Those We Lost — August 24

Honoring those we lost on August 24 — remembered for what they gave, and for what they left behind.

Jan Ernst Matzeliger

Born Sep 15, 1852 — died Aug 24, 1889

Inventor whose lasting machine transformed the American shoe industry.

Matzeliger created a machine that mechanized the difficult process of shaping and attaching a shoe’s upper to its sole. His invention greatly increased production and lowered costs, yet racism and an early death kept him from receiving the wealth and recognition his industrial breakthrough deserved.

Denzil A. Carty

Full name: Denzil Angus Carty

Born Mar 30, 1904 — died Aug 24, 1975

Episcopal priest, civil rights leader, fair-housing advocate, and St. Paul community organizer.

Carty used the pulpit and civic institutions to challenge housing discrimination, racial exclusion, and unequal treatment in Minnesota. His leadership at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church joined spiritual care to direct public action and helped make fair housing a central local civil rights issue.

Bayard Rustin

Full name: Bayard Taylor Rustin

Born Mar 17, 1912 — died Aug 24, 1987

Civil rights strategist, nonviolence teacher, labor organizer, and LGBTQ trailblazer.

Rustin trained activists in nonviolent direct action, helped organize the Freedom Rides, and served as chief architect of the 1963 March on Washington. Though often pushed from public view because he was gay, his strategic brilliance linked racial justice, labor rights, peace, and democratic participation.

Don Byas

Birth name: Carlos Wesley Byas

Born Oct 21, 1912 — died Aug 24, 1972

Jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, bandleader, and bridge from swing to bebop.

Byas developed a powerful, harmonically advanced tenor style through work with Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, and other innovators. His playing connected swing’s full-bodied sound to bebop’s modern language, while his long European career helped internationalize Black American jazz.

Haywood Patterson

Born Dec 12, 1912 — died Aug 24, 1952

Author and one of the Scottsboro Boys, whose case exposed Jim Crow injustice.

Patterson was one of nine Black teenagers falsely accused of rape in Alabama in 1931 and repeatedly convicted by all-white juries despite collapsing evidence. His resistance, courtroom struggles, and memoir Scottsboro Boy helped expose racial terror in the legal system and drive landmark due-process rulings.