By Alexa Imani Spencer Cathay Williams is history’s only known female Buffalo Soldier, according to the National Park Service. In 1866, she enlisted in the United States Army under the pseudonym “William Cathay,” becoming the first known black woman to enlist in the Army and the only documented African-American woman to serve as a soldier…
Black History Month, Quick Hits
Freedom’s Journal and the Birth of the Black Press
By Maya King Decades before Frederick Douglass published The North Star and more than a century prior to John H. Johnson’s Jet and Ebony magazines, freedmen Samuel Cornish and John B. Russwurm established Freedom’s Journal. Founded in 1827, the newspaper was the first to be written and published by black Americans, thus giving birth to…