A00022 - Daniel Hale Williams,19th Century Surgeon Who Performed Heart Surgery

Daniel Hale Williams,  (b. January 18, 1858, Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania — d. August 4, 1931, Idlewild, Michigan), American physician and founder of Provident Hospital in Chicago, credited with the first successful heart surgery.

Williams graduated from Chicago Medical College in 1883. He served as surgeon for the South Side Dispensary (1884–92) and physician for the Protestant Orphan Asylum (1884–93). In response to the lack of opportunity for African Americans in the medical professions, he founded (in 1891) the nation’s first interracial hospital, Provident, to provide training for black interns and the first school for black nurses in the United States. He was a surgeon at Provident (1892–93, 1898–1912) and surgeon in chief of Freedmen’s Hospital, Washington, D.C. (1894–98), where he established another school for African American nurses.

It was at Provident Hospital that Williams performed daring heart surgery on July 10, 1893. Although contemporary medical opinion disapproved of surgical treatment of heart wounds, Williams opened the patient’s thoracic cavity without aid of blood transfusions or modern anesthetics and antibiotics. During the surgery he examined the heart, sutured a wound of the pericardium (the sac surrounding the heart), and closed the chest. The patient lived at least 20 years following the surgery. Williams’ procedure is cited as the first recorded repair of the pericardium; some sources, however, cite a similar operation performed by H.C. Dalton of St. Louis in 1891.

Williams later served on the staffs of Cook County Hospital (1903–09) and St. Luke’s Hospital (1912–31), both in Chicago. From 1899 he was professor of clinical surgery at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, and was a member of the Illinois State Board of Health (1889–91). He published several articles on surgery in medical journals. Williams became the only African American charter member of the American College of Surgeons in 1913.

A00021 - Edwin Harleston, Artist and Civil Rights Leader

Edwin A. Harleston (b. 1882, Charleston, South Carolina - d. 1931)  was one of the most distinguished artists and civil rights leaders of his generation.  Born in 1882, in Charleston, South Carolina, he graduated from Avery Institute in 1900 and Atlanta University in 1904.  He studied at Howard University with the intention of becoming a physician, but instead set his sights on art.  From 1906 to 1912, he attended the School Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

In 1913, Harleston returned to Charleston to help with the family funeral business.  He soon became an active artist, businessman, and civil rights leader.  Harleston founded the Charleston NAACP in 1916 and was successful in its efforts toward educational reform for Black schools, teachers and principals.  He was a firm believer in civil rights for all Americans.  By the 1920's Harleston's reputation as an artist had flourished.  An active participant in the Harlem Renaissance, he received portrait commissions from all over the United States.  Even though his primary mode of art was portraiture, his work also showed the people and culture of the era.

In 1931, Harleston joined the Harmon Foundation at International House in New York.  The House had presented the first all African American exhibition in the United States.  Harleston created sensitive humanistic portraits of mostly African American civic leaders, businessmen, and their families.  He always captured the strength and depth of his subjects' personalities.  The Gibbes Museum and Art Gallery and the Avery Institute in his native Charleston co-hosted an exhibition of his work, Edwin Harleston: Painter of An Era, on the 101st anniversary of his birth.

Among the portraits displayed was his painting of Aaron Douglas, one of the most significant African-American artists of the 20th century.  This portrait was purchased by the Gibbes Museum. Many of Harleston's famous works, including "Mending Sock" and "The Old Servant" are in anthologies of African American Art.  Edwin Harleston died in 1931 at the age of 49.

A00020 - Buddy Bolden, Founding Father of Jazz

Buddy Bolden, byname of Charles Joseph Bolden (b. September 6, 1877, New Orleans, Louisiana - d. November 4, 1931, Jackson, Louisiana), was a cornetist and is a founding father of jazz. Many jazz musician, including Jelly Roll Morton and the great trumpeter Louis Armstrong acclaimed him as one of the most powerful musicians ever to play jazz.

Little is known about the details of Bolden's career, but it is documented that by about 1895 he was leading a band.  The acknowledged king of New Orleans lower musical life, Bolden often worked with six or seven different bands simultaneously.  In 1906, Bolden's emotional stability began to crumble, and the following year he was committed to the East Louisiana State Hospital, from which he never emerged. 

A00019 - "Blind" Lemon Jefferson, Father of the Texas Blues

"Blind" Lemon Jefferson (born Lemon Henry Jefferson) (b. September 24, 1893, Coutchman, Texas – d. December 19, 1929, Chicago, Illinois) was an American blues and gospel singer, guitarist, and songwriter from Texas. He was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s, and has been called "Father of the Texas Blues." 

Jefferson's performances were distinctive as a result of his high-pitched voice and the originality on his guitar playing.  Although his recordings sold well, he was not so influential on some younger blues singers of his generation, who could not imitate him as easily as they could other commercially successful artists. Later blues and rock and roll musicians, however, did attempt to imitate both his songs and his musical style. 

Today, Jefferson is widely recognized as a profound influence upon the development of the Texas blues tradition and the growth of American popular music. His significance has been acknowledged by blues, jazz, and rock musicians, from Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, and T-Bone Walker to Bessie Smith, Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Carl Perkins, Jefferson Airplane, and the Beatles.

Among Jefferson's most well-known songs are "Matchbox Blues," "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean," "That Black Snake Moan," "Mosquito Blues," "One Dime Blues," "Tin Cup Blues," "Hangman's Blues," "'Lectric Chair Blues," and "Black Horse Blues."

A00018 - Semei Kakungulu, Founder of the Abayudaya (Ugandan "People of Judah")

Semei Kakungulu (1869 – 24 November 1928) was a Ugandan man who founded the Abayudaya (Luganda: Jews) community in Uganda in 1917 (1919?). He studied and meditated on the Old Testament, adopted the observance of all Moses' commandments, including circumcision, and suggested this observance for all his followers. The Abayudaya follow Jewish practices and consider themselves Jews despite the absence of Israelite ancestry.

Kakungulu was also chosen to be the president of the Lukiiko of Busoga by the British colonists, and in effect, he became Busoga’s first 'King', although the British refused to give him that title. However, disputes amongst the different chiefs and clans continued, and most Basoga still retained affiliation to their chief, clan or dialect. The Lukiiko structure collapsed, and Semei Kakungulu was dismissed by the British.

Kakungulu was a warrior and statesman of the powerful Baganda tribe. During the 1880s, he was converted to Christianity by a Protestant missionary who taught him how to read the Bible in Swahili. Because he commanded many warriors, because of his connections to the Bugandan court and because he was a Protestant, the British gave Kakungulu their support. He responded by conquering and bringing under the British sphere of influence two areas outside of the Bugandan Empire, Bukedi and Busoga. These areas were between the Nile River's source in Lake Victoria and Mt. Elgon on the Kenyan border.

Kakungulu believed that the British would allow him to become the king of Bukedi and Busoga, but the British preferred to rule those areas through civil servants in their pay and under their control. The British limited Kakungulu to a 20-square-mile (52 km²) area in and around what has now become Mbale, Uganda. The people who inhabited this area were of the Bagisu tribe, rivals to Baganda. Nevertheless, Kakungulu, with the help of his Baganda followers, although much reduced in numbers, was able to maintain control so long as he received British support.

Beginning in about 1900, a slow but continuous mutual disenchantment arose between Kakungulu and the British. In 1913, Kakungulu became a Malakite Christian. This was a movement described by the British as a "cult" which was "a mixture of Judaism, Christianity and Christian Science." Many who joined the religion of Malaki where Kakungulu was in control were Baganda.

While still a Malakite, Kakungulu came to the conclusion that the Christian missionaries were not reading the Bible correctly. He pointed out that the Europeans disregarded the real Sabbath, which was Saturday, not Sunday. As proof, he cited the fact that Jesus was buried on Friday before the Sabbath, and that his mother and his disciples did not visit the tomb on the following day because it was the Sabbath, but waited until Sunday.

Under pressure from the British, who wished to limit his holdings, in 1917, Kakungulu moved his principal residence a short distance further from Mbale into the western foothills of Mt. Elgon to a place called Gangama. It was there that he started a separatist sect initially known as Kibiina Kya Bayudaya Absesiga Katonda (the Community of Jews who trust in the omnipotent God). Recruitment into this Bayudaya community came almost exclusively from what remained of Kakungulu's Baganda following.

The Bible, as a result of the teachings of the missionaries, was held in high regard among the Christians of Uganda. The missionaries had stressed the truth of the Bible by declaring that it came not from the Europeans but from an alien race, the Jews. The purpose of the missionaries was to impress upon the Africans that the Europeans too had found truth from a foreign race. But because of this emphasis, the customs and manners of the Jews became of great interest to Kakungulu's followers.

In 1922, at Gangama, Kakungulu published a 90-page book of rules and prayers as a guide for his Jewish community. The book set forth Jewish laws and practices as Kakungulu found them in the Old Testament, although it contained many verses and sections from the New Testament as well. Despite this interest in Jewish practices, there does not appear to have been any direct contact between Kakungulu and Jews before 1925.

Beginning in about 1925, several European Jews who were employed as mechanics and engineers by the British chanced upon the Christian-Jewish community near Mbale. Jews such as these, during what appear to have been chance encounters, told Kakungulu about Orthodox Judaism. As a result, many remaining Christian customs were dropped, including baptism. From these encounters, the community learned to keep the Sabbath, to recite Hebrew prayers and blessings, to slaughter animals for meat in a Kosher manner, and also to speak some Hebrew.

Kakungulu died on November 24, 1928 of tetanus.  After his death, the Abayudaya community divided into those wishing to retain a toehold within Christianity and those wanting to break those ties completely. The Bayudaya "remained a mixture of both Christianity and Judaism, with faith in Christ remaining prominent in Kakungulu's beliefs."

Kakungulu is buried a short distance from the main Abayudaya synagogue behind the unpretentious home in which he lived during the last years of his life. The grave has a stone which reads:

“SEMEI WAKIRENZI KAKUNGULU
A Victorious General and
Sava Chief in Buganda
Administrator of Eastern Province 1899-1905
President of Busoga 1906-1913
Died 24th 11 1928”

A00017 - A'Lelia Walker, Daughter of Madame C. J. Walker

A'Lelia Walker, original name Lelia McWilliams   (b. June 6, 1885, Vicksburg, Mississippi —d. August 16, 1931, Long Branch, New Jersey),  was a businesswoman associated with the Harlem Renaissance as a patron of the arts who provided an intellectual forum for the African American literati of New York City during the 1920s.

Walker grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and attended Knoxville College in Tennessee before going to work for her mother, Madame C.J. Walker (Sarah Breedlove Walker), who had made a fortune in the hair-care business. When her mother died in 1919, Walker inherited the business and the lavish family estate, Villa Lewaro, in Irvington, NewYork. In the 1920s, Walker entertained writers and artists at Villa Lewaro and at her apartment and her town house in New York City. Her regular guests at the town house -- which she named The Dark Tower after Countee Cullen's column by that name --included Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, and other writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance.  

A00016 - Ida Wells Barnett, Journalist and Anti-lynching Crusader

Ida B. Wells Barnett (also known as Ida Bell Wells) (b. July 16, 1862, Holly Springs, Mississippi - d. March 25, 1931, Chicago, Illinois) was and African American journalist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s.

Ida Wells was born into slavery.  She was educated at Rust University, a freedmen's school in her native Holly Springs, Mississippi, and at age 14 began teaching in a country school.  She continued to teach after moving to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1884 and attended Fisk University in Nashville during several summer sessions.  In 1887, the Tennessee Supreme Court, reversing a Circuit Court decision, ruled against Wells in a suit she had brought against the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad for having been forcibly removed from her seat after she had refused to give it up for one in a "colored only" car.  Using the pen name Iola, Wells in 1891 also wrote some newspaper articles critical of the education available to African American children.  Her teaching contract was not renewed.  She thereupon turned to journalism, buying an interest in the Memphis Free Speech.  In 1892, after three friends of hers had been lynched by a mob.  Wells began an editorial campaign against lynching that quickly led to the sacking of her newspaper's office.  She continued her anti-lynching crusade, first as a staff writer for the New York Age and then as a lecturer and organizer of antilynching societies.  She traveled to speak in a number of major United States cities and twice visited Great Britain for the cause.  In 1895, she married Ferdinand L.Barnett, a Chicago lawyer, editor, and public official, and adopted the name Wells-Barnett.  From that time she restricted her travels, but she was very active in Chicago affairs.  Wells-Barnett contributed to the Chicago Conservator, her husband's newspaper, and to other local journals; published a detailed look at lynching in A Red Record (1895); and was active in organizing local African American women in various causes, from the anti-lynching campaign to the suffrage movement.  She founded what may have been the first black woman suffrage group, Chicago's Alpha Suffrage Club.

From 1898 to 1902, Wells-Barnett served as secretary of the National Afro-American Council, and in 1910 she founded and became the first president of the Negro Fellowship League, which aided newly arrived migrants from the South.  From 1913 to 1916 she served as a probation officer of the Chicago municipal court.  She was militant in her demand for justice for African Americans and in her insistence that it was to be won by their own efforts.  Although she took part in the 1909 meeting of the Niagara Movement, she would have nothing to do with the less radical National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that sprang from it.  Her autobiography, Crusade for Justice, was published posthumously in 1970.