Freedom Train Presents: On the Shoulders of Giants

​The Freedom Train Network is celebrating black women for the entire month of May. So we will be celebrating and teaching you about great black women of the African diaspora. This episode we are focusing on the Mino Warriors of Dahomey.The third king of Dahomey, King Houegbadja ruled from 1645 to 1685, and is created with creating the legendary all-woman Fon of Dahomey. The original purpose of this all female regime was to become ‘gbeto’, or elephant hunters for the king. Around the e [...]

The Freedom Train Network is celebrating black women for the entire month of May. So we will be celebrating and teaching you about great black women of the African diaspora. This episode we are focusing on Professor Wangari Muta Maathai.​Wangari Muta Maathai was born on April 1st, 1940 in the village of Ihithe in the Nyeri District of Kenya.  Around 1943 her family moved to a White-owned farm where her father had found work, she lived there until 1947 when her mother returned to Ihithe so [...]

The Freedom Train Network is celebrating black women for the entire month of May. So we will be celebrating and teaching you about great black women of the African diaspora. This episode we are focusing on Queen Nanny of the Maroons. Born c. 1686 in Ghana as a member of the Ashanti tribe, her village was raided during inter-tribal conflict and she was captured and sold as a slave and shipped to Jamaica. Nanny was sold to the Saint Thomas Parish plantation, that particular plantation grew su [...]

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​In April of 711 AD, Tariq led his army to what is now known as Gibraltar. The name “Rock of Gibraltar” derived from the Arabic name Jabal al Tariq; meaning rock of Tariq. The Straights of Gibraltar were also named after Tariq, the Moore who conquered Spain. Tariq’s army consisted of 12,000 soldiers and they met the Army of Roderick containing 100,000 soldiers at the Battle of Guadelete.  Before battle Tariq gathered his troops and delivered one of history’s most motivating and so [...]

​The legend John Horse was born near Micanopy, Florida during the time of the War of 1812, his mother was an African woman who was a slave of his father, who was a Seminole Indian slave trader named Charley Cavallo. John Horse and his mother were the property of Cavallo but lived in one of the Oconee Seminole settlements populated by black people along the Suwannee River. In 1817 during the First Seminole War, John Horse’s settlements along with others were raided by American forces led by t [...]

​On April 23, 1856 Granville Woods was born in Columbus, Ohio to parents Cyrus Woods and Martha Brown. His family experienced poverty so Woods only attended school until the age of ten, he then began working to help his family survive. He worked in a machine shop where he would learn mechanics; information also suggests that he worked as a railroad engineer, engineer on a British ship, railroad worker and blacksmith. Woods became interested in electrical engineering and began learning as much [...]

In 1474, Queen Anacaona was born in Yaguana, which is now modern day Leogane, Haiti. Yaguana was the capital of Xaragua, a heavily populated kingdom which was also very prosperous. Anacaona means “Golden Flower” in the native Taino language; she was the younger sister of the king of the Xaraguas’, Behechio. In 1494 Christopher Columbus visited the Xaragua kingdom for trade and was met by Anacaona and the king. Anacaona was seen as an equal negotiator with the king. She and her brother were [...]

​Fannie Lou Hamer was born on October 6th, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi. The daughter of sharecroppers; her attention went to helping her family earn money to survive at the age of six. At the age of twelve she dropped out of school to work full-time with her family. In 1944 Miss. Hamer would marry Mr. Perry “Pap” Hamer, and the couple worked as sharecroppers on a cotton plantation in Ruleville, Mississippi. They never had children because Miss. Hamer was having surgery to r [...]

​Lauretta Mary Aiken was born in Brevard, North Carolina in 1894, she was one of twelve children born to James Aiken and Mary Smith. Her father was an entrepreneur and a volunteer fireman who subsequently died in an accident involving an exploding firetruck. In the year 1910 her mother was hit by a truck and killed on Christmas Day.  More tragedy stuck the young life of Mabley, by the age of fifteen she was raped twice and each time became pregnant from her attacker. She was forced to giv [...]