Pioneering Voices
This author from the Harlem Renaissance penned the influential novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God."
Who is Zora Neale Hurston?
Known as one of the "Hidden Figures," this mathematician's calculations were critical to the success of NASA's first manned spaceflights.
Who is Katherine Johnson?
This 1863 proclamation issued by President Lincoln declared that all enslaved people in Confederate states were legally free.
What is the Emancipation Proclamation?
She is recorded as America's first female self-made millionaire, creating a revolutionary line of hair care products.
Who is Madam C.J. Walker?
This journalist and activist was a founder of the NAACP and led a powerful anti-lynching crusade in the United States.
Who is Ida B. Wells?
This playwright is celebrated for his "Century Cycle," a series of ten plays chronicling the African American experience in the 20th century.
Who is August Wilson?
This surgeon is credited with performing the first successful open-heart surgery in 1893.
Who is Dr. Daniel Hale Williams?
This landmark 1954 Supreme Court case declared that state-sponsored segregation of public schools was unconstitutional.
What is Brown v. Board of Education?
This founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET) became the first African American billionaire in 2001.
Who is Robert L. Johnson?
Before becoming the first African American Supreme Court Justice, he was the lead attorney in the Brown v. Board of Education case.
Who is Thurgood Marshall?
This iconic poet and author shared her life story in the acclaimed 1969 autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."
Who is Maya Angelou?
This inventor's patent for a carbon filament made long-lasting, inexpensive electric light bulbs a reality.
Who is Lewis Latimer?
In this year, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, granting African American men the right to vote.
What is 1870?
This investment banker became the first African American to own a billion-dollar company, TLC Beatrice International.
Who is Reginald F. Lewis?
Elected in 1968, she was the first African American woman to serve in the United States Congress and later ran for President in 1972.
Who is Shirley Chisholm?
This author's groundbreaking novel "Invisible Man" won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953.
Who is Ralph Ellison?
This chemist's pioneering work in synthesizing medicinal drugs from plants, like cortisone and birth control, made them more affordable.
Who is Percy Julian?
This series of nonviolent protests in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960, sparked a national movement to desegregate lunch counters.
The Greensboro sit-ins
A former slave who became a prominent Los Angeles landowner and philanthropist, she was a founding member of the First A.M.E. Church.
Who is Biddy Mason?
This influential leader founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and was a major proponent of Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism.
Who is Marcus Garvey?
This trailblazing director was the first African American to direct a major Hollywood studio film with 1969's "The Learning Tree."
Who is Gordon Parks?
This computer scientist and inventor co-created the ISA bus and holds three of IBM's original nine PC patents.
Who is Mark Dean?
This 1921 event saw the destruction of the prosperous Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, also known as "Black Wall Street."
Tulsa Massacre
This visionary created "Soul Train," a music and dance television program that became a cultural phenomenon and a platform for Black artists.
Who is Don Cornelius?
As Dean of Howard University Law School, this lawyer and activist was the architect of the legal strategy that dismantled segregation.
Who is Charles Hamilton Houston?