Director of the Old Slave Mart Museum and scholar of African American art history. Judith Wragg Chase was born in 1907 in Augusta, Georgia, to Samuel Alston Wragg (1875-1953) and Emma Louise Sparks (Wragg) (1877-1966). She attended William Smith College (now Hobart and William Smith Colleges) from 1923-1924. From 1924-1927, she studied at Cooper Union Art School and later completed her degree at Syracuse University in 1960.

African-American artist, curator, and historian of African-American art. Driskell was the son of Baptist minister George Washington Driskell, and Mary Cloud Driskell. Driskell’s family heavily influenced his career in art, as his father, a painter of religious subjects, and his mother, a quilter, both influenced his choice of career, and his grandfather was a sculptor. Driskell grew up in western North Carolina, attending segregated schools.Though Driskell was awarded a $90 scholarship to Shaw University in Raleigh, NC, he chose to attend Howard University in Washington D.C.

Feminist art historian and early scholar of African American art; founded Woman's Art Journal. Elsa Honig was born to Samuel M. Honig and ​​Yetta Susskind (Honig). She earned her Bachelors in Fine Arts from Syracuse University in 1951 and her MEd in art from Temple University's Tyler College of Fine Arts in 1967. She married Harold J. Fine Jr. (d. 2009), a psychologist and psychoanalyst, in 1952.

Smithsonian curator of 19th & 20th century African American Art; Romare Bearden scholar. Carroll Greene was born in 1931 in Washington D.C., and studied at Columbia University and New York University, earning degrees in History and English. Greene’s combining of his passions for African American history and art began in the 1960s while teaching English at NYU and co-curating collections on campus as a hobby.

Expert on African-American art; Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles. Mary Jane Hewitt's birth is undocumented, but likely in the 1920s. She was the youngest of four children in a single-mother household. She was raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, by her mother to whom she accredited her strong will and intolerance of discrimination (Ehrhart-Morrison). Hewitt first earned a Bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota before traveling to Paris, France in the 1950s. In France, Hewitt worked as a French interpreter and translator for the U.S.

Curator and historian of African-American art; first African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in art history. Lewis was a student at Dillard University in New Orleans, LA, and began her art career there under the tutelage of African-American sculptor and printmaker, Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012). At one of her instructor's suggestions, Lewis transferred to Hampton Institute (now Hampton Univer­sity) in Virginia, where she earned her B.A. in art history in 1945. Lewis completed her graduate studies at Ohio State University, earning her M.A. degree in 1948.

Philosopher, journalist, and scholar of African-American art. Alain Locke was born to an African-American couple, Pliny and Mary Hawkins Locke in Philadelphia, Locke was raised in Philadelphia, a popular center for the abolitionists during the Civil War. After his father died in 1891, Locke’s mother focused on developing her son’s intellectual and cultural curiosity. In 1907, Locke received his B.A. in philosophy and literature at Harvard College.

Curator and historian of African-American art. McElroy was the son of Geraldine McElroy (1923-2010) an African-American seamstress, and spent his youth in Fairmont, West Virginia. In 1970, McElroy received a B.A. in art education from Fairmont State College in Fairmont, WV. From 1970 to 1971, he worked as an intern at the Cincinnati Art Museum researching and preparing a catalog essay for an exhibition of paintings by African American landscapist, Robert S. Duncanson (1821-1872). He earned a M.A.

African-American author, lecturer, and civil rights activist; first author to publish a book on African-American art. Freeman Henry Morris Murray was born in 1859 in Cleveland, Ohio to John M. Murray (d. 1862), a tailor, and Martha [Mary] Bentley (Murray). Murray’s ethnic background was diverse; his father was a white man of Scottish descent and his mother had Irish, Native American, and African roots.

Art professor and early specialist of African-American art, museum director, and visual artist. Porter was the son of African-American couple John Porter and Lydia Peck Porter. His father was a Christian minister and his mother a schoolteacher. Porter attended public schools in Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D. C., before graduating cum laude with a B.S. in art from Howard University in 1927. He was immediately hired as an instructor of drawing and painting in Howard’s art department.

Historian of art, professor in art education and visual artist. Born in 1916 to Gay Crichton (1855-1966) and Walter Augustus Simon Sr., Simon Jr. grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. Despite the racism prevalent in schools at this time, Simon received an unconventionally thorough education for an African-American, which would serve as a solid foundation for his love of administration in higher education.

African-American Art Historian at Indiana University.

Curator and early historian of African and African-American art. Thompson was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, by his father, a surgeon, and his mother, a local arts patron. He grew to appreciate the cultures on either side of the border with Mexico. On a trip to Mexico City during his last year of high school, Thompson first heard mambo, a genre of Cuban dance music. This experience sparked what would become a lifelong passion for Afro-Atlantic music, dance, visual arts, and culture.