Category: 1910-1929 (Born)
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Bessie Lanier Smith
1924-1966 Bessie Lanier was born in Virginia but graduated Arts High in 1942 with a major in music. She was prominent in the Clinton Hill anti-poverty activities with United Community Corporation and as…
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Everane (Eva) Crump Harris
1913-2006 Born in Pleasantdale, NJ but lived in Newark by 1930 and in the Ironbound at 101 Hawkins St by 1950, after her first husband died, and for the rest of her life.…
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Rose A Leonardis
1916-2012 Lifelong Ironbound resident. Proprietor of the Rose A. Leonardis Funeral Home after the death of her father in 1953. She graduated from embalming school in 1950. She ran the funeral home until…
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Peggy Officer Lista
1913-2013 Inducted into the Newark Athletic Hall of Fame in 1994 for being a basketball and track standout at Central High in the late 1920s. As of 1930, she was the only girl…
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Anna Lois Russ Jones
1911-1987 Mother of Amiri Baraka. Born in Alabama, lived in Newark from 1926. Attended Tuskegee, Fisk, and Shaw College. Administrator for Community Hospital for many years. Community relations specialist for the Newark Housing…
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Sarah Catherine Howard Johnson
1907-1993 One of the first African American nurses in the Visiting Nurses Association of Newark, where she worked from 1930-1950. Nurse at Hawkins Street School from 1965-1977. Received degrees from Tuskegee Institute (1929)…
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Aileen Fong Shane
1926-2017 Born and raised in Newark’s Chinatown Aileen Fong Shane was an early woman engineer, graduating from Newark College of Engineering in 1946, at just age 19. In a 1947 article in the…
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Helen Pollard Zimmer
1910-1980 Corporate secretary (secretary/treasurer) of Fidelity Union Bank from 1964-1975, previously assistant secretary 1961-1964 and with Fidelity from 1956. First woman officer of the bank and first woman in Newark to be elected…