Those We Lost — October 25

Honoring those we lost on October 25 — remembered for what they gave, and for what they left behind.

Joseph Charles Price

Born February 10, 1854 — died October 25, 1893

Educator, college founder and president, AME Zion minister, orator, and civil-rights leader

Born in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, Price raised money on a speaking tour of England, which helped him establish Zion Wesley College (renamed Livingstone College) in Salisbury. He became its president in 1882 at age twenty-eight. In 1890 he was elected president of both the Afro-American League and the National Equal Rights Convention. Price built Livingstone into a leading Black college and was a national voice for Black education and civil rights. Historians, including W. E. B. Du Bois, saw his early death as leaving a leadership vacuum.

Jessie Parkhurst Guzman

Born December 1, 1898 — died October 25, 1996

Educator, historian, researcher, editor, and college administrator

Born in Savannah, Georgia, Guzman was educated at Howard University and Columbia University. She worked at Tuskegee Institute from 1923 to 1928 and from 1930 to 1965 as professor, dean of women, and director of the Department of Records and Research. She edited the 1947 and 1952 editions of the Negro Year Book and directed the Tuskegee branch of the NAACP. Her research and reference publications, including the Negro Year Book and her history of the Tuskegee Civic Association, documented Black life and civil-rights struggles in the South.

Yvonne Walker-Taylor

Born c. 1914 — died October 25, 2006

Educator, academic administrator, and college president

Walker-Taylor spent much of her career at Wilberforce University as professor, dean, provost, and president, becoming one of the earliest Black women to lead a four-year college. Her leadership at the nation’s oldest private historically Black university created a model of Black women’s authority in higher education.

Emanuel Steward

Born July 7, 1944 — died October 25, 2012

Boxing trainer, gym owner, former amateur boxer, and television commentator

A West Virginia native raised in Detroit, Steward built the Kronk Gym into a center of championship boxing. He transformed Thomas Hearns into a multi-division world champion and later trained Lennox Lewis and Wladimir Klitschko. He also worked for HBO Sports as a fight analyst from 2001. An inductee of the International Boxing Hall of Fame, Steward made Detroit’s Kronk Gym an international force in the sport and mentored generations of fighters.

Vaino Spencer

Born July 22, 1920 — died October 25, 2016

Lawyer, judge, presiding appellate justice, and legal organizer

Spencer became the first Black woman appointed to a judgeship in California and served forty-six years on the bench, including decades as a presiding justice of the California Court of Appeal. She cofounded the Black Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles and the National Association of Women Judges, widening access to legal leadership.