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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.
Belated, belated, belated birthday wishes Chimananda Ngozi Adichi! Born September 15, Chimananda Ngozi Adichi was born in Enugu, Nigeria in 1977. She grew up on the campus of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where her father was a professor and her mother was the first female Registrar. She studied medicine for a year at Nsukka and then left for the US at the age of 19 to continue her education on a different path. She graduated summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State University with a degree in Communication and Political Science.
Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), won the Orange Prize. Her 2013 novel Americanah won the US National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013. Other notable works:
Happy birthday Bernice L. McFadden! Born September 26, Bernice L. McFadden is is a national bestselling, award-winning African American author celebrated for her richly layered novels that center ancestry, memory, and the enduring strength of Black women. She is the author of Sugar, The Book of Harlan, and other acclaimed works of fiction. Her writing has earned numerous honors, including the American Book Award and an NAACP Image Award. Other notable works are:
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:
Heavenly birthday wishes Frances Ellen Watkins! Born September 24, 1825, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was an African American abolitionist, suffragist, poet, temperance activist, teacher, public speaker, and writer. Beginning in 1845, she was one of the first African American women to be published in the United States. She died in 1911. Here are some of her notable works:
Read some of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper poems here and here:
Happy birthday George C. Wolfe! Born September 23, George Costello Wolfe is an African American stage and screen director, playwright and producer. His accolades include two Tony Awards for directing the play Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and the musical Bring in ‘da Noise/Bring in ‘da Funk. He served as Artistic Director of The Public Theater from 1993 until 2004. Here are some of his notable works:
Heavenly birthday wishes Leighla Frances Whipper! Born September 22, 1913, Leighla Frances Whipper was an African American songwriter, journalist, mystery writer, and businesswoman. She is best known for arranging and publishing musical scores of calypso and Afro-Caribbean songs, often with collaborator Lionel Belasco. She died in 2008.
Here are a couple of her notable works:
Heavenly birthday wishes Kwame Nkrumah! Born September 21, 1909, Kwame Nkrumah Kwame Nkrumah was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He served as Prime Minister of the Gold Coast from 1952 until 1957, when it gained independence from the United Kingdom. He was then the first prime minister and then the president of Ghana, from 1957 until 1966. He died in 1972. Here are a few of his notable works:
