Sherman Maxwell (1907-2008)

Sherman Maxwell (1907-2008)

Sherman “Jocko” Maxwell was born December 18, 1907, in Newark, New Jersey. He was an African American sports broadcaster, journalist, and postal worker and best known as a chronicler of the Negro Baseball League. Sherman Leander Maxwell was the son of William and...
Luis Gama (1830-1882)

Luis Gama (1830-1882)

Luis Gonzaga Pinto da Gama (Luis Gama) was a Brazilian poet, journalist, legal activist, abolitionist leader, and former slave. He was born in 1830, a free mulatto in Salvador, the capital of Brazil’s Bahia province. His mother, Luisa Mahin, was a black woman from...
Malcolm Gladwell (1963- )

Malcolm Gladwell (1963- )

Bestselling author, journalist, and public intellectual Malcolm Gladwell was born in Fareham, Hampshire in southern England on September 3, 1963, the second son of Graham Gladwell, a British mathematics professor, and Joyce Nation, a psychotherapist from Jamaica. The...
Roger Sauvage (1917-1977)

Roger Sauvage (1917-1977)

Roger Sauvage was one the few pilots of African descent to fly in both the French and Russian Air Forces in World War II. Sauvage was born in Paris on March 26, 1917, the son of a white Frenchwoman, Marie Sauvage, and a black soldier from Martinique. Sauvage’s father...
Ousmane Sembene (1923-2007)

Ousmane Sembene (1923-2007)

Ousmane Sembène, prolific writer and film producer, was born in January 1923 in Ziguinchor, Senegal.  Official documents were rare in 1920s French colonies, so even though Sembène was officially listed as born on the eighth of January, he says that it is likely that...