McKissack, Calvin Lunsford
1890-1968 · Contribution: 1905-1921
Architect
Co-founded McKissack & McKissack, the oldest minority-owned architectural-engineering firm in the United States

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Quick facts
- Born
- 1890
- Active since
- 1905
- Category
- Architecture & Design
- Best known for
- Co-founded McKissack & McKissackOldest minority-owned A/E firmPassed Tennessee's exclusionary exam
Impact on the world
Calvin McKissack helped found and sustain the oldest Black-owned design firm in the country, and his very licensure defeated a law engineered to exclude Black architects.
Sources
- Nashville Historical Newsletter
1 more sources and references are available to members.
Related visionaries
McKissack, Moses III
1879-1952
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Stanley, William J. III
unknown
First African American graduate of the Georgia Tech School of Architecture; co-founded Stanley, Love-Stanley, PC
Campbell, Wendell Jerome
1927-2008
Co-founded and served as first president of the National Organization of Minority Architects
Madison, Robert P.
1923-
First African American to graduate from the Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve) School of Architecture (1948), and the first to earn an architecture degree in the state of Ohio; founded Robert P. Madison International, Ohio's first Black-owned architecture firm