

1921 - The Binga State Bank
Jesse Binga's rise from relative poverty to become the wealthiest African American entrepreneur and banker in Chicago in the late 19th...


1930s and 1940s - This outfit defined an era, created a riot, and was banned by the government
The zoot suit was a subversion of capitalism’s uniform, worn largely by black and hispanic men There’s a picture of a boy in a pinstripe...


1930s to 1996 - Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald, in full Ella Jane Fitzgerald, (born April 25, 1917, Newport News, Virginia, U.S.—died June 15, 1996, Beverly Hills,...


1930s to 1987 - James Baldwin
James Baldwin was an essayist, playwright and novelist regarded as a highly insightful, iconic writer with works like The Fire Next Time...


1930s - Katherine Dunham: Anthropologist, Ethnologue, Choreographer, Dancer, creator of the Dunham T
Katherine DunhamLegendary dancer, choreographer and anthropologist, Katherine Dunham was born on June 22,1909 in Chicago, to an African...


1930s - Loïs Mailou Jones paved a path for black artists who had been shut out of the world of fine
Black artists weren’t allowed to submit their work to most galleries and exhibitions in the 1930’s and 1940’s, but that didn’t stop Loïs...


1930s - Modernism was about revolt, but Lois Mailou and her black contemporaries had a more radical
Lois Mailou Jones was the rare kind of artist who can work successfully in as many modes as she felt like. The New England-born artist, a...


1930s to 1960s-The Segregated Black Schools That Dominated in Science
In the 1930s, at a time when many white high school teachers did not have bachelor’s degrees, 44 percent of Sumner’s teachers had...


1931 - THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS
The Scottsboro Boys were nine black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women aboard a train near Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931....

1932 - ‘You’ve got bad blood’: The horror of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment
In the fall of 1932, the fliers began appearing around Macon County, Ala., promising “colored people” special treatment for “bad blood.”...