Famous Firsts
The first African American president of the United States.
Barack Hussein Obama, II
She sang spiritual songs to communicate with slaves she intended to take north to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
Harriet Tubman
He was a Baptist minister and civil rights advocate of the 1950s and 1960s. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
Dr. Martin Luther King
He invented over 300 uses of the peanut.
George Washington Carver
She said, "I never run my train off the track and never lost a passenger."
Harriet Tubman
The first African American Major League Baseball player.
Jackie Robinson
Dizzy Gillespie is known for playing this instrument with puffed cheeks.
Trumpet
She refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger.
Rosa Parks
These laws permitted segregation on railways, restaurants, hospitals, theaters, and schools, and a whole host of other public institutions.
Jim Crow Laws
He said "The time is always right to do what is right."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The first African American billionaire.
Oprah Winfrey
This Harlem theatre is a showcase for Black talent in New York City.
The Apollo
He is often called “The father of the Civil Rights Movement”.
Frederick Douglas
She wrote the famous novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
She said "Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise."
Maya Angelou
First African American on a postage stamp.
Booker T Washington
This singer-dancer performed the “Moonwalk” in the 1980s.
Michael Jackson
The Name of Dr. Martin Luther King's famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
"I Have a Dream"
The first black teenagers to attend all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas were called this.
The Little Rock Nine
This famous athlete said "Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn't matter which color does the hating. It's just plain wrong."
Muhammad Ali
The first female black astronaut.
Mae Jemmison
She is ranked as the second best-selling female artist of the 21st century with record sales of over 37 million dollars?
Beyonce Knowles
He was a civil rights lawyer that fought for black and white children to attend the same school and helped to end segregation.
Thurgood Marshall
These people believed that slavery should be abolished.
Abolitionists
He said "I don't want a Black History Month. Black history is American history."
Morgan Freeman