Those We Lost — August 5

Honoring those we lost on August 5 — remembered for what they gave, and for what they left behind.

Ernest Whitman

Born Feb 21, 1893 — died Aug 5, 1954

Stage and screen actor, vaudeville performer, radio personality, and minister.

Whitman moved from ministry and vaudeville into Broadway, radio, and Hollywood during an era when Black performers were frequently limited to stereotyped roles. His long career included The Green Pastures and work across several forms of American entertainment.

Rosa Lee Ingram

Born Jul 23, 1902 — died Aug 5, 1980

Sharecropper, mother, civil rights cause figure, and symbol of resistance to Jim Crow injustice.

Ingram and two of her sons were sentenced to death after a one-day trial arising from a confrontation with a white sharecropper who attacked her. A national campaign led by Black women’s and civil rights organizations helped commute the sentences and eventually secure their release in 1959.

Toni Morrison

Birth name: Chloe Ardelia Wofford

Born Feb 18, 1931 — died Aug 5, 2019

Novelist, editor, professor, essayist, Pulitzer Prize winner, and Nobel laureate.

Morrison transformed American literature by centering Black memory, language, family, history, and interior life in works including The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. She also expanded the Black literary canon as an editor and became the first Black woman awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Pat Norman

Birth name: Patricia Elise Richardson

Born Oct 21, 1939 — died Aug 5, 2022

Black lesbian activist, women’s rights organizer, health advocate, and civic leader.

Norman spent decades organizing at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, health, and public policy in San Francisco. Her leadership helped build institutions for lesbian mothers, expand LGBTQ representation in city government, and place Black queer communities inside broader civil rights work.