FOOD, CULTURE & THE COOKOUT
Bring a bad version of this baked pasta dish to the cookout and you may not get invited back
macaroni and cheese
Founded by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi, this Nigerian payments company was acquired by Stripe in 2020
Paystack
This Minneapolis icon wrote, produced, and starred in 1984's Purple Rain
Prince
He directed Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, and BlacKkKlansman.
Spike Lee
This Nation of Islam minister told his life story to Alex Haley before his 1965 assassination
Malcolm X
This Louisiana stew is thickened with okra or filé powder.
gumbo
Apple paid $3 billion in 2014 for this producer's headphone company
Dr. Dre (Beats)
Nicknamed "Satchmo," this trumpeter's "What a Wonderful World" topped charts decades into his career
Louis Armstrong
This 2016 film told the story of NASA's Black women mathematicians
Hidden Figures
Founder of Tuskegee Institute, he wrote the memoir Up from Slavery
Booker T. Washington
Graduates often wear stoles of this hand-woven Ghanaian cloth.
kente
She launched OWN and became the first Black woman billionaire
Oprah Winfrey
His "Johnny B. Goode" and duck walk made him a founding architect of rock and roll
Chuck Berry
In 1940 she became the first Black person to win an Oscar, for Gone with the Wind
Hattie McDaniel
After 27 years imprisoned, he was elected South Africa's first Black president in 1994
Nelson Mandela
Washington, D.C. wings come drenched in this sweet-tangy red sauce
mumbo (mambo) sauce
This Vista Equity founder paid off the student debt of Morehouse's 2019 graduating class.
Robert F. Smith
This Beyoncé album made her the first Black woman to top Billboard's country albums chart.
Cowboy Carter
In 1991 this John Singleton film made him the youngest person ever nominated for Best Director
Boyz n the Hood
Beaten on Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, he later served 17 terms in Congress.
John Lewis
This formerly enslaved distiller taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey and now has a bottle of his own.
Nathan "Nearest" Green
He founded BET in 1980 and became America's first Black billionaire when he sold it to Viacom
Robert L. Johnson
In 2023 she became the first female rapper inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Missy Elliott
Her 1991 film Daughters of the Dust was the first feature by a Black American woman to get a wide theatrical release.
Julie Dash
This Mississippi organizer told the 1964 DNC she was "sick and tired of being sick and tired
Fannie Lou Hamer