Black Lives: Essays in African American Biography

These fifteen chapters comprise biographical sketches of notable but heretofore unknown (or lesser known) African Americans, among them General Daniel "Chappie" James, Jr. (the first African American four-star general in the U.S. Air Force); William Levi Dawson (a composer); Vinnette Carroll (a director and playwright); Elizabeth Ross Haynes (an early political speaker and activist); Richard Allen (founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church); Besse Head (a South African-born writer); Maria Stewart (a nineteenth-century African American writer); and a number of others.