SEARCH RESULTS
-
African American Heritage Week: William Wells Brown
EnglishMajorLeagues
This week, I'm dedicating my posts to African American heritage, and I'll be highlighting some of the figures from American history that you may not have heard of. The first of these figures is the controversial novelist, William Wells Brown. Brown was born into slavery in either 1814 or 1815, to a Kentucky-based slave named Elizabeth and George W. Higgins, a white planter. His father did ... ...more
-
African American Heritage Week: Matthew Henson
EnglishMajorLeagues
Trekking further into lesser known African American figures, let's explore the life of Matthew Henson, the Arctic explorer. Henson was born in 1866 in Maryland to freed sharecropper parents. When his father died when Henson was seven years old, he was uprooted and sent to Washington, D.C. to live with his uncle, who paid for some education, but soon passed away. Henson attended a black public ... ...more
-
African American Heritage Week: Bass Reeves
EnglishMajorLeagues
Are you a fan of 'The Lone Ranger?' It might surprise you to learn that the inspiration for the character may not have been white at all, but an African American deputy named Bass Reeves. Reeves was born into slavery in 1838, in Arkansas. Not much is known concretely about his life and whereabouts, but we do know that the man who owned Reeves as a slave, Colonel George R. Reeves, took him ... ...more