Trailblazers & Firsts
Science & Innovation
Literature & Arts
Civil Rights Movements
Music & Performance
Global Perspectives
100
In 2021, she became the first female, first African American, and first South Asian American Vice President of the United States.
Who is Kamala Harris?
100
This agricultural scientist promoted crop rotation and developed hundreds of products using peanuts and sweet potatoes.
Who is George Washington Carver?
100
This 1970 memoir by Maya Angelou describes her early years and the power of character to overcome trauma.
What is "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"?
100
This 381-day protest was sparked by Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a public bus in 1955.
What was the Montgomery Bus Boycott?
100
Known as the "Queen of Soul," she was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Who is Aretha Franklin?
100
This Caribbean island nation became the first black-led republic in the world after a successful slave revolt against French colonial rule ended in 1804.
What is Haiti?
200
This woman became the first African American child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South in 1960.
Who is Ruby Bridges?
200
Her calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA "human computer" were critical to the success of the first U.S. crewed spaceflights.
Who is Katherine Johnson?
200
He was a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance, known for his poetry, plays, and the creation of "jazz poetry."
Who is Langston Hughes?
200
He was a prominent minister and activist who led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) until his assassination in 1968.
Who is Martin Luther King Jr.?
200
This jazz trumpeter and singer, nicknamed "Satchmo," was one of the most influential figures in jazz history.
Who is Louis Armstrong?
200
This South African anti-apartheid revolutionary served as the country's first Black president from 1994 to 1999.
Who is Nelson Mandela?
300
He was the first African American to serve on the United States Supreme Court, appointed in 1967.
Who is Thurgood Marshall?
300
This inventor and engineer received over 50 patents, including one for a "lubricating cup" that improved steam engine efficiency.
Who is Elijah McCoy?
300
This author won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983 for her novel, The Color Purple.
Who is Alice Walker?
300
This network of secret routes and safe houses helped enslaved people escape to free states and Canada.
What was the Underground Railroad?
300
She was an American-born French entertainer and Resistance agent who used her fame to aid the French during WWII.
Who is Josephine Baker?
300
This Ethiopian Emperor is credited with modernizing his country and leading his troops to victory against the Italian invasion at the Battle of Adwa in 1896.
Who is Menelik II?
400
This "Father of Black History" first established Negro History Week in 1926.
Who is Carter G. Woodson?
400
He created the three-position traffic signal and the smoke hood, a predecessor to the gas mask.
Who is Garrett Morgan?
400
In 1993, she became the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Who is Toni Morrison?
400
This 1954 Supreme Court case ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
What was Brown v. Board of Education?
400
This 1939 song, famously performed by Billie Holiday, protested the lynching of African Americans in the South.
What is "Strange Fruit"?
400
She was a legendary 17th-century queen of the Ndongo and Matamba Kingdoms (modern-day Angola) who resisted Portuguese colonization for decades.
Who is Queen Nzinga?
500
She was the first African American woman to be elected to the United States Congress, representing New York's 12th District.
Who is Shirley Chisholm?
500
This ophthalmologist and inventor created the Laserphaco Probe for the treatment of cataracts.
Who is Dr. Patricia Bath?
500
This painter’s "Migration Series" depicted the mass movement of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North.
Who is Jacob Lawrence?
500
This civil rights activist and journalist led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s.
Who is Ida B. Wells?
500
He was a pioneer of rock and roll, known for hits like "Maybellene" and his distinctive "duckwalk."
Who is Chuck Berry?
500
This Jamaican-born political leader founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and was a central figure in the Pan-Africanism movement.
Who is Marcus Garvey?
