Editor Nina Mjagkij includes the largely untold stories of the Highgate sisters, two northern black teachers whose lives exemplify the African American thirst for education and penchant for racial uplift through schooling; Father of the Kansas Exodus, Benjamin "Pap" Singleton; Pan-African Congress member and international peace movement activist Addie Waites Hunton; and Lester A. Walton, a journalist, foreign minister, and political activist who fought tirelessly for the birthright of citizenship for African Americans in a country that systematically denied that claim.
In these engaging passages, students will meet Edgar Daniel Nixon, a forgotten Father of the Civil Rights Movement; Sgt. Allen Thomas, Jr., who served in the Vietnam War; civil servant and civil rights activist, Elmer Henderson; and educator and feminist, Anna Julia Cooper. They will become acquainted with fraternal society leader William Washington Browne, who fostered life insurance among African Americans and advocated black owned banks; Richard Henry Boyd, who established the National Baptist Publishing Board, the largest publishing house owned and controlled by black Americans; and Timothy Drew, "Noble Drew Ali," founder of the Moorish Science Temple of America, who fused religion with black nationalism, paving the