Daniel Alexander Payne Murray (1852-1925) Assistant librarian, Library of Congress; bibliographer, author, politician, and historian was the son of a freed slave. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland on March 3, 1852. In 1861, he went to work at the United States Senate Restaurant managed by his brother who was also a caterer. Murray became the personal assistant to the Librarian of Congress, Ainsworth Rand Spofford at the age of nineteen.

On April 2, 1879 he married Anna Evans with whom he had seven children. By 1881 he had risen to become assistant librarian. He joined the professional staff of the Library of Congress in 1871. He was eighteen years old, and only the second black American to work for the Library. Ten years later Murray was named assistant librarian, a position he held for forty-one years. Murray married educator Anna Jane Evans, and the couple became a major force in the social and civic life of the District of Columbia. Murray began to compile a collection of books and pamphlets authored by African Americans at the request of Herbert Putnam, the successor to Spofford. Wikipedia

Lillie May Carroll Jackson (May 25, 1889 Baltimore, Maryland – July 5, 1975 Baltimore), pioneer civil rights activist, organizer of the Baltimore Branch of the NAACP. . . .As a successful owner of rental property, Jackson was free to engage in activities which led to community improvement. She sponsored the City-Wide Young Peoples forum with her daughter Juanita in the leadership in the early 1930s. The forum conducted a campaign to end racial segregation beginning with the grassroots "Buy Where You Can Work" campaign of 1931. Jackson and her daughter Juanita along with the forums' members encouraged African American residents of Baltimore to shop only at businesses where they could work, boycotting businesses with discriminatory hiring practices. The campaign's success led to similar protests in other cities around the country. . . . That was the beginning of her thirty-five year tenure with the NAACP, in a role as president of the Baltimore branch in 1935, a position she held until retirement in 1970. 1934 saw the beginning of Thurgood Marshall's employment with the Baltimore NAACP branch. The next year he won a landmark case financed by the Baltimore NAACP, Murray v. Pearson, removing the color barrier from admissions to the University of Maryland School of Law. In 1946 she founded the Maryland state conference of the NAACP and was elected to the National Board of Directors in 1948.

Father Divine (May 1879–September 10, 1965), the noted and controversial founder of the Peace Mission movement, gained national prominence during the Great Depression for his ability to feed and provide jobs for the poor, as well as for his followers' claims that he was God. Born George Baker in Rockville, Maryland, in 1879, Divine grew up in poverty and segregation, the son of ex-slaves who were menial laborers. Although he had limited educational opportunities, he became an avid reader of religious literature. In 1899, he moved to Baltimore, where he worked as a gardener and taught Sunday school in a storefront church. During these years, Baker formulated a unique theology that blended New Thought (the mind power philosophy that encouraged believers to channel God's inner presence for happiness, prosperity, and health), African-American Christianity, Pentecostalism, and other religious ideologies. In 1912, convinced that he had achieved oneness with God, he set out as an itinerant preacher and attracted a small following who recognized his divinity.