Septima P. Clark (1898 – 1987) was a pioneer educator, civil rights activist, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called her the “Mother of the Movement.” King considered her to be a “community teacher, [an] intuitive fighter for human rights and leader of her unlettered and disillusioned people.”1 Clark was born in Charleston, South Carolina, …
Without the influences of African American people, medicine as a concept and practice would look very different today. Modern practices such as inoculation, gynecology, and certain birthing techniques can be traced directly back to the knowledge of African descended people held in bondage in the United States. While some of that knowledge has become part …
Denmark Vesey was born, raised, and enslaved in St. Thomas (Danish West Indies). As a boy, he was purchased and sold several times before ending up in Charleston, South Carolina, the domestic property of a captain named Joseph Vesey. At age thirty-two, he won a lottery and bought his freedom for six-hundred dollars. Afterward, he …
