Leigh Whipper (1876-1975)

Leigh Whipper (1876-1975)

Leigh Whipper, the first black member of the Actors’ Equity Association (1913), was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1876. His father, William James Whipper, was a Civil War Veteran from Connecticut who settled in South Carolina during the Reconstruction period...
Johnson C. Whittaker (1858-1931)

Johnson C. Whittaker (1858-1931)

Johnson Chesnutt Whittaker was the second black cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York. He was born in South Carolina to an enslaved mother, Maria J. Whitaker, and her free husband, James Whitaker, in 1858. (Later in life, he added a...