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...

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...

Eugene Jacques Bullard, the first black military combat pilot in World War I, was born Eugene James Bullard.  He led a colorful life, albeit much of it happened in Europe where his life has been surrounded by many legends.  He was known as the “black swallow of death” for his courage during missions. Bullard was born on October 9, 1895, in Columbus, Georgia, one of 10 children of William O. Bullard, and his wife, Josephine Thomas, a Creek Indian. He was a student at Twenty-eighth Street School in 1901-1906, where he learned to read and write. As a teenager, Eugene Bullard stowed away on a ship bound for Scotland, seeking to escape racial discrimination (he later claimed to have witnessed his father's narrow escape from lynching). Bullard arrived at Aberdeen, Scotland before making his way south to Glasgow. He finally arrived in Paris, France where worked as a boxer and did odd jobs in a music hall. In 1914 at the age of 20, Bullard enlisted in the French Foreign Legio...

(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 ...