"Daniel Simmons" 1875-????)

Walked to Savannah Georgia at the age of 17 from Allendale, South Carolina. He 

became a telegraph operator and later entered the Mattress industry. In 1906 his mattress making business became a very successful and he opened a mattress making plant on East Bay Street.

John-Berry-Meachum" (1789-1854)

Was an African American pastor,business man,educator and founder of the First African Baptist Church St.Louis,the oldest African American church west of the Mississippi River.

At a time when it was illegal in the city to teach African Americans to read and write,John 

operated a school in the church's basement. He also circumvented a Missouri state law 

banning education for African American by creating the Floating Freedom School  on a steamboat on the Mississippi River.

As a young, he guided 75 enslaved people from Kentucky to their freedom in Indiana,

a free state.Once established in Missouri, he and his wife Mary Meachum were conductors on the Underground Railroad.They also purchased enslaved people and took them into their home until they earned enough money to repay their purchases price.The Meachums employed the enslaved people that they purchased and emancipated them when they have saved enough money to repay their purchase price.In the meantime,they were also educated and learned skills to be self-sufficient once freed.John &Mary also helped runaway enslaved people across the Mississippi and into Illinois along the 

Underground Railroad.The Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing in St.Louis, thw first site 

in Missouri to be accepted in the National Park Service's National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom,was named after Mary.

In 1846,John spoke at the National Negro Convention in Philadelphia and published the 

pamphlet An Address to all of the Colored Citizens of the United States,which stressed the importance of educational and self respect.

He was born in Goochland County,Virginia. John was the son of an enslaved Baptist minister named Thomas Granger and an enslaved woman named Patsy.Born into slavery, his slaveholder was Paul Meachum (Mitchem).  They moved to North Carolina,and after 

nine years,they moved to Hardin County,Kentucky.His owner,who John described as kind

man,allowed the young man to be hired out to work at a saltpeter cave.He also earned 

money as carpenter.With his shares of his earnings,John purchased his freedom when he was 21.John then walked 700 miles to Hanover County,Virginia,and purchased his daddy's freedom for 100 Virginia pounds.John was baptized in Virginia in 1811.After they 

accumulated more money,the daddy and son walked to Kentucky and freed John's mama 

mama and siblings.His family settled in Harrison Indiana.Remaining in Kentucky,John married  and enslaved woman named Mary.

According to John,Paul was more than 100 years of age with  75 slaves when he made 

John an offer to free his slaves if he would lead them out og Kentucky.He agreed and led  the group across the Ohio River to Harrison County Indiana,where his parents had 

settled.His parents' neighbors ran the group out of the area and the freed African Americans settled elsewhere.Paul & Susannah Mitchem were and elderly couple when they chose to move to Indiana in 1814 with about 100 enslave people.John traveled 

with them.Most of the former slaves settled around the town of Corydon in Harrison 

County.

When John returned to Kentucky,he learned that his wife's had taken her and their 

children to St.Louis Missouri,with only three dollars (equivalent $44 in 2021),he 

moved to the river port city to be with her in 1815.He saved his earnings as carpenter,

cabinet,maker,and cooper to purchase the freedom of Mary and their children. He made

a good living in the city as a cooper.

In St.Louis,he met white Baptist missionaries John Mason Peck and James Welch who 

established the Sabbath School for negroes in 1817.John began preaching and assisting the missionaries in 1821.After he was ordained by Rev. Peck in 1825,John 

constructed a separate building at the same location for the First African Baptist Church  and school.Founded in 1827,it was the first African American church west 

of  the Mississipp.By that time,there were 220 congregants,200 of whom were slaves,

who required the permission of their owners to attend church.The church continued 

to grow into the 1840s,when it had 500 parishioners.

A dee-toned missionary spirit,uncommon order and correctness among the slave population,and strict and regular discipline in the church,were among the fruits of 

his arduous preserving labor.

Allen's Register,1835.

Beginning in 1822,John taught religious and secular classes for free and enslaved African Americans.It was the first known school for African Americans in Missouri.

called the Candle Tallow School,it charged those who could pay one dollar per student

in tuition.

In 1825,the city had passed and ordinance that banned the education of free African Americans. Those in violation of the law could be whipped with 20 lashes,fined,or 

imprisoned.In 1847,the school was closed down by the police,who arrested John 

and a white teacher from England.the slave state of Missouri banned all education for 

African Americans,one of several restrictions on the lives of both enslaved African Americans and free people of color.It also prohibited them from having independent 

African American religious services without a white law enforcement officer present,

or from holding any meetings for education or religion.

John moved his classes in the middle of the Mississippi River,which was subject to federal law and outside of Missouri's jurisdiction.He supplied the riverboat with a library,desks,and chairs, and called it the "Floating Freedom School". This allowed 

him to resume his educational practices to African Americans,free snd enslaved,

eluding limitations of the then established Southern state laws.

Among John's student was James Milton Turner,who was at the school when John was arrested. He was the consul to Liberia under President Ulysses S.Grant. After the civil

war,he founded the Lincoln Institute,the first school in Missouri for higher education for

African American students.

John worked as a carpenter and cooper.He purchased enslaved, people,who studied 

under him and worked for him,and saved their earnings.When the bondsman repaid him,John meachum emanicipated them.By 1835,he was worth $25.00 (eqivalent to $ 656,694 in 2021).

John married Mary,who was born about 1805 in Kentucky.They had two children,John & William.In 1840 his household consisted of 10 free people of color and six slaves.

In 1850,they had eight African Americans living with them,two of whom were boatsmen.

John and Mary helped enslaved people gain their freedom via the Underground Railroad.They transported people by boat to the free state of Illinois.Through profits from his successful businesses,the meachums purchases and freed enslaved people.

He provided on-the-job-training. He owned two riverboats and operated a barrel-making factory,which was staffed by escaped slaves,who saved up their earnings, John and Mary purchased the freedom of around 20 slaves between 1826 & 1836. Nearly every 

person that the Meachum's freed paid them back, which provided the money to free others. 

By 1846,John had purchased the freedom of 22 people and taught them vocational and 

life skills to be self-reliant.That year,he spoke at the National Negro Convention in 

Philadelphia.He said that black people needed to receive practical,hands-on education 

so they would could support themselves after emancipation. He punctuated his arguments with Biblical references like Proverds 22:6: "Train up a child the way he should go and when he is old he will depart from it. He also wrote,

In order that we might do more for our young children, I would recommend manual labor schools to be established in the different states, so as they children could have 

free access to them. And i would recommend in these schools pious schools teachers,

either white or colored,who would take all pains with the children to bring them up in 

piety, and in industrious habits.We must endeavor to have our children look up little, for they are too many to lie in indleness and dishonor.

John Berry Meachum

After his death,Mary continued her work with the Underground Railroad. She and a free

African American man named Isaac traveled by a boat with nine slaves across the 

Mississippi River to Illinois, a free state,on May 21, 1855.Once they reached they shore ,

they were arrested and went to jail for violating the Fugitive Slave Act of  1850.On May

24,she was charged with slave theft.The charges against Isaac were dropped. The Missouri Republican reported on July 19,1855,that Mary was tried by a jury and acquitted of a at least one charge, and the remaining charges were dropped.

She was president  of  the ladies aid society in St.Louis. Because African Americans 

were not allowed to ride streetcars at that time, the women negotiated with the streetcar company to ride the streetcar one day a week,on Saturdays,to allow the 

members of the 'ladies aid society visit wounded soldiers at the segregated wing of the Hospital at Benton Barracks in St.Louis.

John died in his pulpit on February 26.

 

"Bert-Maynard-Roddy" (August 19,1886-1963)

A well known,innovative businessperson,Bert founded the first African American owned grocery chain in Memphis.He was born in Augusta,Arkansas,to Jerry &Harriette Mckenny Roddy.

When Bert was a young boy,he and his family moved to Memphis,where he attended and later graduated from Lemoyne Institute.Bert Bert had a great interest in promoting racial progress and participating in business and civil activities that benefited African Americans.He was one of the early stockholders of the Solvent Savings Bank and Trust,Company,established in 1906,he became a cashier of the bank in 1914.During this period,he and a 
friend,Robert S.Lewis Sr., opened the Iroquois Cafe,a popular spot on Beale Street.Another friend who assisted in managing  this enterprise was Modecai 
Wyatt Johnson,who later became president of Howard University in Washington, D.C.

In 1916 he joined a political Organization,the Lincoln League,and became a candidate for the state Senate on the Lincoln League ticket.The ticket lost,the Lincoln League became a respected political organization in Memphis,Tennessee,and the nation.Bert was the first president of the Memphis branch of the NAACP,established in 1917.

Bert's business prowess drew him to establish Citizen's Cooperative Stores in 1920.There were fourteen of these stores at the peak of the business's success,
along with several dozen employees and fleet of delivery trucks,the stores met their demise due to the recession of the 1920s and increased market competition.

An active church member,Bert was a member of Second Congregational Church for many years and was superintendent of the church's Sunday School as well as a trustee.

He organized the syndicate that launched the Supreme Life and Casualty Company of Ohio, founded Truman Kella Gibson Sr.Later the company moved to Chicago with his family,Bert became the assistant agency officer of Supreme in 1931 and retained this position until he retired in 1957.

"John-Berry-Meachum" (1790?-1854)

Craftsman,minister,and businessman,was born a slave in Virginia.The names of his daddy, a Baptist preacher,and his mama are unknown.A skilled carpenter and cooper,John was allowed  to save some of  earnings,and eventually he bought his freedom. Moving to Louisville,Kentucky,he married a slave, Mary,and then purchased her out of bondage; they had an unknown number of children.About 1815 he and Mary to St.Louis, reportedly with only three daughters in his pocket. There John used his carprntry skills to find a job as a cooper.He established his own cooper's shop a few years later and began buying St.Louis real estate.

During the 1830s,in order to help fellow African Americans become free,John started buying slaves,training them in barrel making and letting them earn money to pay him back for their liberity.By 1846 he had emancipated "twenty colored friends that I brought."Except for one,who was an alcoholic,they all were successful, as John boasts in An Address to All Colored Citizens of the United States (1846). In fact,one former slave not only acquired his own freedom, he purchased his wife, built a home for his family, and became a highly proficient blacksmith.John's Address does not include all of the facts.In 1834 Julia Logan petitioned the Circuit Court of St.Louis,claiming that she was entitled to her freedom that she was being "held as a slave by Berry Meachum a man of color in Saint Louis and [was]  bound and imprisioned in his house." Julia feared that she would soon be sold " ton some distant place." In 1836 the case went to the Missouri Supreme Court,which ruled against John.

By 1850 he owned two brick homes in St.Louis and an Illinois farm. According to the census that year,his eight thousand dollars in real estate holdings made him the third-richest free African American in Missouri.John conducted himself  modestly,even with his sizable wealth.An 1854 inventory  of John's estate listed a few basic chairs, carpet worth seven dollars, and about forty books,valued eight dollars.The 1850 census  showed twelve people living in his house,including his wife,their two grandchildren,various other adults and children,and two African American coopers who appeared to be working to reimburse John for their liberty.

John also organized and maintained two schools for African American youth,one even after a state law had been passed that prohibited the teaching of African American children.When the Englishman whom he hired to teach at the school was arrested,John got him out of jail and later reopened the school secretly on one of the steamboats that he built and owned.

As the of a Baptist preacher,John followed his daddy's lead.He joined the St.Louis Mission Church about 1816 and became its pastor about 1828,when it became an independent African American church,called the First African Baptist Church.By the late 1830s his congregation included two hundred slaves and twenty free African Americans. John's style as a preacher was so energetic and energetic and enthusiastic that in 1846 a small group led by John R.Anderson, a former slave describeded as "quiet" with " reserved power," left the church. Even the name of John's steamboat-Temperance-reflected his concerns as a minister and as a leader in his community .

John left a a lasying impact on St.Louis.His school educated hundreds of free African Americans and slaves including James Milton Turner who after the Civil War would found Lincoln Institute,the first schhol  of higher education for African Americans in Missouri.The work of John and Mary on the Underground Railroad is now commemorated at the Mary Meachum Crossing in St.Louis,where the two led slaves across the the Mississippi River to freedom in Illinois.The First African Church.(now the First Baptist Church) continues to operate in St.Louis.John died at his pulpit.

"Frederick-McDonald-Massiah"[December 12 1886-July 7 1975]

Was  one of the first African Americans to receive   a civil engineering degree from Drexel    University Philadelphia Pennsylvania,and was also one of the first successful African  American contracting engineers in the country.

He    was born in Barbados.Frederick immigrated to the United    States in    1909  where he  he started his career as    a        laborer,working during the day and    studying at night.He studied  architecture at the    Pennsylvania   School  of the Fine  Arts and   earned a  degree in civil  

engineering at Drexel Institute around   1915 (now Drexel University).

By the early 1920s,he had  established his own business.Frederick

became a U.S. citizen on April 29,1931.

Frederick was among the first successful African American contracting engineers in the country.He established a  construction business during

a time it was almost  impossible for African Americans to obtain financing,insurance,and  acceptance by trade unions.

Fredrick came to public notice in the fall of 1925 he was heralded in the

press for his successful construction of an elliptical concrete dome on

the Ascension of Our Lord Roman Catholic church in Philadelphia.The dome was the first of its kind in the country.His methods of using reinforcements  in concrete were prior to widespread building codes in the 1920s.Two years later,in the fall of 1927,Frederick and his construction were again featured in the press when he was selected as

the general contractor for the Walnut Plaza Apartments in West Philadelphia.Fredrick's work on this project led to his receiving the bronze   medal in business by the William E.Harmon Foundation in January 1929 for outstanding work in building engineering,especially concrete construction.

As his firm's reputation grew,Frederick received numerous government

contracts.He subcontracted concrete work for construction projects

throughout the nation.During a forty-five span of activity stretching into

the late 1960s,Frederick was responsible for building numerous structures,including the William Donner X-Ray Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania;the Trenton New Jersey Sewage Disposal Plant; Army barracks at Fort Meade,Maryland; and U.S. Post Office buildings in Coatsville, Pennsylvania;Camden New Jersey; and Germantown (a    section of Philadelphia ).He also built the Morton Housing Development,a $ 5 million project in Philadelphia.

Edith Lamarre and Frederick Massiah were married in 1950 and had two sons,Allen and  Louis,and a daughter Frederick Jackson.Frederick was a member of the Phi  Beta Sigma Fraternity,the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce,the Masonic Order,and the NAACP.

"Dr. Midian Othello Bousfield"(August 22,1885-February 16,1948)

Was a leader in Chicago's insurance industry.His diverse career included work in medicine,advocating for African-American health care and for the training of African-American medical personnel.

In 1914 Dr.Bousfield accepted a job as a secretary of the Railway Men's International Benevolent Association,an African-American railroad union that later became the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

In 1919 Dr.Bousfield left the union to become one of the founders Liberty Life Insurance Company headquartered in Chicago.Dr.Bousfield was the medical director and later president of Liberty Life.In 1929 he helped  engineer the merger of Liberty Life and two other African-American insurance companies,Supreme Life of Columbus,Ohio and Northeastern Life of  Newark,New Jersey.Dr.Bousfield became the vice president and medical director of the combined firm,Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company.

Dr.Bousfield  spent much of  the remainder of his career developing and improving health care and medical training opportunities for African-Americans.As director of Negro Health Division for the Julius Rosenwald
Fund,he helped finance the education of numerous future African-American physicians and nurses.

Dr.Bosfield also was responsible for developing the Infantile Paralysis Unit at Tuskegee University and a similar facility at Provident Hospital in Chicago.

From 1933-1934 he was president of the National Medical Association (NMA),an organization of African-American physicians across the nation.In 1939 Dr.Bousfield was appointed the first African-American member of the Chicago Board of Education.

Three years later in 1942 Dr.Bousfield  was selected to command the U.S. Army's Station Hospital,all-African-American hospital in Fort Huachuca,Arizona.The hospital served the 14,000 African American women and men stationed at the fort in training for combat in World War II.Dr.Bousfield earned the rank of  Lieutenant Colonel and retired in 1945 as the Medical Corp's first African-American colonel.

Dr.Bousfield  was born in Tipton,Missouri to Willard Hayman Bousfield,
a barber and businessman,and Cornelia Catherine Gilbert Bousfield.The family moved to Kansas City,Missouri,and after high school Midian graduated from the University of Kansas in 1907 with a bachelor degree of arts degree.He then entered medical school at Northwestern University in Chicago where he earned an M.D. in 1909.The following year Dr.Bousfield  began working as an intern at Howard University's Freedman's Hospital in Washington, D.C. and then worked  briefly in Kansas City.

"John-Newington-Conna"(1836-October 11,1921)

Was a pivotal  figure in the early  history  and development  of  Washington State.Born enslaved  near  San Augustine,Texas.John was a free man by the time  of  the Civil  War  because he  served  in  the  1st Louisiana Native Guards ,an all-African Americans Union  Regiment  between  1863 &  1865.  John  fought  in  three major  engagements:  the bloody  siege at  Port  Hudson  and battles  at  Miliken's  Bend  and  Tonica Bayou.

After  his  military  discharge on  May 4,1865,John  moved  north  to  Hartford,Connecticut.There  he  married  Mary L.Davis  in 1870.In 1879 ,the  Connas and their seven children   moved  to Kansas City, Kansas.In 1883,when  the  continental  railroad  reached  the west  coast,the Conna family  became the  first  African Americans to travel  by train  to Tacoma,Washington,the western terminus.He purchased  a 160 acre  farm north  of  Tacoma  which is now  a part  of  Federal  Way,Washington.


Shortly thereafter,John  joined the  Allen  C. Mason  real estate  firm and  soon  became  its leading  broker  by 1890  he started his own real estate  firm.He  also  actively recruited  African  Americans  from other  parts  of the country  to  migrate  to the Pacific  Northwest  including  coal miners who  settled  near  Roslyn, Washington  in the  1890s.


John was  politically  active.By the time  Washington  became a state  in 1889,he was  the titular leader  of the  African American  voting  bloc  in  Tacoma  as president  of the John Brown Republician  Club  and the  Washington  State  Protective  League.He  was  also  a member  of the local  chapter  of  the   African -American  League,the predecessor  to the NAACP.Due to his political influence  he was selected  Sergeant  at  Arms  for the  Washington State  Legislature  in 1889. While there  he helped  successfully  lobby  for Washington's  first  Public  Accommodation  law.On  December 24,18889,John & Mary  Conna donated  40 acres  of land,which is now called  the Conna addition ,to the City of  Tacoma.

He caught  the  "gold fever"  and the age of  64 sailed  for Alaska.By  1910  he had established a  real estate,mining  and investment  company  and a second  hand furniture  store  in  Fairbanks,Alaska.John  also ran  unsuccessfully  for the Alaska  Territorial  Senate  and for  the Fairbanks  City Council  as a Socialist.At  the time  of  his  death  in 1921,at the time  of his death John owned  six rental  houses  in  Fairbanks,and several  shares  of the Cripple  Creek  gold  mine.

"Edward-Davis" (1911?-1999)

Opened his first  automobile business,a used-car lot,in downtown Detriot.Two years later the used car business was turned into a Studbaker dealership,until 1956,when the manufacturer went of business.When Edward  was awarded a Chrysler Plymouth dealership in November 1963,he became  the first African American to  run a big three franchise.Before operating his own business,Edward worked at a Dodge plant and later sold cars for a Chrysler-Plymouth dealership.Forbidden to sell  on the showroom floor with white salespersons,he  was successful in promoting himself  in Detriot's African American community.After retiring from his Chrysler dealership, in 1971,he became  manager for the city bus system and worked as a consultant to minority automobile dealers.In 1933 the National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers honored  Edward  by establishing the annual  Edward  Davis Pioneer  Award.The Edward  Davis Scholarship Fund,in his honor, was established to support  African American students interested in the automotive field.In  January 1999  Edward was inducted into the Automobile Hall of  Fame Museum,the first  African American man to be honored. Edward  is the author of the book One Man's Way.

"C.H.James"

In 1883 an an African American man,C.H.James,walked into West Virginia's

countryside to barter trinkets for vegetables to sell at market.More than 12 decades later,his great-grandson,Charles H.James III,is still in the food sector running the $66 million C.H.James Restaurant Holdings,LLC,and teaching his three son the business.

It began in 1883 when C.H.James I moved to West Virginia from Ohio and and began selling goods on a mule cart,trading with coal miners.The miners had no cash,only scrip money,so he traded goods in exchange for produce that could grow.

His son,E.L. James would later say,"You have to diversify to survive."Just before the 1929 stock market crash,the company went bankrupt.The family was able to pick up the pieces and begin again,opening a small outlet store at Charleston's original farmers' market on Patrick Street,and the company reorganized under the name James Produce Co.Before the James family came to West Virginia they were involved in helping to organize part of the Underground Railroad railroad in Ohio.

The James Produce Company operated their second business on Virginia and Park St.on Charleston's West Side.

"Timothy-Thomas-Fortune" (October 3,1856-June 2,1928)

Was an orator,civil rights,leader,journalist,writer, editor,and publisher.He was the

highly influential editor of the nation's African American newspaper The New York Age,was the leading economist in the African American community.He was a long-time adviser to Booker T.Washington and the ghost writer,and the editor of Booker's first autobiography,The Story of my Life and Work.Timothy's philosophy of militant on behalf of the rights of African American people laid one of the foundations of the Civil Rights Movement.

He was born during slavery in Marianna,Jackson County,Florida,to Emanuel & Sarah Jane Fortune.He started his education at Marianna's first school for African Americans after the Civil War.His family moved to Jacksonville where he attended Stanton High School for Negroes.Timothy worked both as a page in the state senate and as apprenticed printer at a Jacksonville newspaper during the time Emanuel,was a reconstruction politician in Florida.At one time Timothy also worked at the Marianna Courier and later the Jacksonville Daily-Times Union.These experiences would be the start of a career wherein he would go on to have his work published in over twenty books and articles and more than three hundred editorials.In 1874 he was mail route agent and then he was promoted to customs inspector for the eastern district of Delaware but only held this position for a few months before resigning in order to attend Howard University.

He was mostly self-taught,in 1875 Timothy Timothy enrolled in Howard University to study law.He changed to journalism after two semesters before leaving school altogether to begin work,in 1876,at the People's Advocate,a newspaper in Washington,D.C.

He moved to New York in 1881 and began process whereby over the next two decades he would become known as editor and owner of a newspaper named first the Globe,then the Freeman and finally the New York Age.

Upon  arrival  in New York,Timothy began working as a printer.He became part owner of various,publications,ultimately founding the New York Freeman 1884.That same year he published a book atitled Black and White: Land,Labor,and Politics in the South.Four years later The Freeman took the new name of The New York Age and set out to become "The Afro-American Journal of News and Opinion."

In Chicago on January 25,1890,Timothy co-founded the militant National Afro-American League to right wrongs against African American authorized by law and sanctioned or tolerated opinion.The league fell part apart after four years.When it was revived in Rochester,New York,on September 15,1898,it had the new name of "National  Afro American Council," With Timothy as president.These two organizations would play a vital role in setting the stage for the Niagara Movement,NACCP and other civil rights organizations to follow.Timothy was also the leading advocate of using "Afro-American to identify his people.Since they are "African in orgin and American in birth," it was his argument that most accurately defined them.

With Timothy as the helm as co-owner with Emanuel Fortune Jr.and Jerome B.Peterson,the New York Age became the most widely read of all African American newspapers.It stood at the forefront as a voice agitating against the evils of discrimination,lynching,mob violence and disenfranchisement.Its popularity was due to Timothy's editorials which condemned all forms of discrimination and demanded full justice for all African Americans.Ida Bell Wells Barnett's newspaper Memphis Free and Headlight had its printing press destroyed and building burned as the result of an article published in it on May 25,1892.Timothy then gave her a job and a new platform from which to detail and condem lynching.His book The Kind of Education the Afro-American Most Needs was published in 1898.He published Dreams of Life:Miscellaneous Poems.After a nervous breakdown,Timothy sold the New York Age to Fred R.Moore in 1907,who continued it until 1960.Timothy published another book,The New York Negro in Journalism in 1915.

Timothy went to work as an editor at the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African League's house organ,the Negro World,in 1923.At its height the Negro World had circulation of over 200,000.With distribution throughout the United States,Canada,Europe,Africa,the Caribbean,and in Central America it may have been the most widely disturbed newspaper in the world at that time.During his tenure at the Negro World,Timothy rubbed shoulders with such literary luminaries as Zora Neale Hurston,W.A. Domingo,Hubert Harrison,and John E.Bruce among others.

Timothy moved to Red Bank,New Jersey,in 1901,where he built his home,Maple Hill.

He died in Philadelphia Pennsylvania.

"Granville-Tailer-Woods"(April 23,1856-January 30,1910)

Was a prominent inventor and electrical engineer who developed over 50 significant patents over the course of his life.Because of significant electrical inventions he is known as the "Black Edison."


He was born in Columbus Ohio.Granville attended school until he was 10 and then,as was typical of the era,he left school to start work.Employed in a mechanic's shop,he developed a fascination with railroad equipment.Granville,and avid reader and astute learner,began to focus all his spare time and attention to mastering electrical engineering.At age 20 he enrolled in a technical college and trained for two years in electrical and mechanical engineering.After graduation,with no prominent jobs prospects in Ohio,he worked as an engineer on a British steamer which allowed him to travel the globe.He  eventually settled in Cincinatti,Ohio where he formed the Woods Electric Company.His decision to become an independent entrepreneur stemmed in part because of his difficulty in finding work.


By 1887 Granville developed the first of his inventions,the synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph which allowed communication between moving trains and train depots.One year later he developed a system for overhead electric conducting which helped power locomotives.In 1889 he filled his first patent for an improved steam-boiler furnace.


Granville competed with more prominent inventors of the era including Thomas Edison who claimed invention of the multiplex telegraph and filed a lawsuit to support his claim.Granville won the legal challenge prompting Edison to offer him a prominent postion in the engineering department of Edison Electric Light Company in New York.Granville declined the offer,preferring to maintain control over his inventions.


He died in Cincinnati.Over the course of his lifetime he held over 35 patents including a dozen for inventions which made electrical railways safer and more efficient.

"George-Edwin-Taylor" (August 4,1857-December 23,1925)

Was born in Little Rock Arkansas (Pulaski County) to Bryan (Nathan) Taylor,a slave

and Amanda Hines,a " free African-American woman; he had eleven siblings,none of whom are known by name.Nothing is known about his parents,except Amanda Hines was forced to leave Arkansas in 1859 in compliance with the state's Free Negro Expulsion Act,signed into law on February 12,1859.She fled with baby,Taylor to Alton,Illinois,a major center of the Underground Railroad.


Little is known about his time in Alton,except his mama died from tuberculosis in 1861 or 1862,and the young George lived in "dry good boxes" before he was taken to the La Crosse Wisconsin,area area,where he lived from 1865-1891.While in La Crosse (1865-1867),he lived the Henry & Agnes Southhall family and attended La Crosse's schools.From 1867,he was raised by politically active African American farmer near West Salem,Wisconsin.George attended county schools and Wayland Academy (1877-1879) in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin,where he studied the "classical curriculum."


From 1879,Edward worked as a journalist in the La Crosse are,contributing to numerous local newspapers and eventually and editing the Wisconsin Labor Advocate.He was active in local and state politics,especially in the labor movement and in the Wisconsin People's Union Labor parties.Edward moved to Okaloosa,Iowa,and in 1891,when he owned and edited and the Negro Solicitor.While in Iowa,he was president of the National Negro Democratic League,the National Negro men's Protective Association,and the National (Negro) Knights of Phythias.From Iowa (1891-1910),Edward moved to Florida,where he was the executive director of Jacksonville's "Colored" Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) and editor of three local newspapers: the Promoter,the Florida Times-Union (colored section),and the Florida Sentinel.


He married three times:Mary Hall of Prairre du Chien,Wisconsin,on October 15,1885;Cora E.Cooper in Okaloosa,Iowa,on August 25,1894,and Marian Tillinghast of Green Cove Springs,Florida circa 1919.No children were born to any of these marriages.


Edward's principal success (and failure) was his candidacy of the National Negro Liberty Party in 1904 for the office of president the United States.That election was won by Theodore Roosevelt,but Edward's 1904 candidacy reflected the enormous trama then facing African-American voters who were witnessing a fundamental failure of both Republican & Democratics to protect civil rights gained after the war,a systematic and through disfranchisement of  their in Southern states,and an imposition  of  Jim Crow Law & segregation.The Liberty Party's platform contained planks that supported pensions for ex-slaves,independence for Puerto Ricans & Filipinos,and representation for voters in the District of Columbia.It is condeemed disfranchisement efforts sweeping the South.The state of Arkansas played a role in attempt to dehumanize African Americans.


He died in Jacksonville,Florida.The cause of death and his burial is known.

"Wallace-A.- Rayfield"(May 10,1874-1941)

Was the second formally educated practicing African-American architect in the United States.


He attended schools in Macon,Georgia before moving to Washington,DC after the death of his mama.He was an apprentice at an architectural firm while attending Howard University.Wallace then completed a graduate certificate from Pratt Institute before earning his bachelor's degree in architecture from Columbia University in 1899.Upon graduation,he was recruited by Booker T.Washington to the Directorship of the Architectural and Mechanical Drawing Department at Tuskegee University in Alabama.In 1907,Wallace opened a professional office in Tuskegee from which he solid mail-order plans nationwide.Wallace also advertised "branch offices" in Birmingham,Montgomery,Mobile,and Talladega,Alabama and Atlanta,Savannah,Macon and Augusta,Georgia.


He left Tuskegee University and moved to Birmingham in 1908 to focus on his young practice.Wallace was elected as Superintending Architect for the Freedman's Aid Society and Connectional Architect of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.




List of his works:
1.16th Street Baptist Church,Birmingham,Alabama,1911.
2.T.C.Windham Construction Company Office Building,Birmingham,Alabama,1912.
3.32nd Street Baptist Church,Birmingham,1924.
4.6th Avenue Baptist Church,Birmingham.
5.Trinity Baptist Church,Birmingham.
6.Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion Church,Birmingham.
7.Ebenezer Baptist Church,Chicago Illinois.
8.St.Paul's Episcopal Church,Batesville,Arkansas.
9.Trinity Building,South Africa.
10.Mt.Zion Baptist Church,Pensacola,Florida.
11.Morning Star Baptist Church,Demopolis,Alabama.
12.Marlinton Methodist Church,Marlinton,West Virginia.
13.Marlinton Presbyterian Church,Marlinton West Virginia.
14.Mt.Pilgrim Baptist Church,Milton Florida.
15.Madame Clisby Residence Birmingham.
16.Dr. A.M.Brown Residence,Birmingham.
17.R.A.Blount Residence,Birmingham.
18.Rocky Springs Presbyterian Church,Laurens,South Carolina.
19.First Missionary Baptist Church,Decatur,Alabama.

"Charles-ClintoSpaulding" ( August 1,1874-August 1,1952)

Businessman and civic leader, was born in in Columbus County,North Carolina, one

of ten children of Benjamin McIver Spaulding & Margaret (Moore) Spaulding,who together ran a prosperous farm.The Spauldings were descendants of a tight-knit, and fiercely independent community of free people of color who had settled in southeastern North Carolina in the early nineteenth century. Benjamin was also an accomplished blacksmith and furniture maker,and he served as county sheriff during Reconstruction.George White,the last African American to represent a Southern district in Congress until the late 1960s,was a neighbor. Like his nine siblings Charles learned the dignity of labor from an early age.He recalled in an unpublished autobiography that when not working with their daddy tending, crops, the children were to be found helping their mama scrub the floors of their cabin or keeping the farmyard as pristine as farmyard can be kept.

As the second eldest son,it became clear to Charles that he would have to leave the family farm to to make his way in the world.In 1894 he moved to Durham to live  with his uncle,AaRon McDuffie Moore,the city's only African American physician and pharmacist.Charles completed his high school equivalency two years later and worked variously as a bellhop,waiter,dishwasher, and office assistant before taking over the management of a cooperative grocery store in 1898. For a young man of Charles ambition Durham was the right place at the right time. Once a sleepy village,Durham was by the 1890s a bustling, industrious city whose tobacco factories drew thousands of African-Americans & white workers from the sourrounding countryside and produced vast profits for white businessmen like James Buchanan Duke.

Enterprising African American such as Aaron Moore & John Merrick could only dream of James millions. But imbued with the entrepreneurial ethos of  Booker T. Washington they readily understood the business opportunities made possible by the city's rapidly expanding African American population and by the city's rapidly expanding African American population and by the prevailing white preference for racial segregation.Because white insurance companies such as the Prudential,for example,refused to insurance African-American,John & Aaron founded the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association in Durham in 1898.Two years later,with the company floundering,they turned to reorganize the Mutual singlehandedly.


Over the next three years,Charles natural flair for salesmanship,his boundless energy,and his tenacious optimism transformed the company's fortunes.He began his workday sweeping and mopping the Mutual's floors,spent his mornings and afternoons hawking insurance policies door to door and street corner to street corner,and worked well into the knight attempting to balance the company's books. The long hours that he worked left little time for personal life,in 1900 he married Fannie Jones,with whom he had four children before her death in 1919. The Mutual flirted with bankruptcy on several occasions, by 1903 Charles had earned the trust of hundreds of policyholders and had secured insurance agents in fifty towns in North & South Carolina.That year Charles finally awarded  himself a set salary-fifteen dollars a week-and also launched an innovative company magazine,the North Carolina  Mutual,which published testimonials from satisfied customers and helped to build the company's reputation for trustworthiness.


The Mutual's greatest achievement lay in making life and sickness policies affordable to the great mass of African Americans,with premiums beginning as low as only five or ten cents a week.By 1907 Charles presided over a new,imposing brick headquarters,which serviced the needs of more than 100,000 policyholders.Advertising itself as "the Greatest Negro Insurance Company in the World," the Mutual encouraged the formation of other  of other African American owned businessesses in Durham and with Charles at the fore helped established ans support,a hospital,a library,a college,a literary club,three newspapers,and even a baseball team for African Americans in Durham.In 1911 Charles effort's at the Mutual earned the endorsement of his hero,Booker T.Washington,who praised the entrepreneurial spirit of African American Durhamities in a national newsweekly.W.E.B. Du Bois echoed these views a year later and contrasted the favorable climate for African American businesses in Durham with the hostility of whites to African American business development in Atlanta.


By the time that Edward  Franklin Frazier dubbed Durham "the Capital of the Black Middle Class"in the early 1920s,the Mutual had presence in eleven Southern states and employed 1,100 workers.Charles,Charles who married Charlotte Garner in 1920,assumed the presidency of the Mutual in 1923 upon the death of Aaron Moore and retained that position until his death twenty-nine years later.In the 1920s & 1930s Charles emerged as the most powerful African American businessman of his era.In addition to his leadership of the Mutual he was prominent in the National Negro Business League (NNBL),which had been founded by Booker T.Washington in 1900.When the NNBL was on the verge of collapse in the late 1930s,Charles rescued it,almost at the cost of his health.iN 1924 Charles founded the National Negro Finance Corporation (NNFC) in the hope yhat it could pool African American capital and expertise in a central location and provide loans for African Americans entrepreneurs.In 1927 Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover endorsed the NNFC's goals and praised Charles efforts in Durham,this early experiment in government  supported African American capitalism was a victim of the Depression.That the Mutual survived the Depression years while so many other companies failed was thanks in part of Charles skills in lobbying Congress to provide loans through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.A more significant role was played by Charles's second cousin,Asa Timothy Spaulding the nation's first African American actuary,who mastered the company's successful modernization after joining the Mutual in 1933.Charles gathered around him a cadre of talented executives,including the board's only female member,Viola Turner.As Viola recalled,"nobody ever doubted that "Papa" was in charge.

The Mutual's secure business footing enabled Charles to pursue his broader social and political goals. He continued to fund and support libraries,schools,college,and youth groups throughout the South, and he served as trustee of Howard  University in Washington,D.C., sHAW university IN Raleigh,AND THE THE north Carolina College for Negroea (NCCN) in Durham.In 1932,Charles registered as a Democrat and had the ear of several prominent New Dealers,including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.He also enjoyed unprecedented access to, and influence on, several governors,state legislators,and other members of North Carolina's white political elite.

Yet such connections and his wealth could not always protect Charles from the worst excess of Jim Crow racism,most notably in 1931 when a white man attacked and beat him in a Raleigh drugstore.The NAACP national secretary Walter White also criticized Charles in 1933 for sabotaging an early legal challenge to segregation when NAACP activists sought admission for the Durham native Thomas Hocutt to the pharmacy school on the University of North Carolina's flagship white campus at Chapel Hill.Rembering the bloody violence of the Wilmington race riot three decades earlier,Charles feared that such a blatant challenge to segregation would provoke a violent white blacklash,and he joined with the NCCN president James Shepard to block Thomas admission.Charles later tried to parlay his opposition to James into increased public spending on African American education, white lawmakers ignored his entreaties.

The Hocutt case marked a turning point in Charles evolving political liberalism. Afterward he proved more willing to work with the state and national NAACP,most notably in helping to fund and organize a campaign for equalizing teacher's salaries and

"Andrew-Franklin-Hilyer"

He was born a Georgia slave in 1858. After a brief stay in Nebraska.He settled in

Minneapolis.In 1882,he became one of the first African American graduates of the University of Minnesota.He received two law degrees from Howard University in the Mid 1880s.After his government employment as a clerk in the Treasury Department.

In 1892,Andrew was one of the founders of the Union League,an African American fraternal and business promotion group.The League's directories of local African American businesses published in 1892, 1894 ad 1895 remain important sources of imformation about African American life in the nation's capital on the eve of the twentieth century.The league's outstanding effort was its " study of colored Washington" done in 1901.

Andrew was a man of many talents.He also ran a real estate business and was present at the initial meeting in Boston of the National Business League in August,1900.The league's first president was Booker T.Washington.Booker believed that there was "need of an organization that will bring color people who engaged in business together  for consultation and to secure information and inspiration from each other." Represeentatives attended from over 30 states, most from the South.

Andrew understood the patent process better than most.He toured several southern states in 1899 as a field agent for the U.S. Commission for the Paris Exposition of 1900 was responsible for preparing the " Negro Exhibit" in which was a large number of African American craftsmen, artists,and inventors displayed their wares.

In 1890,Andrew had patented  a " water evaporator attachment for hot air registers" and a related "register." Both of these patents sought to improve the quality of room air by adding more moisture to the environment.

Andrew and his wife belonged to Coleridge-Taylor Society which promoted and peformed the works of the black classical composer,Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.They helped arrange two visits by the composers to the United States where the black elite received him enthusiastically.Andrew and his wife were members of several other music,social,and literary societies.

In 1913, Andrew became a member of the Howard Board of Trustees.In 1916,his wife died.Andrew did not remarry until 1923.His second wife was Amanda Victoria Gray,a family friend,widow,and graduate of the Howard University School of Pharmacy.

"Giles-Beecher-Jackson" {September 10,1853-August 13,1924}

One of four children of Hulda & James Jackson.During Jackson's formative

years,the family lived in Goochland County.Little is known of his daddy,because his mama was enslaved,by law he and siblings were born into slavery.During the Civil War,Giles became the body servant of his owner,Charles G.Dickerson,a Confederate cavalry colonel.After the war,he worked for the Stewart family on the Brook Hill estate in Richmond,where he learned to read and write.On November 17,1874,Giles married Sarah Ellen Wallace,and together they had fourteen children.Giles studied law under the tutelage of the Richmond attorney William H.Beveridge,and on November 30,1887,he became the first African American certified to practice law before the Virginia Supreme Court of appeals-in its day,the equivalent of passing the bar.


In 1888 Giles wrote  Giles wrote the articles of incorporation for the Savings Bank of the Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers,of which he was a member.The bank was rooted in the tradition of the benevolent societies and fraternal organizations of the era.By 1907 membership had reached 100,000 with deposits of  $330,000 and more than $1.5 million in annual business. Booker T.Washington selected Giles as his aide-de camp in 1990 when Booker was organized the Negro Business League in Boston.Giles served as vice president during the organization's first three years.


In 1901,United States President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned Giles an honorary colonel and Giles participated in the presidential inaugural parade in 1905,Theodore renewed the commission and for the occasion Giles commanded the Third Civic Division,an African American cavalry unit.


In March 1902,Virginia governor Andrew Jackson Montague chartered the Jamestown Exposition Company to organize an event to commemorate the three-hundred anniversary of the founding of Jamestown by English settlers.The commissioners had not planned to feature African American Virginians,Giles saw an opportunity to highlight their achievements at a time when lynching were common across the South-forty in Virginia since 1890-and Jim Crow laws enforced strict segregation and second-class citizenship.Following the endorsement of the Jamestown Exposition Company's president,Fitzhugh Lee,Giles promoted his idea of a Negro Building that would be home to exhibitions by and about African Americans.He organized the Negro Development and Exposition Company of the United States of America (NDEC),which oversaw construction from its headquarters in Richmond.

The NDEC  set up a nation board of directors that include both African Americans and white members,and in 1903 President Roosevelt appointed Giles its director general.The group lobbied Congress for $1.2 million but instead received $100,000 from the Treasury Department:in the meantime,critics,charged that Gile's  effort to create a separate exhibit at the Ter-Centennial only emphasized African Americans position in a segregated society.Giles defended and publicized the venture in his newspaper the Negro Criterion,which also promoted African American business in general.In addition,Roosevelt proved to be an important advocate.In a public appearance in front of Gile's law office in Richmond,the president,addressing Giles,congratulated "you and your people on the magnificent showing you have made in your development.I am with you.I assure you and your people that you have that you have my hearty support in the efforts you are making to have a creditable exhibit of the achievements of your race and commend you  in the effort you are making for the betterment of the condition of your race."

Between April 16 & December 1,1907,the Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition,held in Northfolk,attracted three million visitors.The Virginian-Pilot reported that the Negro building  was indeed "an excellent showing"and was one of the most well attended and well awarded venues at the exposition.

The official record estimates that at least a least 750,000 visited the Negro Building,and the exhibition won 162 medals: 25 gold,51 silver, and 86 bronze.Following the success of the exhibitions at the Negro Building organizers,led by Giles,published an Address and Appeal to the White People seeking support to relocate the Negro Building to Richmond as a permanent national museum.The Richmond News Leader declared that "the Negro exhibit at the exposition is universally regarded as one of the best on the grounds,and its removal to Richmond would be a matter,not only of considerable interest,but of substantial value to the city."Because the organizers could find no financial support the Negro Building was dismantled,as were the other buildings, at the Jamestown Exposition.In 1908,Giles published The Industrial History of the Negro Race of the United States,which provided a history of the exhibition,as well as of African American achievements in business and the arts.

During World War 1 (1914-1918) Giles appointed of the Negro Division of the U.S. Employment Service in Washington,D.C.,serving until June 30,1919.He spent the last four years of his life lobbying Congress on behalf of a commission to address Interracial labor problems and,more generally,the working conditions of African Americans.Both U.S. presidents Warren G.Harding & Calvin Coolidge expressed support for such a commission,they took no action.Separate bills were introduced in the U.S.House of Representatives in May 1920,December 1923,and June 1924 and in the U.S.Senate,and Giles became ill while attending the Republican National  Convention in Cleveland,Ohio.
Giles died of cardiac asthma complicated with acute nephritis.