Artists/Musicians/Athletes
He is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. This African American musician was known as the "King of Pop".
Michael Jackson
This African American poet and Civil Rights activist was known for her poem "Still I Rise"
Maya Angelou
Known for creating specialized hair products for African American hair care, she was one of the first women to become a self-made millionaire.
Madame C.J. Walker
Rosa Parks
The first African Amercian to serve as President of the United States.
Barack Obama
This African American tennis player broke the color barrier in professional tennis and went on to win 20 Wimbledon titles.
She earned national attention in 1977 for Song of Solomon, which also earned her the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved, and in 1993 she became the first African American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Toni Morrison
One of NASA's human 'computers,' she performed the complex calculations that enabled humans to successfully achieve space flight. Her story is depicted in the 2016 movie 'Hidden Figures.'
Katherine Johnson
This abolitionist and women's rights activist is best known for her speech on racial inequalities, "Ain't I a Woman?" delivered at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in 1851.
Sojourner Truth
As a civil rights attorney who won the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka instrumental in ending legal segregation, he became the first African American Justice of the Supreme Court in 1967.
Thurgood Marshall
A Hollywood icon, he was the first African American to win an Academy Award for Best Actor, receiving the honor in 1964 for his performance in 'Lilies of the Field.'
Sydney Portier
The first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Toni Morrison
He was one of the most prominent black scientists of the early 20th century. As an American agricultural scientist and inventor he discovered over 300 uses for peanuts.
George Washington Carver
Best Known as a leader in the abolitionist movement, an early champion of women’s rights and author, he first learned to read and write at the age of 12 from a Baltimore slaveholder's wife. To much controversy, he married a white abolitionist feminist Helen Pitts. He also became the first African American nominated for vice president of the United States.
Frederick Douglas
Born into slavery, this educator went on to put himself through school and become a teacher after the Civil War. In 1881, he founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama (now known as Tuskegee University)
Booker T. Washington
He one four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olypics, defying Adolf Hitler's notion of Aryan supremacy.
Jesse Owens
This poet moved to Chicago at a young age and began writing and publishing as a teenager, eventually achieving national fame for her 1945 collection A Street in Bronzeville. In 1950 she became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize, for her book Annie Allen.
Gwendolyn Brooks
This African American Inventor patented the process for making synthetic dyes.
Thomas L. Jennings
As an influential African American rights activist during the early 20th century, he was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895. This prolific author also co-founded the NAACP in 1909.
W.E.B. Du Bois
The daughter of formerly enslaved people, this educator founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls in Daytona, Florida, in 1904 now called Bethune Cookman University. She went on to become the highest-ranking Black woman in the U.S. government in 1936.
Mary Mcleod Bethune
He the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era breaking the color line when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947.
Jackie Robinson
This African American female author was a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance. After releasing acclaimed short stories, such as "Sweat," and the autobiographical "How It Feels to be Colored Me", she wrote her classic novel, "Their Eyes Were Watching God, in 1937.
Zora Neale Hurston
With only an elementary school education, this African American scientist began his career as a sewing-machine mechanic. He went on to invent the first gas mask and traffic signals.
Garrett Morgan
This civil rights activist was a prominent leader in the Nation of Islam. Until his 1965 assassination, he vigorously supported Black nationalism.
Malcom X
An American educator, missionary, and lifelong supporter of higher education for women, she became the country’s first Black principal. In 1926, a Baltimore teacher training school was named after her. Today, that school goes by Coppin State University.
Fannie Jackson Coppin