Black Brilliance
- Feb 19
- 6 min read
Howdy! It’s the Chess Friends!
Happy Black History Month! February was officially recognized in 1976 by President Ford to honor and celebrate Black Americans. Today we’re going to celebrate some amazing Black chess players who changed the landscape of American and global chess, including some friends of ours. Let’s get to it!
Theophilius Thompson was born in 1855, as a slave, in Maryland. Slavery was abolished in 1865, with the 13th amendment to the US Constitution. In 1873, he wrote the book Chess Problems: Either to Play and Mate, about many interesting endgame positions. He was likely expert (2000+) strength.
Walter Harris was the first Black National Master, earning the title in 1963. He was also the junior champion at the famous Marshall Chess Club in New York. Frank Street, Jr. was the second Black American NM, earning the title in 1965. Baraka Shabazz, formerly Christine Barker, of Colorado, was the first Black woman to become a USCF Expert (2000+ rating) and peaked as the #6 highest rated woman in the USA, in the late 1970s.
GM Maurice Ashley is a Jamaican-American chess player. (Check out his website!) He is the first-ever Black Grandmaster, obtaining his GM title in 1999. He is a leading commentator, teacher and author. His book Maurice Ashley Teaches Chess, released in 1996, also became a leading chess learning app that helped a generation of beginning and intermediate players learn to love and grow in the game. Here are some of our favorite other works of his:
Secrets of Chess Geometry (Chessable Course)
FM James Canty III, also known as GMCanty, is an amazing chess streamer and player. (Check out his Youtube channel and his Twitch channel!) He has quite a few amazing courses and popularized some cool aggressive chess openings, such as the Jobava London, and the Black Lion, which I covered in our last blog. Here are some of his aggressive opening repertoires, and a bunch of other cool stuff:
The Meanest Jobava London (Chessable course)
Blast the Rossolimo: Ferguson’s Cannon Variation (Chessable course)
Sicilian Hitman: Aravindh Variation (Chessable course)
The Kylo Strike Opening System (Chess IQ Academy)
E4 Jedi Way (Chess IQ Academy)
Brewington Hardaway, aka BrewMaster, is a young chess phenom out of the Bronx. He recently reached the coveted Grandmaster title and is the second African-American chess player to do it, and got it at only 15 years old! AND he also got to Master at 10 years old and beat an IM at 7! Also, I (The Myth Sarang) played him in bughouse at an event!
Also out of the Bronx, Coach Walter Guity owns and operates Sage Chess, teaching people of all ages life lessons through chess in the Seattle area, where he now lives. Both I (The Myth Sarang) and my brother (The Legend Vivaan) worked a lot with Walter one summer, and I think he is a phenomenal coach.
When I worked with him, he taught me a few important life lessons and mindset tips as well as improved my chess immensely, particularly how to play under pressure, how to put pressure on my opponents, and how to be resilient and fight back from worse positions. We both won multiple tournaments and gained lots of rating points under his coaching. If you want to get chess lessons from this fantastic coach in the Seattle area, go to his website (mentioned earlier) and book lessons today!
In 2012, a phenomenal movie called Brooklyn Castle came out. We reviewed it in Back to School Time! It highlighted stories of a school in New York, called I.S. 318. Many great young black chess players came from this school and this program led by coach Elizabeth Spiegel. Justus Williams has been called the “LeBron James of Chess” for good reason. He became an NM when he was 12 (my age!) and founded the Black Squares Network to support young Black chess players in Saint Louis. What a legend! James Black is another black master from IS 318 who helped lead the team to the 2012 national title. Rochelle Ballantyne is a multiple time US Girls National Champion and Expert. She currently champions education equity and criminal justice reform as a lawyer in New York. I.S. 318 has won over 20 national championships!
In 2006, Seattle Police Detective Denise “Cookie” Bouldin started Detective Cookie Chess Club. Ever since, Detective Cookie’s chess club has created an opportunity for local players of all ages to interact and play chess. This club plays every Saturday in the Rainier Beach neighborhood of Seattle, with many players showing up. To honor Detective Cookie, a group of local leaders and volunteers also helped build a permanent chess park, called the Detective Cookie Chess Park, also in Rainier Beach. One rising chess player, Brook Ayalew, is a local kid who plays at the Cookie chess club regularly. He is one of the best players out of the club, and a good friend of ours, already class A (1800+) and soon to be Expert!
We also want to highlight a legendary young man we grew up with through ChessKid and many tournaments, namely IM Tanitoluwa Adewumi. We reviewed a lovely book he wrote called Tani’s New Home in Chess Picture Books! Oh my!. You can get Tani's New Home here. Tani and his family came from Nigeria to the USA as refugees and started in a homeless shelter in New York. In 2019, he won the New York State Championship at 8 years old. In 2021, he became a National Master and later that year, a FIDE Master. In 2025, he became an International Master! Tani is now 15 years old and a great inspiration for all of us chess kids! Hope to see GM Tani soon!
There are so many legendary Black American chess players we could feature here, but we’ll leave it there. The reality is that Black Americans represent about 15% of the US Population and while US Chess doesn’t collect racial data, articles consistently highlight that Black chess players are grossly underrepresented. We are hopeful that great educators and leaders like many we’ve mentioned above, as well as some we’ve spoken about in the past like Stephanie Ballom (Travel Time! 2025 US Open Recap!), continue to inspire the next generation of great young Black chess players. We are fortunate enough to be coaching four young Black players on the Kings Knights high school chess team (shoutout Nebiyu, Mathuselah, Mahanaim, and Melchizedek) and are excited to watch them continue to grow and improve!
Now let’s turn it over to The Man Benji for a book review of one of GM Maurice Ashley’s many fantastic books:
by Maurice Ashley (2024)
Do you know how a specific book comes to you just at the right time of your life? Well, that’s what happen to me and GM Maurice Ashley’s Move by Move book: it couldn’t come to me at a better moment! Having just completed a tough up-and-down tournament, where the down felt more steep than usual, and the up felt more like an uphill battle, the book reassured me that I am on the right path.
No other books have so much profound wisdom packed in… well, Q&A Chess comes close. Still, while The Chess Friends share their present chess wisdom, GM Ashley speaks from the future. He says, “Greatness comes from listening intently to the messages, direct or indirect, that come from others.” As he elaborates, using his life examples, you need to gain your “future” wisdom to help you move forward in your present. In a way, GM Ashley speaks as “future us”, having completed the titled journey.
A lot of advice resonated with me that I’m now trying to incorporate in my daily life. For example, the value of tiny daily improvements that slowly but surely accumulate over time. Each day, ask yourself this powerful question: How did I improve today? Then acknowledge every little gain.
We all know that losing is learning in chess but it’s hard to come to terms with this notion. Reading his experiences, it is easier now to accept losing "gracefully and gratefully." The greatest champions recognize that “your opponent can be your greatest teacher!”
The real gem for me came on page 160, where GM Ashley gave the ultimate mindset advice on how to reach your titled goal, in chess or otherwise. Don’t want to spoil that for you, so I highly recommend reading this book. Even if you are not a chess player, but someone who is aiming to achieve brilliance in your life, this book is for you!
Three Cheers, Fellow Future Master Chess Friends!
The Man Benji, The Myth Sarang, The Legend Vivaan
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