Happy birthday Ta-Nehisi Coates! Born September 30, Ta-Nehisi Coates is an award-winning African American author and journalist. His books include The Water Dancer and The Message. He is currently a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the Sterling Brown Endowed Chair in the English department at Howard University. Here are additional notable works:
Heavenly birthday wishes Gwen Ifill! Born September 29, 1955, Gwen Ifill was an African American journalist and author. In 1999, Ifill became the first African American woman to host a prominent political talk show on national television when she became moderator and managing editor of PBS’s Washington Week and senior political correspondent for The PBS NewsHour. In 2004, Ifill moderated the vice-presidential debate between Republican Vice President Dick Cheney and Democrat Senator John Edwards, and in 2008, she moderated the vice-presidential debate between Democratic Senator Joe Biden and Republican Governor Sarah Palin. She died in 2016.
Heavenly birthday wishes David Walker! David Walker was born on September 28, 1785, in Wilmington, North Carolina. His father was an enslaved African who died a few months before his son’s birth, and his mother was a free woman of African ancestry. Walker grew up to despise the system of slavery that the U.S. government allowed in America. He knew the cruelties of slavery were not for him and said, “As true as God reigns, I will be avenged for the sorrow which my people have suffered.” He eventually moved to Boston during the 1820s and became very active within the free black community. Walker’s intense hatred for slavery culminated in him publishing his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World in September 1829. The Appeal was smuggled into the southern states, and was considered subversive, seditious, and incendiary by most white men in both northern and southern states. It was, without a doubt, one of the most controversial documents published in the antebellum period. He died in 1830.
Heavenly birthday wishes Bell Hooks! Born September 25, 1952, Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen name bell hooks, was an African American philosopher, educator, author, and social critic; she was a Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College in Kentucky. Professor hooks wrote about race, feminism, and social class. She died in 2021. Here are a few of her notable works:
Belated birthday wishes Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.! Born September 16, Henry Louis Gates Jr., popularly known by his childhood nickname “Skip”, is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is well-known for his series, “Finding Your Roots” and authoring several African American history books. Here are just a few of his notable works:
Heavenly birthday wishes Guy Johnson! Born September 8, 1945, Clyde Guy Johnson was an African American author, poet, and public servant best known as the only child of legendary literary figure Dr. Maya Angelou. After completing college in Ghana, Guy Johnson managed a bar on Spain’s Costa del Sol, ran a photo-safari service from London through Morocco and Algeria, and worked on oil rigs in Kuwait. Most recently he worked in the local government of Oakland, California, for more than twenty years. He authored three books: Standing at the Scratch Line, Echoes of a Distant Summer and Save the Stratford Canal! He died in 2022.
Happy birthday Mark Whitaker! Born September 7, Mark Whitaker is an African American author, journalist and media executive. He was editor of Newsweek from 1998 until 2006, the first African-American to lead a national news magazine. From 2004 to 2006, Whitaker served as president of the American Society of Magazine Editors. He authored five books, including his memoir: My Long Trip Home.
Happy birthday Imani Perry! Born September 5, Imani Perry is the Henry A. Morss, Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Perry is the African American author of 9 books, including the New York Times Bestseller South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation which received the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
Heavenly birthday wishes Richard Wright! Born September 4, 1908, Richard Wright was an African American author of novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially related to the plight of African Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries suffering discrimination and violence. He died in 1960. He was well-known for his novels, Black Boy and Native Son. His other works include:
Happy birthday Glenn C. Loury! Born September 3, Glenn Cartman Loury is an American economist, academic, and author. He is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences at Brown University, where he has taught since 2005 also as a professor of economics. His notable works:
