest of Denver, Colorado.  She was the daughter of Sarah Lavinia and James Fenton Buchanan, emancipated slaves from adjoining plantations in northern Virginia. Sarah and James Buchanan were married in 1872.  Within ten years  of their marriage the couple, and their four Virginia-born children, migrated to Colorado. When the Buchanans arrived in Colorado in 1882, Lucile’s mother, Sarah, bought five lots of land in an unincorporated area outside the Denver city limits from P.T. Barnum of the Barnum and Bailey Circus.  The Buchanans were one of three black families in this predominately first-generation European immigrant community. In 1903, 19-year-old Lucile enrolled in the two-year teacher certification program at the Colorado...

(1856 - 1940)  Born near Thomasville, Georgia on March 21, 1856, Henry O. Flipper rose to prominence as the first African American graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1877. Despite being born into slavery to Festus, a shoemaker, and Isabella Flipper, Henry was reared in a family that emphasized excellence, and he and his younger brothers all became respected members of their communities.   Commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army upon completing West Point, Flipper was transferred to the l0th U.S. Cavalry Regiment where he became the highest ranking and most famous of the Buffalo Soldiers (African Americans in all-black regiments) stationed at Western military installations.  Flipper's assignments included Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Fort Elliott, Fort Concho, Fort Davis, and Fort Quitman, all in Texas. Flipper earned distinction during the the Victorio Campaign which pitted the Apache leader Victorio against the U.S. Army in Texas and ...

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...