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“There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.” Proverbs‬ ‭14:12‬ ‭NIV‬‬

DeMarcus Amir Cousins (August 13, 1990) is a basketball player who last played for the Mets de Guaynabo of the Baloncesto Superior Nacional. Nicknamed “Boogie”, he played college basketball for the Kentucky Wildcats, earning consensus second-team All-American honors in 2010. He left Kentucky after one season and was selected with the fifth overall pick in the 2010 NBA draft by the Sacramento Kings. In his first season with the Kings, he was named to the NBA All-Rookie First Team, and from 2015 to 2018, he was named an NBA All-Star four times. He is a two-time gold medal winner as a member of the United States national team, winning his first in 2014 at the FIBA Basketball World Cup and his second in 2016 at the Rio Olympics.

He is the son of Monique and Jessie Cousins. He has four sisters and one brother, Jaleel, who is a professional basketball player.

Shani Earl Davis (August 13, 1982) is a speed skater.

Davis was born on Friday, August 13, 1982, in Chicago, Illinois, to Reginald Shuck and Cherie Davis. His father selected the name “Shani” from an African name dictionary; the name translates to “to adventure.” His mother, Cherie, worked for a local lawyer who happened to be a speed skating official, and at whose suggestion, Cherie enrolled Shani at the Robert Crown Center in nearby Evanston when he was six years old.

At the 2006 Winter Olympics, he became the first African American athlete to win a gold medal in an individual event, winning the 1000-meter speed skating race. He won a silver medal in the 1500-meter event. At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, he repeated the feat, becoming the first man to successfully defend the 1000 meters and repeating as the 1500-meter silver medalist.

He won the silver medal at the 2004 World Allround Speed Skating Championships. He then won the World Allround Championships in both 2005 and 2006. In 2009, he won the World Sprint Championships in Moscow, the site of his first World Allround Championship victory. When he won those events, he became the second male skater to win both the Sprint and Allround in his career. He has won six World Single Distance Championship titles, three at 1500 meters (in 2004, 2007, and 2009) and three at 1000 meters (in 2007, 2008, and 2011), and he led the US to its first and only World Championship gold medal in the Team Pursuit event in 2011. He has won ten career Overall World Cup titles, six at 1000 meters (in 2006, 2008–10, 2012, 2014) and four at 1500 meters (2008–2011). He earned the title of Grand World Cup Champion for the 2013–14 season, earning the most points across all distances. His 58 career individual victories on the ISU Speed Skating World Cup circuit (through March 2014) place him second all-time among men.

Karine Jean-Pierre (August 13, 1977) is a Haitian-American political advisor who has served as the White House press secretary since May 13, 2022. She is the first African American and the first openly LGBTQ person to serve as White House press secretary. She worked with Kamala Harris during the 2020 election and with the Biden-Harris administration. She was the senior advisor and national spokeswoman for the progressive advocacy group MoveOn.org. She was a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC and a lecturer in international and public affairs at Columbia University. She served as a faculty member at Columbia University.

She was born in Fort-de-France, Martinique, France, the daughter of Haitian immigrants. She has two younger siblings and was five years old when her family relocated to Queens Village.

During Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, she served as the campaign’s Southeast regional political director and as the regional political director for the White House Office of Political Affairs.

She served as National Deputy Battleground States Director for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. She led the delegate selection and ballot access process and managed the political engagement in key states.

She served as the deputy campaign manager for Martin O’Malley’s 2016 presidential campaign.

She was born in Fort-de-France, Martinique, to Haitian parents, and was raised in Queens Village from age 5. Her mother worked as a home health aide, and her father was a taxi driver.

She is a graduate of the New York Institute of Technology. She received her MPA from the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, where she served in student government and decided to pursue politics.

She has worked at the Center for Community and Corporate Ethics.

She published Moving Forward: A Story of Hope, Hard Work, and the Promise of America. She reflects on her life and encourages people to get involved in politics. WJLA-TV described it as “part memoir, part call to arms.”

Dawnn Jewel Lewis (August 13, 1961) is an actress. She is known for her role as Jaleesa Vinson–Taylor on A Different World and for co-writing the theme song. Her other notable roles were the sitcom Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper and the film I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. She has appeared in numerous TV series, including other sitcoms, and has performed on stage.

In college, she majored in musical theatre with a minor in journalism, graduating with a BSM, cum laude, from the University of Miami.

She was born in Brooklyn to Carl and Joyce Lewis. She began singing at the age of four and acting at eleven. At sixteen, she graduated from the High School of Music & Art.

She starred in the film adaptation of Dreamgirls. She released her debut CD, entitled Worth Waiting For. She played in The Wiz with New York City Center’s Encores! and played on One Tree Hill. She played a minor recurring role as Lauren’s mother in The Secret Life of the American Teenager. She voiced Malora in Strange Frame. She appeared on Days of Our Lives. She starred in The Divorce. She is playing a recurring role. She has voiced Ruby’s mother, Helen Hanshaw, in one episode of Sofia the First.

She was cast in Doc McStuffins. She provided the voice of Maybelle Mundy in Bunyan and Babe. She began voicing Fannie Granger’s Spirit Riding Free and Dr. Jones in Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters, and began voicing The Chief on the animated Carmen Sandiego. She voiced Attorney General’s special agent Lenora Carter in The Simpsons episode “The Fat Blue Line”.

She began portraying Tina Turner’s mother in Tina on Broadway under the name “Dr. Dawnn Lewis”. She starred as the voice of Captain Carol Freeman in Star Trek: Lower Decks.

Kathleen Deanna Battle (August 13, 1948) is an operatic soprano known for her distinctive vocal range and tone. She became known for her work within the concert repertoire through performances with major orchestras during the early and mid-1970s. She made her opera debut in 1975. She expanded her repertoire into lyric soprano and coloratura soprano roles during the 1980s and early 1990s, until her dismissal from the Metropolitan Opera. She has focused on recording and the concert stage. After a 22-year absence from the Met, she performed a concert of spirituals at the Metropolitan Opera House in November 2016.

She was born in Portsmouth, Ohio, the youngest of seven children. Her father was a steelworker, and her mother was an active participant in the gospel music of the family’s African Methodist Episcopal church.

Vice Admiral Dr. Minnie Joycelyn Elders (Minnie Lee Jones; August 13, 1933) the former US Surgeon General, was born in Schaal, Arkansas to Curtis and Hailer Jones; she added the name Joycelyn when she was in college. As the eldest of eight children of sharecroppers, she experienced extreme poverty in segregated, rural Arkansas. She received a BS in Biology from Philander Smith and an MD from the University of Arkansas Medical School.

She enlisted in the Army and became a physical therapist. She returned home and protested against local segregation. She refused to park in the back of a drive-in theater. She completed her residency and became chief pediatric resident at the University of Arkansas Medical Center. She was named a pediatric research fellow for a three-year term. She earned her second MS from the University of Arkansas. She served the University of Arkansas as an assistant, associate, and full professor. She published over 100 articles, primarily regarding juvenile diabetes. Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton appointed her as the head of the state’s health department. She became the first African American woman to serve as director of the Arkansas Department of Health.

She increased the number of Arkansas school clinics and expanded sex education. Largely due to her lobbying, the Arkansas State legislature “mandated a kindergarten-through-twelfth-grade course curriculum encompassing not only sex education, but hygiene instruction, and substance-abuse prevention.” The Arkansas teenage pregnancy rate fell below the national rate.

Dr. Russell Lee Adams, Sr. (August 13, 1930) is a historian and political scientist born in Baltimore to James Russell, a farmer, and Isabella Ponder Adams, a schoolteacher who graduated from Edward Waters College. They were the parents of three boys and one girl.

His primary education was academically and physically challenging; he walked three and a half miles daily through the woods to attend school. He graduated as valedictorian from racially segregated Washington Street High School in Quitman. He enrolled in Morehouse College, where he received his BA in Political Science and Sociology. He earned an MA from the University of Chicago. He returned to the institution and received his Ph.D.

He is married to Eleanor McCurine, and they are the parents of two children. While pursuing his doctoral studies, he took a position as a probation officer in Cook County, Chicago. He was chairperson and Assistant Professor of political science at North Carolina College. He was offered a teaching position at the newly formed Federal City College. He became the first chair of the Department of History and vice chair of the Humanities division. He laid the foundation for the institution’s Black Studies program. He became the head of the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University. He retired from Howard University in 2001 with emeritus status.

He is the author of Great Negroes Past and Present and The Pursuit of Power in Black America in the Nineteenth Century: A Study of the Emergence of Black Politically Oriented Voluntarism. He has contributed to numerous peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Negro Education and African Americans: Voices of Triumph.

Mayor Benjamin Franklin Gross (1921 – August 13, 2012) was a legendary civil rights and union activist in San Jose, California, and the surrounding Silicon Valley. He was born and raised in McGehee, Arkansas. In Arkansas, he lived under Jim Crow Laws (legal segregation) and picked cotton during the Great Depression.

His activism began during his senior year at Lake Village Central High in Lake Village, Arkansas, when he led a successful protest against discrimination and segregation within the school.

He left Arkansas for the first time when he was inducted into the Army. He moved to Richmond, California, and went to work for the Ford Motor Company. He joined UAW Local 560 and became active in union politics. He became the first African American elected to Local 560’s bargaining committee.

His success led to him becoming UAW President, and he was appointed as Local 560’s housing committee chairman in 1954. He was responsible for ensuring that Local 560 workers, regardless of race, had comfortable and affordable housing when Ford relocated its plant from Richmond to Milpitas. He and other union leaders created the Sunnyhills cooperative development, the first planned interracial community in America sponsored by a labor union.

He, with UAW backing, became the first Black city councilman in Milpitas. He was elected mayor and reelected. He fought San Jose’s annexation of his city and presided over its phenomenal growth.

He was a national leader in the UAW’s support of civil rights activism in the South. He participated in the March on Washington, the Selma-to-Montgomery March, and the Poor People’s March to Washington.

Tuskegee Airman Dr. Charles Edward Anderson (August 13, 1919 - October 21, 1994) meteorologist, Air Force officer, and weather officer, was born in University City, Missouri. Both his mother and father were from Mississippi.

He earned his BS in Chemistry from Lincoln University, graduating third in his class. This is where he met his future wife, Marjorie Anderson. He joined the Army Air Corps during WWII. The Army sent him, along with 150 other cadets, to the University of Chicago in Illinois to study meteorology while enrolled in the Army Air Forces Meteorological Aviation Cadet Program. He earned his MS in Meteorology from the University of Chicago.

He was stationed in Tuskegee as a weather officer with the 332nd Fighter Group, otherwise known as the Tuskegee Airmen. He became a squadron weather officer, training fighter pilots across the country. He temporarily left the Air Corps to pursue high polymer chemistry at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.

He worked at the Air Force Cambridge Research Center in the Chief Cloud Physics Branch. He earned his Ph.D. in Meteorology from MIT, becoming the first African American in the nation to do so. He worked in the Atmospheric Science Branch of the Douglas Aircraft Company. He served as the Director of the Office of Federal Coordination in Meteorology in the Environmental Science Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

He was hired at the University of Wisconsin as Professor of Meteorology. He was appointed Professor of Afro-American Studies and Chairman of the Meteorology Department. He was promoted to Associate Dean. From 1987 until his retirement in 1990, he was a professor in the Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences at North Carolina State University.

The Golden 14 were the first Black women to muster into the Navy. First recognized by scholar Kelly Miller in his 1919 book “Kelly Miller’s History of the World War for Human Rights,” but nearly lost to history after the war, the women were dubbed the Golden 14 in homage to WWII’s Golden 13, the first Black men to become Navy officers.

Their service began with Armelda Hattie Green of Jackson, Mississippi, who enlisted on August 13, 1918. A former public school teacher, she was in the Aviation Department before being assigned to the Division of Enlisted Personnel, Mustering. Her brother-in-law, John T. Risher, was chief of the Muster Office in the Bureau of Navigation. He was instrumental in her transfer and the other Black women’s enlistment.

Woodrow Wilson won a second term on a platform that included keeping the US out of the European war. He promoted the passage of the Naval Act and the Naval Reserve Act in 1916. Risher exploited this broad language and the military’s pressing need for administrative support to hire thirteen more African American women and ten Black men to work in the Muster Office.

Black women were often disqualified from military service due to contrived medical issues, such as flat feet. These fourteen pioneering women distinguished themselves as they served during WWI, braving the Secretary of the Navy, an avowed White Supremacist, housing discrimination, and systemic racism that included the rampant lynching of Black people in and out of uniform.

They encompassed women from prominent families such as Sara Davis Taylor and Ruth Welburn. The others were Pocahontas A. Jackson, Catherine E. Finch, Fannie A. Foote, Olga F. Jones, Sarah E. Howard, Marie E. Mitchell, Anna G. Smallwood, Maud C. Williams, Caroll E. Washington, Josephine Washington, and Inez B. McIntosh.

Claudia Mae McNeil (August 13, 1917 – November 25, 1993) was an actress known for premiering the role of matriarch Lena Younger in both the stage and screen productions of A Raisin in the Sun.

She was born in Baltimore to Marvin Spencer McNeil and Annie Mae (Anderson) McNeil. The family moved to New York City after her birth. Her mother raised her after her father left the family. At the age of 12, she began working for The Heckscher Foundation for Children. There, she met a Jewish couple who adopted her, and she became fluent in Yiddish.

She appeared in a production of the musical version of the play, Raisin, presented by Equity Library Theater. She was twice nominated for a Tony Award, first for her onstage performance in A Raisin in the Sun and again for the play Tiger Tiger Burning Bright. She was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award for the screen version of A Raisin in the Sun.

She became a licensed librarian but began singing in vaudeville theaters and performing in nightclubs in Harlem, Greenwich Village, and on 52nd Street. She sang for the Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe on its South American tour. She was advised by Ethel Waters to begin acting and made her New York stage debut playing Tituba in The Crucible at the Martin Beck Theater. Langston Hughes chose her to sing in his musical play Simply Heavenly. She won critical acclaim for this role.

Judge James Benton Parsons (August 13, 1911 – June 19, 1993) was a District Judge of the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he moved to St. Louis with his family, where his father was an evangelist and missionary with the Disciples of Christ Church. The family lived in Lexington, Kentucky, Dayton, Ohio, and Bloomington, Indiana, before settling in Decatur, Illinois.

He earned a BA degree from Millikin University.

He first started working as the acting head of music at Lincoln University. He was the director of instrumental music for Greensboro’s Negro public schools. The band at James B. Dudley High School became known throughout the state for its expert musicianship and precision marching.

During WWII, he enlisted in the Naval Reserve. Serving as a Musician MUS1, he directed the Navy B-1 Fleet Band. The band was organized from a core of members of the bands at Dudley High School and NCATSU.

He used the GI Bill to earn his MA from the University of Chicago, followed by a JD from the University of Chicago Law School. He entered private practice in Chicago, serving as an assistant corporation counsel. He was appointed Assistant US Attorney for the Northern District of IL. He was a judge of the Superior Court of Cook County.

The 1900 New York City Race Riot began following an incident between Arthur J. Harris, an African American man, and a white undercover police officer, Robert J. Thorpe, outside the apartment of Harris and his girlfriend May Enoch in the Tenderloin section of New York City. At 2:00 a.m. on August 13, Harris witnessed Thorpe grabbing Enoch, whom Thorpe believed to be a prostitute soliciting customers. Harris, not knowing that Thorpe was a police officer, attacked Thorpe and cut him with a knife. Both Harris and Enoch fled the scene. Harris left for his mother’s home in DC, and Enoch ran into her apartment, where she was arrested. Thorpe, who was the son-in-law of Acting Captain John Cooney of the local Twentieth Police Precinct, was taken to Roosevelt Hospital, where he died the next day.

On August 15, the day before Thorpe’s funeral, a fight broke out near Thorpe’s family’s home between a white man, Thomas J. Healy, and an African American man, Spencer Walters. Walters was beaten to near death by a white mob that gathered. This assault touched off the riot.

New York City Mayor Robert Van Wyck and Police Chief William Devery sent 700 police into the Tenderloin to quell the rebellion. African Americans were disproportionately arrested during the riot, and many were severely beaten while in police custody.

On August 16, the riot subsided. African Americans began arming themselves, and a black defense committee, the Citizens Protective League, was formed on September 3. Approximately 35 people were arrested, and 60 people were injured during the riot, mostly African Americans. There were no reported deaths.

Dr. Eva Beatrice Dykes (August 13, 1893 – October 29, 1986) became the first Black woman in the US to complete the required coursework for a Ph.D. and the third African American woman to receive a doctoral degree. Two other Black women, Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander and Georgiana Simpson, received their Ph.D. in the same year as she did. Still, because their respective commencement ceremonies took place earlier, she is considered the third woman to receive the advanced degree.

She was born in DC and attended M Street High School. In 1914, she graduated Summa Cum Laude from Howard University with a BA in English. After spending one year teaching at Walden University in Nashville, she decided to seek an MA at Radcliffe College. Radcliffe would not accept her degree from Howard, forcing her to earn a second BA in English from Radcliffe. She graduated Magna Cum Laude with an MA from Radcliffe. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She completed her Ph.D. Her dissertation focused on Alexander Pope’s views on slavery and his influence on American writers.

She began teaching at Dunbar High School. She accepted a position teaching English at Howard University. She published several scholarly works, including The Negro in English Romantic Thought, which reflected her growing interest in examining Black History and literature in England.

A member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church since 1920, she left Howard University to begin teaching at Oakwood College. She helped the school gain accreditation. She retired from full-time teaching in 1968.

The Baltimore Afro-American, commonly known as The Afro or Afro News, is a weekly African American newspaper published in Baltimore. It is the flagship newspaper of the AFRO-American chain and the longest-running African American family-owned newspaper in the US.

The Afro-American was established in 1899 as the Home Protector. It became the Afro-American on August 13, 1892. In the spring of 1895, the Northwestern Family Supply Company assumed control of the Afro-American. John H. Murphy, Sr., the head of the printing press at the paper, purchased the newspaper’s printing equipment for $200. The Afro-American has been owned and operated by the Murphy family.

Murphy was born into slavery and served in the Civil War in the US Colored Troops, reaching the rank of sergeant. He was active with the Bethel AME Church in Baltimore. Murphy merged his church publication, The Sunday School Helper, with two other church publications, The Ledger and The Afro-American.

Carl J. Murphy took control in 1922, serving as its editor for 45 years. He expanded the paper to have nine national editions, with papers published in 13 cities.

He used the editorial pages of The AFRO-American to push for the hiring of African Americans by Baltimore’s police and fire departments, to press for African American representation in the legislature, and to advocate for the establishment of a state-supported university to educate African Americans.

During WWII, the AFRO-American deployed several reporters to Europe, the Aleutians, Africa, Japan, and other parts of the South Pacific. Elizabeth Murphy Phillips Moss was the first Black female correspondent.

The AFRO-American has employed many African American journalists and intellectuals, including Langston Hughes, William Worthy, and J. Saunders Redding. It became the first African American newspaper to employ a female sportswriter when it hired Lillian Johnson and Nell Dodson. Romare Bearden began his career as a cartoonist.

Sam Lacy was hired as the sports editor.

George Wesley Edmonds (August 13, 1890 – June 13, 1962) was a founder of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Incorporated. Unfortunate events led to his losing contact with the fraternity, and for many years, little was known about his life and whereabouts.

He was born in Knight Township, Vanderburgh County, Indiana. He attended Carver Elementary School and graduated from Clark High School in Evansville, Indiana, in 1910.

He entered Indiana University at Bloomington in the fall of 1910. He and nine other men founded Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity. He returned home in the summer of 1911. While there, his father, a coal miner, became terminally ill with pneumonia and died. He withdrew from school and assumed responsibility for supporting his family, taking a job as a coal miner, like his father.

Due to his need to support his family, his isolation from the academic community, errors in organizational records, and the subsequent renaming of the fraternity, he lost contact with the founders and other members.

He married Willa Mae Forte and settled in Stevenson, Indiana, the couple having one son named Noel.

He died of pneumonia and was buried in Evansville, unbeknownst to the members of the fraternity he helped found.

In 1972, Dr. Henry S. Wilson requested and received information on him from the Assistant Registrar of Indiana University. In 1975, Founder Edward Giles Irvin called for a renewed investigation, aided by information obtained through Wilson’s request, to determine his whereabouts. His family members were recontacted in 1975 by William E. Miller, the Polemarch of the Evansville Alumni chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi, and in 1978 his burial site was rediscovered.