Christina Proenza-Coles

Handwritten letter dated 1828.

A miniature portrait of well dressed young girl with a pearl necklace.

Euphemia Toussaint was freed by her uncle, Pierre Toussaint, a formerly enslaved man from Haiti who became a very successful entrepreneur & philanthropist in New York. She wrote him weekly letters in English & French. This one is from June 20, 1828.

Woman in a top hat, coat, tie, & spectacles with text "Ellen Craft, The Fugitive Slave." Schomburg Center, The New York Public Library Digital Collections, 1853. The fact that Mrs. Craft passed as a white planter during her escape attests to the European ancestry in her enslaved family tree.

Ellen & William Craft lived near one another in Georgia with different enslavers. In 1848 they escaped when Ellen disguised herself as a white man traveling with William posing as her servant. The couple worked in Boston for 2 years until the Fugitive Slave Act forced them to seek safety in England.

Formal black and white portrait of a man in coat and tie.

Jeremiah Haralson was elected Unites States Representative in 1875. Born in Georgia, he was sold three times as a child, taught himself to read & write, & became one of the most powerful orators in the nation.

Grateful to @rhomomoney.bsky.social & @profjeffries.bsky.social who invite us to inquire & care about our world, celebrate our connections, & strive for greater, stronger community.

Looking forward to reading it!

Title page of Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, Written in Boston, State of Massachusetts, September 28, 1829

In 1829 David Walker, son of an enslaved man & a free Black woman in NC, published an Appeal reminding readers of their natural rights, inherent equality, & political duty to reject despotism. Distributed via southern ports by white agents, Black seamen, & sewn into the clothing that Walker vended.

Engraved portrait of Abraham Galloway in coat & tie. From William Still's book, Underground Railroad, from 1872. Government & Heritage Library, State Library of North Carolina.

Abraham Galloway was a Union spy & military recruiter, active abolitionist, voting rights advocate & North Carolina State Senator. His mother was enslaved & his father was a white boatman.

Black and white photo of a young man with a mustache.

Raphael Elizé was a WWI veteran from Martinique & veterinarian trained in Lyon who became France’s first elected Black mayor in 1929. In WWII Elizé worked with the French Resistance but was deported to Germany’s Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945 where he was killed.

Black & white portrait of a woman in suit jacket and glasses. She has signed the photo “To Mother & Dad”

Georgia Louise Harris Brown earned a degree in architecture in 1944 after studying with Mies van der Rohe. After working in Chicago, advancing her study of civil engineering & learning Portuguese, she moved to Brazil where she opened her own firm & designed buildings for Pfizer, Kodak, & Krupp.

Portrait of a man with a beard and mustache in coat and tie

Teodoro Sampaio (b. 1855) Brazilian public intellectual, engineer, geographer, historian, & author. The son of an enslaved mother, Sampaio was appointed to the federal Hydraulic Commission in 1879, cofounded São Paulo's Polytechnic School in 1893 & the Historical & Geographical Institute in 1894.

“This land was originally 65 acres [belonging to] former slaves who formed a community here [their descendants] are the people, families, soldiers [in the cemetery] There’s 9 WWII soldiers & one WWI veteran, & just families, children, all kinds of people are here which were part of this community.”

Portrait of a bearded man wearing a coat and high collar c. 1880

Luís Gama, Brazilian journalist & lawyer, formerly enslaved, freed more than 1000 Afro-Brazilians for whom he provided legal assistance & raised funds. His mother Luisa Mahin was a key organizer of Brazil’s 1835 Malé revolt, the largest urban slave revolt in the Americas.

Portrait of Henrique Dias by an anonymous artist. He is wearing an elaborate coat with gold buttons, sash, & cross. Collection of the Pernambuco State Museum.

In the 1630s Henrique Dias led an army composed of free Black men & self liberated slaves that was crucial to Brazil’s recovery of territory from an eight year Dutch occupation. He was offered knighthood in 1638.

Bearded man in suit and tie

Melvil-Bloncourt (b. 1820s in Guadeloupe of African & European descent) drew together antislavery & equal rights activism in the US, France, & the Caribbean. He saw his activism as "part of a larger effort to change human society by eradicating injustice & elevating law & order.”

16th century painting depicting Juan Garrido holding a pike, standing next to Hernan Cortes, negotiating with a local emissary in what is today Mexico.

Black military service in the Americas began in the 1500s. Per historian Peter Voelz, it would’ve been “impossible for the Spaniards & Portuguese to colonize the Americas w/out Africans as soldiers.” Juan Garrido arrived free & served with Cortez, others were enslaved & freed bc of military service.

Black and white image of a woman in high collar and plumed hat. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Pauline Hopkins (b. 1856) journalist, novelist, playwright, historian, daughter of a Civil War veteran. She edited the Colored American & the New Era in the early decades of the 1900s, authored 3 novels, & offered enlightened perspectives in national political & intellectual discourse.

Black and white photo of a man in coat, vest, and tie with mutton chop sideburns.

Francis Cardozo was born in 1837 in South Carolina to a formerly enslaved mother & a white Jewish father. He was a prize winning student at the University of Glasgow, twice elected to state office in South Carolina, & principal of an excellent school in DC.

Oil portrait of a poised young woman wearing jade jewelry & a luminous green cap, with white gossamer puffed sleeves. Waring's portraits generally depicted well-known figures, however, the identity of this young woman is unknown.

Girl in a Green Cap 1948 by Laura Wheeler Waring, a renowned Harlem Renaissance artist. The artist's mother, Christiana Freeman, was an Underground Railroad agent & the daughter of Philip Livingston (grandson of a Declaration of Independence signer) & Barbara Williams, an enslaved woman from Jamaica

A young girl in cap and gown in a high school graduation photo in 1958. The black and white image has creases that suggest it has survived damage.

At 16, Barbara Johns (b. 1935) led a strike for equal education in her Virginia high school & filed a law suit that was foundational to the historic 1954 Brown decision. She survived Klan harassment & championed American democracy & equal rights.

Grainy photo of woman and child

Henrietta Bowers Duterte of Philadelphia (b. 1807) was a successful entrepreneur, philanthropist, & the 1st woman to operate a mortuary in the US. She used her business to support safe passages on the Underground Railroad.

Image of people during a church service, a man at the pulpit leads congregants in worship. Detail from an 1876 broadside in the Prints and Photographs Collection, Library of Congress.

Gowan Pamphlet (b. 1748) was an enslaved tavern worker in Virginia who risked his life to preach equality. Ordained in 1772, he helped to establish Williamsburg’s First Baptist Church which continues to exist today. By the early 1800s he was a free property holder who continued to minister.

Man in a white coat, cravat, & hat. The subject’s hat, which was once mistaken for the tall chef’s toque that emerged in the 1820s, is similar to the style depicted in “Free West Indian Dominicans” made by Agostino Brunias c. 1770.

It was once believed that this painting was of Hercules Posey, a chef enslaved by George Washington, renowned for his culinary skill, who liberated himself through escape. Today it is believed that the subject was a free person of African descent from the Caribbean in the 18th century.

Two women in long skirts & two men in suits in front of their home. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The Bates family moved from Tennessee to Nicodemus, Kansas during the Black homesteading movement. African Americans successfully homesteaded in all the Great Plains states. The Nicodemus Town Company was formed in 1877 by 7 Kansans (1 white & 6 Black). Today 45 descendants reside in the community.

Double ambrotype portrait of Mary Joseph Lyons in a long sleeved dress & Albro Lyons, Sr. in coat, vest, & tie, c. 1860, Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center, The New York Public Library,

Albro & Mary Lyons were abolitionists in 19th century New York who fought to end slavery & protect those escaping bondage. The Lyons family ran a boardinghouse for Black sailors that doubled as an Underground Railroad station for hundreds of enslaved people fleeing slavery.

Close up of a man’s face, he’s gazing directly at the viewer.

Charles Hamilton Houston, attorney, law school dean, WWI vet, Harvard alum, mentored a generation of lawyers including Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. A champion of universal civil rights, Houston urged “Do not bind the children within narrow circles of your own lives.”

Rising Above Bias to Become the First African American Grand Slam Champion Althea Gibson shattered barriers in tennis and beyond by becoming the first Black athlete to win major titles and blaze a path in professional golf and public service.

"Althea Gibson shattered barriers in tennis and beyond by becoming the first Black athlete to win major titles and blaze a path in professional golf and public service." www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/smiths...

"Slavery, Freedom, Public History & National Identity: Charlottesville, Curaçao, Cartagena" explores these locations as Black spaces whose histories help us better appreciate the communities we are today.

uva-center-for-cultural-landscapes-newsletter-features.mailchimpsites.com/african-dias...

"Slavery, Freedom, Public History & National Identity: Charlottesville, Curaçao, Cartagena" explores these locations as Black spaces whose histories help us better appreciate the communities we are today.

uva-center-for-cultural-landscapes-newsletter-features.mailchimpsites.com/african-dias...

Close headshot of young Black woman, her student portrait from the Oberlin Conservatory where she graduated with Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance in 1889.

Harriet Gibbs Marshall (b. 1868) was a musician, author, & educator who founded a music conservatory in DC in 1904, marched in the 1913 women’s suffrage parade & wrote a history of Haiti where her husband, a WWI vet, served as US ambassador. They are interred at Arlington.

Woman in military uniform

Attorney & Army veteran Dovey Roundtree won a landmark 1955 desegregation case representing Sarah Keys, a US Army private who’d been forced by a NC bus driver to relinquish her seat to a white Marine. Roundtree, an officer during WWII, had experienced a similar situation in 1943.