Judith Diane Judith Nash was born on May 15, 1938, in Chicago, Illinois. She was raised in a middle-class, Catholic household. Her father, Leon, served as a clerk in the ...

Herndon Alice Childress was born Alice Herndon on October 12, 1912, in Charleston, South Carolina. After her parents separated in 1925, she moved to Harlem, New York. There, she lived ...

Elmer Geronimo Pratt was born Elmer Pratt on September 13, 1947, in Morgan City, Louisiana. He was one of six siblings born to Jack and Eunice Pratt. His parents owned ...

Irene Dorothy Irene Height was born on March 24, 1912, in Richmond, Virginia. Her mother was a nurse and her father worked as a building contractor. She was severely asthmatic ...

West African François Toussaint L'Ouverture was born François Toussaint on May 20, 1743. Although his early life is not well documented, it is believed that he descended from West African ...

Jacksonville James Weldon Johnson was born on June 17, 1871, in Jacksonville, Florida. He was born to a freeborn Virginian man and a Bahamian mother. Despite the racial tensions between ...

Nell Ruby Nell Bridges was born on September 8, 1954, in Tylertown, Mississippi. She grew up on the farm that her family had sharecropped on. In 1958, The Bridges family ...

Mpilo Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born on October 7, 1931, in Klerksdorp, South Africa. Both of his parents worked in education. His mother cooked and cleaned at the local school ...

Freda Josephine Baker was born Freda Josephine McDonald on June 3, 1906, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother, Carrie, was a washerwoman. She had once dreamed of being a music-hall ...

Alexander Matthew Alexander Henson was born August 8, 1866, in Charles County, Maryland. He was an infant when his mother died. When young Matthew was four years old, his father moved ...