By Bashir Muhammad Akinyele Editor: Victor Trammell Photo credits: ©2016 Brittany Starr  Artifacts attributed to the ancient vizier Ptahhotep were found in Kemet (Egypt). However, in that same country, there exists a book older than the Teachings of Ptahhotep. It was called the incomplete instructions to Kagame. In the book, The Teachings of Ptahhotep: The Oldest […]

Frank and Edward Mallory were big names of the minstrel and vaudeville stage. The two appeared from the early 1880s to the early 1900s. They often used saxophones, handbells, and other brass instruments. After the brothers married, their wives were included in the act. The Mallory Brothers began their careers with Billy Kersands’ Genuine Colored […]

James Alexander Chiles was one of the first African American lawyers to argue a case before the Supreme Court. He was also the first black person to practice law in Lexington, Kentucky. Chiles was one of eight children, born in 1860 to Richard and Martha Chiles. After completing high school, he attended Lincoln University in […]

Four #African American children, probably three girls and one boy, pose in #a living room next to a piano in white dresses. c1910 Found On Flicker.com in Black History Album

Pharmacist Frank Barbour Coffin owned and operated the first drug store in Little Rock, Arkansas which served the black community. Coffin was also a poet during the nineteenth and twentieth century. Coffin was born on January 12, 1870, in Holly Springs, Mississippi to Samuel and Josephine Barton Coffin. His mother died while he was still […]

BY WALTER OPINDE On this day, May 23, 1975, the first African-American standup comedian, Jackie Moms Mabley, dies. She achieved a great professional and commercial success during the age in which there were very few African-American females on the comedy platforms. Famous with her stage name, Jackie Moms Mabley; Loretta Mary Aiken was born on […]

The city of New York hired Gertrude Hadley Jeanette, as its first woman licensed taxi driver in 1942. Jeanette also later became a notable  film and stage actress and playwright. Jeanette was born in Urbana, Arkansas in 1914 to a mother who was a homemaker and father who taught on a Native American reservation. During […]

Key Facts About Gwendolyn Bennett: Kidnapped by her father at an early age First black member of her high school’s literature and theater organizations An influential figure of the Harlem Renaissance Literary Poet and Artist   Famed Harlem writer, Gwendolyn Bennett, spent most of her childhood on a Native American reservation in Nevada. Both her […]

Editors: Dr. Asa Hilliard, Larry Williams, Nia Damali, and Victor Trammell By Bashir Muhammad Akinyele Photo credits: Martino Publishing {I will use the words Afrikan and Black interchangeably for people of African descent) The late Dr. John Henrik Clarke, the legendary Africana Studies Professor, and respected Pan Africanist, once said, “Afrikan history is the missing […]

During the Baixa de Cassanje and UPA revolts in early 1961, there was another conflict that February in the 1961 Luanda Attacks. Luanda Attacks The Assaults in Luanda in 1961 saw Black guerrilla forces takeover several military and police buildings in a bid to release political prisoners. The other part of their plan didn’t come […]

At Black Then, we frequently see interesting photos that give us a glimpse into the past. They tend to show us a piece of black history that is often not covered in textbooks, in history classes, or shown in the media. In a photo that we found on Black History Album , we see this […]

While he was held under house arrest for some time in September along with Kasa-Vubu, Lumumba and others would escape. The house arrest was initiated by the U.N to keep chief-of-staff Colonel Joseph Mobutu from arresting them. There was a fear that he would be dispatched under suspicious circumstances. On November 27, 1960, he arrived […]