Firsts
First black President
Barack Obama
Created revolutionized agriculture with crop rotation and came up with many uses for peanuts and sweet potatoes
George Washington Carver
First black woman millionaire
Madame C J Walker
A secret, loose network of safe houses, routes, and abolitionists that helped approximately 40,000 to 100,000 enslaved African Americans escape from the American South to free states, Canada, Mexico, and other safe havens from the late 18th century until the end of the Civil War
Underground Railroad
This historic district became the cultural and intellectual heart of Black St. Louis, nurturing icons like the Sumner High School and Booker T. Washington networks
The Ville
First Black Supreme Court Justice
Thurgood Marshall
He invented the gas mask and the traffic light
Garett Morgan
These brothers rehab houses in the St. Louis area and were featured for a time on HGTV
The McMiller Brothers
Places where it is/was unsafe for black people to be once evening/night came due to violent intimidation
Sundown Towns
A vibrant, historic 450-to-500-acre African American neighborhood in central St. Louis, Missouri, stretching from 20th Street west to Grand Avenue, but demolished
Mille Creek
The first black man to play major league baseball in the modern age
Jackie Robinson
He drafted patents for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone and invented an improved carbon filament for light bulbs.
Lewis Latimer
The late business legend built his Chicago-based publishing, media, and cosmetics conglomerate into the first Black-owned global powerhouse, distributing worldwide name brands such as Ebony, Jet, and Fashion Fair.
John H. Johnson
Black section of Tulsa, OK was home to Black Wall Street and was bombed to end the rioting/massacre
Greenwood
She gave Madame CJ Walker her start in the beauty and hair industry and created her own empire in St. Louis
Annie Malone
First black woman astronaut
Mae Jemison
He created blood plasma storage methods
Charles Drew
This is the oldest Black-owned construction company in the country, and it's run by a woman
McKissack & McKissack
This Black community in Florida was decimated in 1923 after a white woman falsely accused a black man of violating her
Rosewood
Site of the first two trials of the pivotal Dred Scott case in 1847 and 1850.
Old Courthouse
He drafted patents for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone and invented an improved carbon filament for light bulbs.
Lewis Latimer
First black nurse in the US
Mary Eliza Mahoney
He and his wife created Black Entertainment Television (BET), an American basic cable network targeting Black American audiences. He became the first black billionaire.
Robert L Johnson
This a historic city in Mali, West Africa was a center of African education, trade, and scholarship
Timbuktu
Headed by David Stewart (the 2nd richest black man in the world), it is a major tech services provider headquartered in St. Louis with multi-billion-dollar annual revenues.
World Wide Technology