Pioneers and Trailblazers
This 19th-century inventor revolutionized agriculture by creating hundreds of uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, and other crops while working at Tuskegee Institute.
Who is George Washington Carver?
This organization, founded in 1909, became a major legal force behind desegregation cases, including Brown v. Board of Education.
What is the NAACP?
This long-running TV show, first airing in 1971 and created by Don Cornelius, showcased Black music and dance and featured the famous phrase “Love, Peace, and Soul.”
What is Soul Train?
This physician and scientist is known as the “Father of the Blood Bank” for developing large-scale blood storage techniques during World War II.
Who is Charles Drew?
This poet wrote the famous poem “Still I Rise” and the autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Who is Maya Angelou?
This man became the first Black Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967
Who is Thurgood Marshall?
This 1954 Supreme Court case ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional
What is Brown v. Board of Education?
This television network, launched in 1980 by Robert L. Johnson, was the first cable channel dedicated primarily to Black audiences.
What is BET (Black Entertainment Television)?
This NASA mathematician, featured in Hidden Figures, helped calculate the flight path for John Glenn’s orbit around Earth
Who is Katherine Johnson?
This writer became the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 and wrote Beloved.
Who is Toni Morrison?
This educator and founder of Tuskegee Institute became the first Black American invited to dine at the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901.
Who is Booker T. Washington?
Nine months before Rosa Parks, this 15-year-old girl refused to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery bus in 1955 but was not used as the face of the movement.
Who is Claudette Colvin?
This 1984 film, directed by Prince and sharing the name of his album, helped redefine Black artists’ influence in mainstream visual media.
What is Purple Rain?
These cells, taken without consent from a woman in 1951, became the first immortal human cell line and transformed medical research.
What are HeLa cells? (from Henrietta Lacks)
This Harlem Renaissance writer authored “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and the poetry collection Montage of a Dream Deferred.
Who is Langston Hughes?
This woman became the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress in 1968 and later ran for president in 1972.
Who is Shirley Chisholm?
This 1963 event in Washington, D.C., drew over 200,000 people and is where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
What was the March on Washington?
This 2016 television miniseries, based on Alex Haley’s book, followed the story of Kunta Kinte and brought national attention to the history of slavery in America
What is Roots?
This engineer invented the Super Soaker water gun in 1989 while originally working on a new type of refrigeration system at NASA.
Who is Lonnie Johnson?
This author wrote The Souls of Black Folk, a foundational work that introduced the concept of “double consciousness.”
Who is W.E.B. Du Bois?
In 1992, she made history as the first Black woman to travel to space aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour
Who is Mae Jemison?
This Civil Rights leader and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference helped organize the 1963 Birmingham Campaign and later became a U.S. Congressman.
Who is John Lewis?
This groundbreaking 1988 film by Eddie Murphy’s production company was one of the highest-grossing romantic comedies with a predominantly Black cast and is set in the fictional African nation of Zamunda.
What is Coming to America?
This neurosurgeon became the first Black director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is known for separating conjoined twins early in his career.
Who is Ben Carson?
This author wrote the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, centered on the life of Janie Crawford.
Who is Zora Neale Hurston?