Joan Coles-Howard Photograph Collection

Joan Coles-Howard is the daughter of Howard W. Coles and Alma Kelso, pioneers in broadcasting and housing activism, among many other contributions to Rochester. (Howard W Coles founded the Frederick Douglass Voice, for decades Rochester’s primary African-American newspaper, in 1933.) She was the founder and owner of Uhuru Gift Shop (Jefferson Avenue & Midtown Plaza) and editor of the Frederick Douglass Voice newspaper. Today, Coles-Howard works with the young people she works with at the Teen Empowerment Center in Rochester and others in the community to disseminate information about the accomplishments and the challenges Black people have faced. Coles-Howard said it’s important for young people to “be able to look back and some of them will recognize their forebearers and know that we were doing things, we were a community, we were a village.”