Artists
She delivered a 🔥🔥🔥 spoken word poem at Joe Biden's inauguration
Amanda Gorman
Fredrick Douglass
She became the first Black woman millionaire by inventing a line of cosmetics and hair products
She fought for voting rights in Mississippi and founded the Freedom Democratic Party to get more Black candidates in office
Fannie Lou Hamer
This North Philly native founded the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium in 2020
Dr. Ala Stanford
This actor, director, and entrepreneur is daughter of Motown legend Diana Ross
Tracee Ellis Ross
She wrote Justice's poetry and played a cameo role in the movie Poetic Justice
As the first Black college student at Iowa State University, he discovered over 300 new uses for peanuts
George Washington Carver
This "Fundi" -- or builder -- helped build youth power through the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
Ella Baker
After graduating from CAPA in 2005, she gained fame with songs like "Bust Your Windows" and "Pick Up Your Feelings"
Jazmine Sullivan
She won an Academy Award for her documentary 13th
Ava DuVernay
Oprah Winfrey
He has more than 80 patented inventions, but his most famous is the Super Soaker
Lonnie Johnson
At the age of 17, she disguised herself as a boy in order to fight against slavery in the Union Army
Cathay Williams
As a teacher in Frankford, she defiantly rode whites-only street cars and petitioned to have them integrated (alongside her fiance Octavius V. Catto) over 100 years before Rosa Parks
Her first group was called Girl's Tyme, and three of the four member reunited when she became the first Black woman to headline Coachella
Beyonce
This author of Beloved and The Bluest Eye was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2020
Toni Morrison
Every time you've seen a traffic light prevent an accident, thank this man who invented them
Garret Morgan
He was a key organizer of MLK's March on Washington, but his role was often downplayed due to his homosexuality
Bayard Rustin
Her incredible voice broke multiple race barriers at previously segregated performance halls, and she gave a famous concert outside the Lincoln Memorial in 1929
Marian Anderson
Christopher George Latore Wallace got this rap name from the 1975 movie Let's Do It Again
Biggie Smalls
In addition to writing classics like Their Eyes Were Watching God, this icon of the Harlem Renaissance interviewed formerly enslaved people in the 1930s to capture their history
Zora Neale Hurston
She invented the first home security system in 1969
Marie Van Brittan Brown
She led 150 Black soldiers the Combahee River Raid, liberating over 700 enslaved people in South Carolina
There is a school named after this woman, the first Black female lawyer in Pennsylvania, at 42nd and Spruce
Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander