Clara McBride was born in Elizabeth City, North Carolina in 1905 and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her mother passed away when she was 16, leaving her completely orphaned. She finished her high school education on her own. After finishing high school, Clara married Thomas Hale and moved to New York City where they had three children. Clara worked as a janitor while her husband ran a business and went to college. When Clara was 33, her husband suddenly died and left her to care for the three children alone during the height of the depression.

In order to spend more time with her children, Clara left her job as a janitor and began a daycare business for parents who worked during the day. Clara's home was so warm and loving that most of the kids did not want to go to their real homes at the end of the day. Many of the children began staying full-time when their mothers would only come see them on the weekends.

Clara expanded her operation by obtaining a license to take foster children into her home. Soon, she was the mother of 7-8 children at a time, rearing them into adulthood. She began actively searching for homes for some of the children and she taught essential parenting skills to parents. By the late 1960s, she had taken in over 40 foster children.

In 1969, she retired from fostering children and changed her focus towards babies addicted to heroin. Her daughter, Lorraine, brought home a woman that was a drug addict and Clara agreed to take in her baby. She began taking in more of these children at the age of 65 years. Within months, she was taking care of 22 babies, most without mothers. In 1970, she obtained a licence to turn her home into a child-care facility and she named it "Hale House." She then purchased a much larger building in Harlem and turned it into a new Hale House.

Clara Hale became known as "Mother Hale" as her operations expanded in the 1970s and 1980s. She expanded her focus from kids of drug addicts to children infected with the HIV virus. It is estimated that Clara Hale personally took care of over 800 babies in her lifetime. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan saluted Clara Hale as a great American hero in his State of the Union Address. She was named by the President to be a member of the American Commission on Drug Free Schools.

Clara Hale was taking care of children right up until her death in 1992. She received nearly 400 awards in her lifetime for her work with children. The Women's International Center dedicated the Living Legacy Awards to her memory in 1993. Her great humanitarian efforts to help those in need made Mother Hale a truly great American.

John Robert Clifford was born in Williamsport, Virginia, which is now a part of West Virginia. His family were “free blacks.” Since there were no schools in the region for colored children, his parents sent him to Chicago to receive and education when he was a teenager.

In 1864, Clifford enlisted in the United States Colored Troops to serve for the Union in the Civil War. He served until the end of the war and earned the rank of corporal. After the war, he enrolled in the Storer College for colored people in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. The school had be created to educate freed blacks. After earning a degree, he became a teacher, then principal, at a segregated school in Martinsburg, West Virginia.

In 1882, Clifford started a nationally circulated newspaper called “The Pioneer Press.” The weekly newspaper dealing with African-American issues was one of the most popular in the country. In 1887, he became the first African-American to be admitted to the West Virginia Bar. He would practice law for the next 45 years.

In 1898, Clifford won a landmark civil rights case in the West Virginia Supreme Court called “Williams v Board of Education.” The Tucker County Board of Education decided to reduce the school year for colored students from nine months to just five months. Clifford argued for one of the teachers at the segregated schools. He won the case for equal educational opportunities for black students over 50 years before the famous “Brown v Board of Education” case desegregated the United States.

In 1905, Clifford became one of the founding members of the Niagara Movement. This organization was the precursor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Clifford was a national leader in the civil rights movement early in the 20th century.

When Clifford died in 1933, his remains were buried at Arlington National Cemetery due to his service in the American Civil War. His contributions to the civil rights movement in the early 20th century laid the groundwork for the end of segregation in the 1950s. His contributions as a journalist, attorney, teacher and civil rights leader made him a great American.