Dr. Vada Somerville (born Vada Jetmore Watson) of Pomona graduated from USC, married dentist John Alexander Somerville (1912), was the first African American woman and the second African American person to graduate from USC School of Dentistry (1918), and was the first African American woman certified to practice dentistry in the state of California. She was a civil rights activist, highly involved in several civic and community organizations.
African American church wedding with the bride and groom beneath a canopy in the center and approximately 20 guests in the pews. Flowers adorn the church.
Grafton Tyler Brown was an African American who artist worked as a lithographer, cartographer and landscape painter capturing images of landscapes in the northwest United States, and British Columbia.
Theodore Johnson standing in front of a tree and holding a photograph of a track and field athlete (?). Johnson was probably related to Ivan J. Johnson.
Chevalier de Saint-Georges was a champion fencer, classical composer, virtuoso violinist, and conductor of the leading symphony orchestra in Paris. Born in Guadeloupe, he was the son of George Bologne de Saint-Georges, a wealthy planter, and Nanon, his African slave. During the French Revolution, Saint-Georges was colonel of the Légion St.-Georges, the first all-black regiment in Europe, fighting on the side of the Republic. Today the Chevalier de Saint-Georges is best remembered as the first classical composer of African ancestry. [Wikipedia]
Jeremiah B. Sanderson, a free, New Bedford-educated black man who was active in the abolitionist movement in the Northeast, moved to California during the Gold Rush era and became one of the most influential spokesmen and educators in the state. He successfully petitioned to get public funding for "colored schools" in the 1850s-1870s in Sacramento, San Francisco, and Stockton, with black families from across the state sending their children to his school in Stockton. Sanderson was also a key organizer of state and district conventions during that time period that called for greater civil rights for blacks in California. He was a minister of the First A.M.E. Church in Oakland.
Chevalier de Saint-Georges was a champion fencer, classical composer, virtuoso violinist, and conductor of the leading symphony orchestra in Paris. Born in Guadeloupe, he was the son of George Bologne de Saint-Georges, a wealthy planter, and Nanon, his African slave. During the French Revolution, Saint-Georges was colonel of the Légion St.-Georges, the first all-black regiment in Europe, fighting on the side of the Republic. Today the Chevalier de Saint-Georges is best remembered as the first classical composer of African ancestry. [Wikipedia]
![Raymond Anderson [need more info.]](https://iiif.library.ucla.edu/iiif/2/ark%3A%2F21198%2Fz1q82x6s/full/!200,200/0/default.jpg)
