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Famous African Americans Essay, Research Paper

Throughout his life Ralph Bunche worked to improve race relations and further the cause of civil rights. For 22 years he served on the board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, earning its highest honor, the Spingarn Medal, in 1949. He participated in several civil rights demonstrations, including the 1963 March on Washington. That same year, U.S. President John F. Kennedy awarded him the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.

Sojourner Truth, American abolitionist and advocate of women’s rights, born into slavery in Hurley, Ulster County, New York, and originally named Isabella. (She was freed when New York State emancipated slaves in 1828.) A mystic who heard voices she believed to be God’s, she arrived in New York City in 1829, where she preached in the streets. In 1843, obeying her voices, she took the name Sojourner Truth and went preaching along the eastern seaboard. That same year she came into contact with the abolitionist movement, which she enthusiastically embraced, and for the next few years she toured the country speaking in its behalf. Encountering the women’s rights movement in 1850, she also added its causes to hers. During the American Civil War she solicited gifts for black volunteer regiments, and President Abraham Lincoln received her in the White House in 1864; she later advocated a “Negro State” in the West. Sojourner Truth continued to stump the country on speaking tours until 1875. An illiterate all her life, she was nevertheless an effective speaker and was endowed with a charisma that often drew large crowds to her informal lectures.

Allen, Richard, American clergyman, born in Philadelphia. The son of a slave, Allen was freed after his master was converted to Methodism. He was ordained a minister in 1784 at the first conference of the Methodist church in the U.S. During the next two years he was an itinerant preacher. While preaching at Saint George’s Church in Philadelphia in 1786, an incident of racial prejudice occurred, which is believed to have started him working for the establishment of an independent Methodist church for black members. This separate church was formed in 1799. In 1816 the African Methodist Episcopal Church was formed, uniting congregations of blacks in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. Allen was appointed its first bishop, a post he held until his death.

In 1966 Barbara Jordan became the first black woman to win a seat in the Texas Senate. She authored the state’s first successful minimum-wage bill and pushed for civil rights legislation. In 1972 Jordan was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She took a seat on the Judiciary Committee, where she earned national attention for her eloquent speech in favor of impeaching President Richard M. Nixon (1969-74) during the Watergate affair. She also delivered the keynote address at the 1976 Democratic Convention. In 1978 Jordan left the House to teach public policy at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1982 she was awarded the university’s Lyndon B. Johnson chair of National Policy. During the 1992 Democratic Convention, Jordan earned praise for her powerful speech against racism and intolerance among both whites and blacks.

Edward Brooke, American legislator, was born in Washington, D.C. and educated at Howard University. During World War II Brooke served in the infantry, rose to the rank of captain, and was awarded the Bronze Star and Combat Infantryman’s Badge. After the war he attended Boston University Law School. In 1960 he was appointed chairman of the investigative Boston Finance Commission, and in 1962 he was elected attorney general of Massachusetts; he was returned to this post in 1964. Two years later he was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican, the first black to serve in the upper house since the Reconstruction era and the first ever to be elected by popular vote; he was reelected in 1972. Hurt by a widely publicized divorce and accusations of financial misconduct, he was defeated when he ran again in 1978.

Marcus Garvey established the Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities League, usually called the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Its goals included the promotion of black solidarity, with a special concern for the welfare of African blacks. But the UNIA met apathy from black workers as well as active opposition from the lighter-skinned middle class who did not wish to be identified as blacks. Hoping for support in the United States, Garvey established a branch of the UNIA in New York City in 1917. He taught that blacks would be respected only when they were economically strong, and to that end he founded a newspaper, Negro World, as well as other black-owned businesses such as the Black Star Line, a steamship company. Garvey pledged to establish in Africa a black-governed nation.

Delany, Martin Robinson was an U.S. inventor, author, and physician. He was born in Charles Town, Va. in 1852 invented a device that would assist railroad locomotives in climbing and descending inclined planes, but was denied a patent. He was also an author of ‘The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States Politically Considered’, said to be the first full-length presentation of Black Nationalism (1852). He also formed National Emigration Convention 1854 to aid black people’s emigration to Africa and was the first black to attain rank of major in U.S. Army during American Civil War

Bates, Daisy and the Little Rock Nine were U.S. civil rights figures. Bates was born in Huttig, Ark.and cofounder of Arkansas State Press in 1941. She was president of Arkansas chapter of NAACP in 1957 during Little Rock school integration crisis and while state guardsmen, at Governor Orville Faubus’s

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