HORACE R. CLAYTON

Born in Seattle, Washington, Horace Clayton came to Chicago in 1929 to study sociology at the University of Chicago. In the 1930s and 1940s, he became one of the preeminent black sociologists in America. His works include Black Metropolis, a classic study of Chicago's Bronzeville, and Black Workers and the New Unions, a study of the role of African Americans in industrialized life. During the 1940's, Clayton served as director of the innovative Parkway Community House, a center for culture, education and social services. He died in 1970.

CHARLEMAE HILL ROLLINS

When the George C. Hall Branch of the Chicago Public Library opened in January 1932, Rollins was put in charge of the children's department. Mrs. Rollins led a lifelong crusade to change the image of African Americans in children's literature and promote the publication of books about the African American experience in American life and culture. She gained national attention in 1941 by editing We Build Together: A Reader's Guide to Negro Life and Literature for Elementary and High School Use, an annotated bibliography of children's books about African Americans published by the National Council of Teachers of English. Rollins died in 1979.

CARTER G. WOODSON

Carter G. Woodson researched and collected African American history through his organization, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (later known as the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History). Founded on September 9, 1915 by Woodson, George Cleveland Hall, W.B. Hartgrove, Alexander L. Jackson, and James E. Stamps, the organization was committed to historical research and the publication of books on black history. He also founded and edited The Journal of Negro History and the Negro History Bulletin. He created Negro History Week in 1926 to celebrate achievements of blacks. It later become Black History Month. One of nine children born to former slaves, he enrolled in Kentucky's Berea College, a center of learning for abolitionists, and graduated in 1903. He received bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Chicago. After completing coursework for his doctorate at Harvard University, he accepted a teaching position at Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. in 1909. His first book, considered to be his most important, was The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861: A History of the Education of Colored People of the United States from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War, published in 1915. He died in 1950.