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Woods was the most prolific black inventor at the turn of the 19th century, but when he died, he was all but forgotten, buried in an unmarked grave.
These remarkable black men and women never received obituaries in The New York Times — until now. We’re adding their stories to our project about prominent people whose deaths were not reported by the newspaper.
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A portrait of the inventor Granville T. Woods, as featured in The Cosmopolitan Magazine in 1895. He made revolutionary contributions to transportation but died destitute.
1856-1910
An inventor known as the ‘Black Edison.’ He found that recognition came at a hefty price.
By AMISHA PADNANI
He carefully sealed the drawings in a mailing tube and quietly placed them out of sight from his business partner, then went to a meeting.
But when he returned, Granville T. Woods found that his drawings — a design for a novel invention that held the potential to revolutionize transportation around the world — were gone.
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By AMISHA PADNANI and VERONICA CHAMBERS
Since 1851, The New York Times has published thousands of obituaries, capturing the lives and legacies of people who have influenced the world in which we live.
But many important figures were left out.
Overlooked reveals the stories of some of those remarkable people.
We started the series last year by focusing on women like Sylvia Plath, the postwar poet; Emma Gatewood, the hiking grandmother who captivated a nation; and Ana Mendieta, the Cuban artist whose work was bold, raw and sometimes violent. We added to that collection each week.
Now, this special edition of Overlooked highlights a prominent group of black men and women whose lives we did not examine at the time of their deaths.
Many of them were a generation removed from slavery. They often attempted to break the same barriers again and again. Sometimes they made myth out of a painful history, misrepresenting their past to gain a better footing in their future. Some managed to achieve success in their lifetimes, only to die penniless, buried in unmarked graves. But all were pioneers, shaping our world and making paths for future generations.
We hope you’ll spread the word about Overlooked — and tell us about others we’ve missed.
Read about the project’s first year, and use this form to nominate a candidate for future Overlooked obits.
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In her top hat and tuxedo, Gladys Bentley belted out gender-bending tunes, becoming ’20s-era Harlem royalty. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
1907-1960
A gender-bending blues performer who became 1920s Harlem royalty.
By GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
WHEN IT COMES to loosening social mores, progress that isn’t made in private has often taken place onstage.
That was certainly the case at the Clam House, a Prohibition-era speakeasy in Harlem, where Gladys Bentley, one of the boldest performers of her era, held court.
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Scott Joplin circa 1904. He would come to be revered as a ragtime giant and an in-demand performer. Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images
1867-1917
A pianist and ragtime master who wrote “The Entertainer” and the groundbreaking opera “Treemonisha.”
By WIL HAYGOOD
When Scott Joplin’s father left the North Carolina plantation where he had been born a slave, there was one thing he wanted to hold on to: the echoes of the Negro spirituals he had heard in the fields. In those songs he found a sense of uplift, hope and possibility.
In the post-Civil War era, the cruel breath of slavery and the aborted plan of Reconstruction still hung over the American South. But in the Joplin home, banjo and fiddle music filled the family’s evenings, giving the children — Scott in particular — a sense of music’s power to move.
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An engraving of the story of Margaret Garner, from Harper’s Weekly in 1867. Library of Congress
1833-1858
In one soul-chilling moment, she killed her own daughter rather than return her to the horrors of slavery. Her life inspired a Toni Morrison novel.
By REBECCA CARROLL
Margaret Garner, who was born as an enslaved girl, almost certainly did not plan to kill her child when she grew up and became an enslaved mother.
But she also couldn’t yet know that the physical, emotional and psychological violence of slavery, relentless and horrific, would one day conspire to force her maternal judgment in a moment already fraught with grave imperative.
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The cyclist Major Taylor in 1898. He traveled the globe, racing as far away as Australia, and became known as the “Black Cyclone.” Science History Images/Alamy
1878-1932
A world champion bicycle racer whose fame was undermined by prejudice.
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
More than 100 years ago, one of the most popular spectator sports in the world was bicycle racing, and one of the most popular racers was a squat, strapping man with bulging thighs named Major Taylor.
He set records in his teens and was a world champion at 20. He traveled the globe, racing as far away as Australia, and amassed wealth among the greatest of any athlete of his time. Thousands of people flocked to see him; newspapers fawned over him.
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The fashion designer Zelda Wynn Valdes, who could fit a dress to a body of any size. Dance Theater of Harlem
1905-2001
A fashion designer who outfitted the glittery stars of screen and stage.
By TANISHA C. FORD
More than a half century before a “curvy” model made the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and before hashtags like #allbodiesaregoodbodies, there was a designer who knew that it was the job of clothes to fit the woman, not vice versa.
Zelda Wynn Valdes was a designer to the stars who could fit a dress to a body of any size — even if she had to do so just by looking at the client. “I only fit her once in 12 years,” Valdes told The New York Times in 1994 of her long-time client Ella Fitzgerald, “I had to do everything by imagination for her.” Valdes would simply look at Fitzgerald in the latest paper, noting any changes in her full-figured body, and would design the elaborate gowns — with beads and appliques — that she knew Fitzgerald loved.
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Alfred Hair in his high school yearbook photo. He helped start the Highwaymen, a collective of Floridian artists, all African-American, who painted vibrant landscapes of their home state. via Gary Monroe
1941-1970
A charismatic businessman who created a movement for Florida’s black artists.
By GORDON K. HURD
“Well-Known Artist Alfred Hair Slain,” read the headline in The Fort Pierce News Tribune newspaper in Florida.
But before he was killed in a barroom brawl on Aug. 9, 1970, at just 29, Hair had become more than just an artist. With his drive, charisma and business acumen, he helped start a collective of Floridian artists, all African-American, who painted vibrant landscapes of their home state. They would later come to be known as The Florida Highwaymen, or more simply The Highwaymen.
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Nina Mae McKinney, who was called the first black movie star after showing off her talents doing the Swanee Shuffle in the 1929 film “Hallelujah.” History and Art Collection/Alamy
1912-1967
An actress who defied the barrier of race to find stardom in Europe.
By ANITA GATES
ABOUT 20 MINUTES INTO “Hallelujah,” Hollywood’s first all-sound feature with an all-black cast, Nina Mae McKinney appeared on screen as Chick, a singer and dancer, in a sexy flapper dress.
She had flashing eyes, an armful of jangly bracelets, and no qualms about cheating a handsome young cotton farmer out of the money he had just gotten for his family’s crop.
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The filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, center, in an ad for his film company. He wrote, directed and produced 40 or so films from 1919 to 1948, many of which addressed issues of race. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library
1884-1951
A pioneering filmmaker prefiguring independent directors like Spike Lee and Tyler Perry.
By MONICA DRAKE
Almost as soon as you settle in to watch the 1939 melodrama “Lying Lips,” you can figure out who is the victim, who is the villain and who is the hero. And even if you know how it all will end, you want to watch anyway.
That was the beauty of the filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. He made you want to soak up the exuberance he clearly felt in delivering a whole new way of telling stories.
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Mary Ellen Pleasant, an early African-American businesswoman, circa 1860s. Everett Collection/Alamy
1814-1907
Born into slavery, she became a Gold Rush-era millionaire and a powerful abolitionist.
By VERONICA CHAMBERS
When the abolitionist John Brown was hanged on Dec. 2, 1859, for murder and treason, a note found in his pocket read, “The ax is laid at the foot of the tree. When the first blow is struck, there will be more money to help.” Officials most likely believed it was written by a wealthy Northerner who had helped fund Brown’s attempt to incite, and arm, an enormous slave uprising by taking over an arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia. No one suspected that the note was written by a black woman named Mary Ellen Pleasant.
In 1901, an elderly Pleasant dictated her autobiography to the journalist Sam Davis. As Lynn Hudson writes in the book “The Making of ‘Mammy Pleasant’: A Black Entrepreneur in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco,” Pleasant told Davis, “Before I pass away, I wish to clear the identity of the party who furnished John Brown with most of his money to start the fight at Harpers Ferry and who signed the letter found on him when he was arrested.” The sum she donated was $30,000 — almost $900,000 in today’s dollars.
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A portrait of Elizabeth Jennings published in The American Woman’s Journal in 1895. Her civil rights efforts predate those of Rosa Parks by a century, though the two are often compared. Kansas State Historical Society
1827-1901
Life experiences primed her to fight for racial equality. Her moment came on a streetcar ride to church.
By SAM ROBERTS
Because she was running behind one Sunday morning, Elizabeth Jennings turned out to be a century ahead of her time.
She was a teacher in her 20s, on her way to the First Colored American Congregational Church in Lower Manhattan, where she was the regular organist, when a conductor ordered her off a horse-drawn Third Avenue trolley and told her to wait for a car reserved for black passengers.
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Philip A. Payton Jr., who is now known as the “father of Harlem.” He steered black residents uptown, making it the nexus of a community whose cultural output helped shape 20th-century America. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library
1876-1917
A real estate magnate who turned Harlem into a black mecca.
By ADEEL HASSAN
“Human hives, honeycombed with little rooms thick with human beings,” is how a white journalist and co-founder of the N.A.A.C.P., Mary White Ovington, described the filthy tenements that black New Yorkers were relegated to at the turn of the 20th century.
As more rural Southerners arrived in the city, the teeming Manhattan slums in which African-Americans were living had become the most densely populated streets in the city, nearly 5,000 people per block, according to one count, as landlords rented almost exclusively to white tenants.
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Moses Fleetwood Walker, the first black man to play for a major league baseball team. He played for the Toledo team in the old American Association in 1884. He caught 46 games, all barehanded and hit a .251 average.
1857-1924
The first black baseball player in the big leagues, even before Jackie Robinson.
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
When Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, becoming the first African-American player in modern major league baseball, he was not only a trailblazer in the sports world, but an inspiring figure in the modern civil rights movement.
But Robinson was not the first ballplayer in the long history of big league baseball known to be an African-American. That distinction belongs to Moses Fleetwood Walker.
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More in 'Overlooked'
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Mar. 8, 2018
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Apr. 4, 2018
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Mar. 8, 2018
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Dec. 12, 2018
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Aug. 15, 2018
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Jul. 25, 2018
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Jun. 6, 2018
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Mar. 8, 2018
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Mar. 8, 2018
JOIN US IN HONORING THE OVERLOOKED
On March 5, in San Francisco, The Times is hosting an evening honoring the Overlooked series. The event will feature honorees of the YBCA 100, who have been recognized by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. There will be performances by the spoken-word poet FreeQuency, the singer Martha Redbone and the a cappella ensemble Vocal Rush, and a discussion with Amy Padnani, the editor of Overlooked, Veronica Chambers, an archival story editor and Lauretta Charlton, the editor of Race/Related. Read more and get tickets.
Visit timesevents.nytimes.com for more events about Black History Month and other NYT journalism.
- Editors
- Amisha Padnani
- Veronica Chambers
- Daniel J. Wakin
- Brian Gallagher
- David Corcoran
- Dan Saltzstein
- Thomas Coffey
- Photo & Video
- Amanda Boe
- Antonio de Luca
- Agnes Lee
- Sandra Stevenson
- Elijah Walker
- Sarah Eckinger
- William O’Donnell
- James Nieves
- Jessica White
- Research
- Nick Donofrio
- Doris Burke
- Jeff Roth
- Alain Delaqueriere
- Digital Design
- Umi Syam
- Special Thanks
- Monica Drake
- William McDonald
- Video footage: Nina Mae McKinney in “Hallelujah!” produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in 1929. Oscar Micheaux directing a scene as seen in “Pioneers of African American Cinema" by Kino International. Martin Sostre in conversation with the warden in "Frame-Up: The Imprisonment of Martin Sostre" produced by Pacific Street Films. Gladys Bentley performing on “You Bet Your Life" with Groucho Marx produced by NBC. Dondi presenting his work from “Style Wars” courtesy of Public Art Films, Inc.
