Those We Lost — August 27

Honoring those we lost on August 27 — remembered for what they gave, and for what they left behind.

Janie Porter Barrett

Full name: Janie Aurora Porter Barrett

Born Aug 9, 1865 — died Aug 27, 1948

Educator, social reformer, clubwoman, and pioneer in care for Black girls.

Barrett founded the Locust Street Social Settlement and the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls, creating community-based alternatives to neglect and punishment. Her work joined education, health, family support, and vocational training while influencing Black women’s club activism and social welfare reform.

W. E. B. Du Bois

Full name: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

Born Feb 23, 1868 — died Aug 27, 1963

Sociologist, historian, writer, editor, civil rights leader, and Pan-Africanist.

Du Bois became the first Black person to earn a doctorate from Harvard, co-founded the NAACP, edited The Crisis, and authored The Souls of Black Folk. Across seven decades, he used scholarship and organizing to confront racism, defend Black political power, and connect African American freedom to global anti-colonial struggle.

Norman Lewis

Full name: Norman Wilfred Lewis

Born Jul 23, 1909 — died Aug 27, 1979

Painter, scholar, teacher, and major Black Abstract Expressionist.

Lewis moved from social-realist scenes of Harlem life toward abstraction without abandoning Black history, jazz, protest, or political meaning. His innovative paintings challenged the racial exclusions of the postwar art world and helped establish a fuller history of American modernism.

Greg Morris

Birth name: Francis Gregory Alan Morris

Born Sep 27, 1933 — died Aug 27, 1996

Actor and television trailblazer best known for Mission: Impossible and Vega$.

Morris brought intelligence, calm authority, and technical mastery to Barney Collier on Mission: Impossible, one of television’s most prominent Black dramatic roles of the era. His long-running presence helped normalize Black professionals as indispensable heroes in mainstream adventure television.

Darryl Dawkins

Full name: Darryl R. Dawkins

Born Jan 11, 1957 — died Aug 27, 2015

Professional basketball player, coach, entertainer, and one of the NBA’s most powerful dunkers.

Known as “Chocolate Thunder,” Dawkins turned above-the-rim play into spectacle and shattered two backboards in 1979, helping prompt the NBA’s adoption of breakaway rims. His humor, imagination, and later work with young players made him a beloved ambassador for the game.