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In her early career as an entertainer, under the name Brenda Dale Knox, she won multiple titles in drag pageantry including: |
Chablis said she did not want any label except her name, "The Lady Chablis", and said she found it hurtful when people called her a "drag queen". In his book, Berendt wrote that he met Chablis as she was returning home from having a hormone injection. In her book "Hiding My Candy", Chablis said she had not undergone se... |
The Lady Chablis died on September 8, 2016, from "Pneumocystis" pneumonia, aged 59, at Savannah's Candler Hospital. |
On November 5, a special screening of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" was shown at Savannah's Lucas Theatre for the Arts, with a tribute to Chablis beforehand. A few of Chablis' gowns were on display in the theatre's lobby. Jerry Spence, the former hairdresser who appeared in both the book and movie, was in a... |
Upon news of her death, several of Chablis' former co-stars made tributes to her. Paul Hipp, whom she appeared alongside in the movie adaptation of "Midnight in the Garden", said: "So sad to hear of The Lady Chablis' passing. She was super talented, kind, and laugh out loud funny. She was a true transgender pioneer, wa... |
John Mason Brewer (March 24, 1896 – 1975) was an American folklorist, scholar, and writer noted for his work on African-American folklore in Texas. He studied at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and Indiana University, while he taught at Samuel Huston College in Austin, Texas, Booker T. Washington High School in Dalla... |
Brewer was the first African American to be an active member of the Texas Folklore Society, to be a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, and to serve on the council of the American Folklore Society. He was also the first African American to deliver a lecture series at the University of Arizona, the University of C... |
In 1932, while in Austin, Brewer met J. Frank Dobie, then the secretary and editor of the Texas Folklore Society. According to Byrd, Dobie was the "biggest influence on [Brewer's] career as a writer". Also in 1932, the Society published a collection of African-American folktales collected by Brewer that was entitled "J... |
Brewer began his tenure as a professor of English at Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, in 1959. After moving to North Carolina, Brewer's most significant publications were the articles "Animal Tales as Told by African Students of Livingstone College" and "North Carolina Negro Oral Narratives" (both publ... |
Brewer was a Methodist and a member of the Democratic Party. He married twice, and had a son with his first wife; his second wife, Ruth Helen, was from Hitchcock, Texas. After his death, he was buried in Austin. |
Brewer was the first African American to be an active member of the Texas Folklore Society, to be a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, and to serve on the council of the American Folklore Society, where he rose to the position of vice-president. He was also the first African American to deliver a lecture series ... |
A 1969 interview with Brewer is featured in the Oral History Collection at Texas Tech University's Southwest Collection. In 1997, Brewer was posthumously given the "Compañero/a de las Americas" award by the American Folklore Society for his "outstanding contributions to the further understanding of folk traditions in t... |
Brewer described his tales in "Dog Ghosts" in his own words as "as varied as the Texas landscape, as full of contrasts as Texas weather. Among them are tales that have their roots deeply embedded in African, Irish, and Welsh mythology; other have parallels in pre-Columbian Mexican traditions; and a few have versions th... |
Clay Cane is a journalist, author, television commentator, radio host and filmmaker. He is the director and creator of the documentary "Holler If You Hear Me: Black and Gay in the Church", which was nominated for a 2016 GLAAD Media Award. He is the author of "Live Through This: Surviving the Intersections of Sexuality,... |
A graduate from Rutgers University, Phi Beta Kappa, with a B.A. in English and African-American Studies, Cane's commentary is heard on MTV, HLN, MSNBC, FOX, VH1, CNN and numerous other television programs, including "The O'Reilly Factor", "Don Lemon Tonight" and "Melissa Harris-Perry". He has contributed to print and o... |
Cane was the host of "Clay Cane Live", a weekly, call in and political radio talk show on WWRL 1600AM, which was home to radio programs for Reverend Al Sharpton and Ed Schultz. After 86 years, the station aired its final broadcast in December 2013. In November 2017, Cane returned to radio on SiriusXM Urban View channel... |
He is a member of New York Film Critics Online and the Broadcast Television Journalists Association. |
Cane is the author of "Live Through This: Surviving the Intersections of Sexuality, God, and Race." The book was published via Cleis Press in June 2017. Publishers Weekly called the book, "Cane’s observations on the intersections of class and race, which do not shy away from the quagmire of being poor in America, reson... |
Lucy Ann Delaney, born Lucy Berry (c. 1830 – after 1891), was an African-American author, and activist, a former slave notable for her 1891 narrative From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom. This is the only first-person account of a "freedom suit" and one of the few slave narratives published in ... |
The memoir recounts her mother Polly Berry's legal battles in St. Louis, Missouri, for her own and her daughter's freedom from slavery.For her daughter's case, Berry attracted the support of Edward Bates, a prominent Whig politician and judge, and the future US Attorney General under President Abraham Lincoln. He argue... |
For decades little was known of Lucy Ann Delaney beyond her memoir. In the 1990s her mother's and her freedom suits were among the brief case files found for 301 freedom suits in St. Louis, dating from 1814–1860. Related material is available online in a searchable database created by the St. Louis Circuit Court Histor... |
Born into slavery in St. Louis, Missouri in 1830, Lucy Ann Berry was the second daughter of slaves Polly Berry (born Polly Crocket) and a mulatto father whose name she did not note. Their first daughter was named Nancy. Berry's family was held by Major Taylor Berry and his wife, Frances. Lucy's mother had been born fre... |
In her freedom suit, Polly Berry deposed that she was held as a slave in Wayne County, Kentucky by Joseph Crockett, and was brought by him to Illinois. There they stayed for several weeks while he hired her out for domestic work. As Illinois was a free state, he was supposed to lose his right to hold slave property by ... |
The major told Polly and her husband that they and his other slaves would be freed upon his death and the death of his wife. After the major died in a duel, the widow Fanny Berry married Robert Wash, a lawyer later appointed as a Missouri State Supreme Court judge. When Fanny Wash died, the Berry slave family's fortune... |
Polly Berry became concerned for the safety of her daughters, and determined they should escape. Lucy Ann's older sister Nancy slipped away while traveling with a daughter of the family, Mary Berry Cox, and her new husband on their honeymoon in the North. Nancy left them at Niagara Falls, took the ferry across the rive... |
After having conflict with Mary Cox in 1839, Polly Berry was sold to Joseph A. Magehan, but escaped about three weeks later. She reached Chicago, but was captured by slave catchers. They returned her to Magehan and slavery in St. Louis. |
On returning, Polly Berry (also known as Polly Wash after her previous master) sued for her freedom in the Circuit Court in the case known as "Polly Wash v. Joseph A. Magehan" in October 1839. When her suit was finally heard in 1843, her attorney Harris Sproat convinced a jury of her free birth and kidnapping as a chil... |
In 1845, Lucy Ann met and married steamboat worker Frederick Turner, with whom she settled in Quincy, Illinois. Her mother lived with them. Turner died soon after in a boiler explosion on the steamboat "The Edward Bates". (It was named for the lawyer who had helped secure Lucy Ann's freedom two years before.) |
Polly Wash and Lucy Ann returned to St. Louis. In 1849, Lucy Ann met and married Zachariah Delaney. They were married for the rest of their lives, and her mother lived with them. Though the couple had four children, two did not survive infancy. The remaining son and daughter both died in their early twenties. |
In the late nineteenth century, many blacks migrated to St. Louis from the Deep South for its industrial jobs. Delaney met with new arrivals to try to track down her father. Learning that he was living on a plantation 15 miles south of Vicksburg, Mississippi, she wrote and asked him to visit her. Her sister Nancy from ... |
She died in her Missouri home August 31, 1910. Funeral services were held for her in St. Louis, sponsored by the Heroines of Jericho. |
By 1842, Lucy Ann was working for Martha Berry Mitchell, another of the married Berry daughters. They came into conflict in part because of the slave girl's inexperience at heavy domestic tasks, including laundry. Martha decided to sell her, and her husband David D. Mitchell arranged the sale. The day before she was to... |
Since her own case had not been settled, Wash was still considered a slave with no legal standing, but under the slave law, she could file suit in Circuit Court in St. Louis for Lucy Ann Berry's freedom as "next friend". The law provided a slave with the status of a "poor person", with court-appointed counsel when the ... |
The case was prepared primarily by Francis Butter Murdoch, who litigated nearly one third of the freedom suits filed in St. Louis from 1840–1847. Francis B. Murdoch had served as the Alton, Illinois district attorney, and prosecuted the murder of the printer Elijah Lovejoy by anti-abolitionists. Wash also attracted the... |
Lucy Ann and Polly Berry lived in St. Louis after gaining her freedom. They had to get certificates as free blacks and deal with other restrictions of the time against free people of color. They worked together as seamstresses. |
As Delaney recounted in her memoir, she became active in civic and religious associations. Such organizations developed rapidly in both the African-American and white communities nationally in the years following the Civil War. She joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1855, founded in 1816 in Philadelphia a... |
Delaney belonged to the Col. Shaw Woman's Relief Corps, No. 34, a women's auxiliary to the Col. Shaw Post, 343, Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). The veterans' group was named after the white commanding officer of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, the first of the United States Colored Troops and a unit that achieved re... |
In 1891, Delaney published her "From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom," the only first-person account of a freedom suit. The text is also classified as a slave narrative, most of which were published prior to the Civil War and Emancipation. Delaney devoted most of her account to her mother Polly... |
The narrative is steeped in spirituality, as was typical of the genre and people's lives. Delaney delebrated what she considered God's benevolent role in her own life, and she attacked the hypocrisy of Christian slave owners. "From the Darkness" emphasizes the strength of the African Americans who suffered under slaver... |
"From the Darkness" was originally published in St. Louis in 1891 by J.T. Smith. After the rise of the mid-20th-century Civil Rights Movement and feminism, and new interest in historic black and women's literature, in 1988 the book was reprinted in the collection "Six Women's Slave Narratives" by Oxford University Pres... |
Literary critic P. Gabrielle Foreman suggested that author Frances Harper based her character of "Lucille Delaney", in the novel "Iola Leroy" (1892), on Delaney's memoir published the year before. |
The city of St. Louis has frequently acknowledged Lucy Ann Berry's significance to local and national Black History. |
1900 United States Census, Missouri St. Louis ED 396 Precinct 11 St. Louis city Ward 26 |
Zach Delaney Male 77 Married Black, B. Feb 1823 Ohio, Married 1850, Father born Virginia, Mother born Virginia, Head of Household, Employed as Janitor |
Lucy A Delaney Female 74 Married Black, B. May 1826 Missouri, Married 1850, Father born Kentucky, Mother born Illinois, Mother of 7 children total |
Ancestry City Directories 1822-1995, Zachariah resides in St. Louis occupation as Cook, Porter or Janitor |
Last entry in St. Louis City Directory was on page 257 for 1904, Zachariah Delaney, Janitor resides at 1317 Washington. Approx death date of 1904-5 |
Boiler Explosion and Fire of the Edward Bates where Lucy's first husband Frederick Turner perished as a deckhand. Listed among those Mortally wounded, dying of his injuries with one William Robinson, presumed a co worker. *Note a Claudine and Louisa Robinson lived next door to the Delaneys on the 1900 census for St. Lo... |
"...Missing and Dead of the Crew -- JOHN BROWN, colored fireman, Quincy, blown overboard; ANDREW HATFIELD, colored fireman, Ill., do.; ELI DELANY, first cook, St. Louis, do.; GEO. MATSON, fireman, do., do.; JOHN LEMON, deck-hand, do. do., HARRY JOHNSON, do. do.; WM. PARKS, do. do.; C. W. LYONS, do. do.; Quincy, do.; __... |
Newspaper clipping states 'dead were buried at Hamburg, Illinois" |
Wounded—George Blackwell, T. B. Ewing, D. E. Cameron, Samuel Simpson, Preston Leiper, Le Roy Jenkins, E. B. Morrison and wife, (badly,) M. Vansel, James Cook, J. H. Simpson, Master Bowen, Mr. Eades, E. T. Hudson, H. M. Swazy, J. Righter, and friend. Mortally Wounded—George Watt, Samuel Dolsey, Wm. Wells, John Montague,... |
Sarah Louise "Sadie" Delany (September 19, 1889 – January 25, 1999) was an American educator and civil rights pioneer who was the subject, along with her younger sister, Elizabeth "Bessie" Delany, of the "New York Times" bestselling oral history biography, "", by journalist Amy Hill Hearth. Sadie was the first African-... |
Delany was the second-eldest of ten children born to the Rev. Henry Beard Delany (1858–1928), the first black person elected Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, and Nanny Logan Delany (1861–1956), an educator. Rev. Delany was born into slavery in St. Mary's, Georgia. Nanny Logan Delany was born in a co... |
Sadie Delany was born in what was then known as Lynch Station, Virginia, at the home of her mother's sister, Eliza Logan. She was raised on the campus of St. Augustine's School (now University) in Raleigh, North Carolina, where her father was the Vice-Principal and her mother a teacher and administrator. Delany was a 1... |
Delany died at the age of 109 in Mount Vernon, New York, where she resided in the final decades of her life. She is interred at Mount Hope Cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina. |
In 1994, the sisters and Hearth published "The Delany Sisters' Book of Everyday Wisdom," a follow-up to "Having Our Say." After Bessie's death in 1995 at age 104, Sadie Delany and Hearth created a third book, "On My Own At 107: Reflections on Life Without Bessie." |
Delany was the aunt of science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany Jr., the son of her youngest brother. Living Relative Families: |
Ryan N. Dennis is an American curator and writer who is currently Chief Curator and Artistic Director at the Mississippi Museum of Art's Center for Art and Public Exchange (CAPE). She previously served as Curator and Programs Director (2017-2020) and Public Art Director and Curator (2012-2017) at Project Row Houses in ... |
Ryan N. Dennis was born in Houston, Texas. In 2007, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Houston where she was in the African American studies program and the art history program. She received a M.A. degree in arts and cultural management from the Pratt Institute in New York City in 2011. Denni... |
Early in her career, Ryan N. Dennis worked as a curatorial assistant at the Menil Collection (2007-2009). She moved to New York City to pursue her degree, where she was a fellow at The Laundromat Project in 2009, worked in public programs at the New Museum, and was traveling exhibition and artists-in-residence manager ... |
Dennis was selected for the 2019 Center for Curatorial Leadership annual Fellowship, where she completed a weeklong residency at the Brooklyn Museum. In 2019, she was selected, along with Evan Garza, to co-curate the seventh edition (2021) of the Texas Biennial, a "geographically-led, independent survey of contemporary... |
In April 2020, she became the Chief Curator and Artistic Director at the Mississippi Museum of Art's Center for Art and Public Exchange (CAPE). It is the largest art museum in the state. |
Ryan N. Dennis' written works appear in "Prospect.3 Notes for Now" (2014) as part of Prospect New Orleans, "" (2015)"," the "Miami Rail" (2017). She also contributed to the monograph of Autumn Knight published in 2018. |
George Cain (October 27, 1943 – October 23, 2010) was an African-American author who is renowned for writing "Blueschild Baby", a semi-autobiographical novel published in 1970. The book is about the life of a drug user who finally overcomes his addiction. Cain was himself a drug user but, unlike the character in his no... |
Born on October 27, 1943, as George Maurice Hopkins, he would adopt the pen name Africa Cain, later choosing to use his original first name. He grew up in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan and moved with his family to Teaneck, New Jersey after graduating from the McBurney School, which he attended on scholarship. His basketbal... |
Despite favorable responses to the book, he never completed a planned sequel to his debut book and as described by his ex-wife Jo Lynne Pool he "had a lot of friends from the street, and they were going down", and he went down along with them, his life and family falling apart. |
Cain died at the age of 66 on October 23, 2010, in Manhattan due to complications of kidney disease. He was survived by two daughters, a son and five grandchildren. |
Barbara Taylor Bowman (born October 30, 1928) is an American early childhood education expert/advocate, professor, and author. Her areas of expertise include early childhood care/education, educational equity for minority and low-income children, as well as intergenerational family support and roles. She has served on ... |
Bowman was born and raised on the south side of Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Laura Dorothy Vaughn (née Jennings) and Robert Rochon Taylor, who was on the board of the Chicago Housing Authority. Her grandfather was architect Robert Robinson Taylor. Her parents were African-American. After receiving a B.A. degree f... |
Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty and the 1965 creation of Head Start inspired Bowman. The next year, with the support of businessman and philanthropist Irving B. Harris, Bowman cofounded the |
Chicago School for Early Childhood Education (now known as the Erikson Institute) with child psychologist Maria Piers and social worker Lorraine Wallach. Bowman went on to serve as its president during the period of 1994 to 2001, and maintains a professorship at the institute, where she is the Irving B. Harris Professo... |
Bowman is the Chicago Public Schools' Chief Early Childhood Education Officer. She is the past president (1980–1982) of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Her Board memberships are many including: Business People in the Public Interest, Chicago Public Library Foundation, Great Books Foundatio... |
Bowman was married to the late James E. Bowman, renowned pathologist and geneticist of African American descent, and the first black resident at St. Luke's Hospital. They have one daughter, Valerie Jarrett, who was Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Liaison in the Oba... |
Leroy Eldridge Cleaver (August 31, 1935 – May 1, 1998) was an American writer and political activist who became an early leader of the Black Panther Party. |
In 1968, Cleaver wrote "Soul on Ice", a collection of essays that, at the time of its publication, was praised by "The New York Times Book Review" as "brilliant and revealing". Cleaver stated in "Soul on Ice": "If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, i... |
Cleaver went on to become a prominent member of the Black Panthers, having the titles Minister of Information and Head of the International Section of the Panthers, while a fugitive from the United States criminal justice system in Cuba and Algeria. He became a fugitive after leading an ambush on Oakland police officer... |
After spending seven years in exile in Cuba, Algeria, and France, Cleaver returned to the US in 1975, where he became involved in various religious groups (Unification Church and CARP) before finally joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as becoming a conservative Republican, appearing at Rep... |
Eldridge Cleaver was born in Wabbaseka, Arkansas; as a child he moved with his large family to Phoenix and then to Los Angeles. He was the son of Leroy Cleaver and Thelma Hattie Robinson. He had four siblings: Wilhelima Marie, Helen Grace, James Weldon, and Theophilus Henry. |
Cleaver was released from prison on December 12, 1966. He was writing for "Ramparts" magazine and organizing efforts to revitalize the Organization of Afro-American Unity. The Black Panther Party was only two months old. He then joined the Oakland-based Black Panther Party (BPP), serving as Minister of Information, or ... |
In 1967, Cleaver, along with Marvin X, Ed Bullins, and Ethna Wyatt, formed the Black House political/cultural center in San Francisco. Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Toure, Sarah Webster Fabio, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Avotcja, Reginald Lockett, Emory Douglas, Samuel Napier, Bobby Hutton, Huey Newton, and Bobby Sea... |
Cleaver was a presidential candidate in 1968 on the ticket of the Peace and Freedom Party. Having been born on August 31, 1935, Cleaver would not have been the requisite 35 years of age until more than a year after Inauguration Day 1969. (Although the Constitution requires that the President be at least 35 years of age... |
Cleaver also cultivated an alliance with North Korea in 1969, and BPP publications began reprinting excerpts from Kim Il Sung's writings. Although leftists of the time often looked to Cuba, China, and North Vietnam for inspiration, few had paid any attention to the secretive Pyongyang regime. Bypassing US travel restri... |
Byron Vaughn Booth (former Panther Deputy Minister of Defense) claimed that, after a trip to the DPRK, Cleaver discovered his wife had been having an affair with Clinton Robert Smith Jr. Booth told the FBI he had witnessed Cleaver shoot and kill Smith with an AK47. Elaine Mokhtefi, in the "London Review of Books", writ... |
In his 1978 book "Soul on Fire", Cleaver made several claims regarding his exile in Algeria, including that he was supported by regular stipends from the government of North Vietnam, which the United States was then bombing. Cleaver stated that he was followed by other former criminals turned revolutionaries, many of w... |
Cleaver left Algeria in 1972, moving to Paris, France, becoming a born again Christian during time in isolation living underground. He turned his hand to fashion design; three years later, he released codpiece-revival "virility pants" he called "the Cleavers", enthusing that they would give men "a chance to assert thei... |
Cleaver returned to the United States in 1977 to face the unresolved attempted murder charge. By September 1978, on bail as those proceedings dragged on, he had incorporated Eldridge Cleaver Ltd, running a factory and West Hollywood shop exploiting his "Cleavers", which he claimed liberated men from "penis binding". He... |
In the early 1980s, Cleaver became disillusioned with what he saw as the commercial nature of evangelical Christianity and examined alternatives, including Sun Myung Moon's campus ministry organization CARP. He later led a short-lived revivalist ministry called Eldridge Cleaver Crusades, "a hybrid synthesis of Islam an... |
Cleaver was then later baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) on December 11, 1983. He periodically attended regular services and lectured by invitation at LDS gatherings. |
By the 1980s, Cleaver had become a conservative Republican. He appeared at various Republican events and spoke at a California Republican State Central Committee meeting regarding his political transformation. In 1984, he ran for election to the Berkeley City Council but lost. Undaunted, he promoted his candidacy in th... |
In 1988, Cleaver was placed on probation for burglary and was briefly jailed later in the year after testing positive for cocaine. He entered drug rehabilitation for a stated crack cocaine addiction two years later, but was arrested for possession by Oakland and Berkeley Police in 1992 and 1994. Shortly after his final... |
Cleaver died at age 62 on May 1, 1998, at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center in Pomona, California. He is buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, California. |
While in prison, he wrote a number of philosophical and political essays, first published in "Ramparts" magazine and then in book form as "Soul on Ice". In the essays, Cleaver traces his own development from a "supermasculine menial" to a radical black liberationist, and his essays became highly influential in the blac... |
In the most controversial part of the book, Cleaver acknowledges committing acts of rape, stating that he initially raped black women in the ghetto "for practice" and then embarked on the serial rape of white women. He described these crimes as politically inspired, motivated by a genuine conviction that the rape of wh... |
The essays in "Soul on Ice" are divided into four thematic sections: "Letters from Prison", describing Cleaver's experiences with and thoughts on crime and prisons; "Blood of the Beast", discussing race relations and promoting black liberation ideology; "Prelude to Love – Three Letters", love letters written to Cleaver... |
Ariel Serena Hedges Bowen (March 3, 1863 – July 7, 1904) was an African-American writer, temperance activist, and professor of music at Clark University in Atlanta in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. "Twentieth Century Negro Literature" (1902) noted that "she is regarded as one of the foremost and best cultured ... |
In 1886, Hedges was married to Dr. J. W. E. Bowen of the Gammon Theological Seminary, Atlanta, Georgia. She became a life member of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. She moved to Atlanta with her husband in 1893, where the couple raised a family of four children (one son and thre... |
Bowen became Professor of Music in Clark University in 1895, writing broadly on music ("Music in the Home"), as well as being an accomplished vocalist and musician with the piano and pipe organ. |
Bowen also was a notable figure in the Southern Women's Christian Temperance Union, writing "The Ethics of Reform" and serving as state president of the Georgia W. C. T. U., No. 2. |
Ariel Bowen Memorial United Methodist Church in Atlanta, Georgia is named in her memory. |
Donna LaVonne Franklin is an African-American social scientist and author, and a nationally recognized scholar on African American families. |
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