Authors
This American memoirist, popular poet, and civil rights activist has published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and several books of poetry. She has famously proclaimed that she knows why the Caged Bird Sings!
Maya Angelou
This civil rights lawyer used the courts to fight Jim Crow and dismantle segregation in the U.S. He was a towering figure who became the nation's first Black United States Supreme Court Justice. He is best known for arguing the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, in which the Supreme Court declared "separate but equal" unconstitutional in public schools.
Thurgood Marshall
This American agricultural scientist and inventor, promoted alternative crops to cotton and methods to prevent soil depletion. He was one of the most prominent black scientists of the early 20th century. However his work with soil and cotton is peanuts compared to the famous nut butter he is most known for inventing.
George Washington Carver
This African American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and political and social activist. is recorded as the first female self-made millionaire in America in the Guinness Book of World Records. Her homemade line of hair care products for Black women led to her vast wealth, of which she made financial donations to numerous organizations such as the NAACP, and became a patron of the arts. At the time of her death, she was considered the wealthiest African-American businesswoman and wealthiest self-made black woman in America.
Madam C. J. Walker
An American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the "First Lady of Song" and "Queen of Jazz". She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. In 1949, she and Count Basie became the first African Americans to win the brand-new Grammy Award.
She was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Ronald Reagan in 1987. She received many other awards, including honorary doctorates from Yale, Dartmouth, and several other universities
Ella Fitzgerald
This American novelist, poet, and playwright became disillusioned by American prejudice against Black people. He also wanted to see himself and his writing outside of an African-American context, so he left the United States at the age of 24 to settle in Paris after rising to fame for his first novel Go Tell it on the Moutain (1953)
James Baldwin
This educator never planned on picking this career path or becoming an activist. However when her 14-year-old son was hanously beaten and killed in Mississippi, 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman, she demanded that his casket stay open at his funeral because she, "wanted the world to see what they did to my baby." She went on to tour for the NAACP to talk about her experience as a black mother in America and educate the younger generations.
Mamie Till-Mobley
This American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator, is most famous for popularizing sciencewith such books as The Pluto Files (2009) and through his frequent appearances on television as a talk show guest or hosting his series about science, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014).
This African American jurist, serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She nominated to the Supreme Court by President Joe Biden on February 25, 2022 and confirmed by the United States Senate on April 7, 2022, and sworn into office on June 30. She is the United States' first black female Supreme Court Justice
Ketanji Brown Jackson
This American painter is known for his raw gestural style of painting with graffiti-like images and scrawled text. Although he died at 27, his legacy lives on through thousands of paintings and drawings. His work remains especially relevant today given the social and political climates across the world. As a result, artists of all forms continue his commentaries on racism through their own work
Jean-Michel Basquiat
This American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist was the son of a slave and a recieved PhD of History from Harvard. He helped organize the NAACP after writting the acclaimed Soul of Black Folk (1903) after witnessing a horrific lynching in 1899.
W.E.B. Du Bois
An American labor unionist and civil rights activist. In 1925, he organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful African-American led labor union. Proposed to bring 50-100 thousand balck people to Washington D.C. to protest racism and segregation during the WWII which resulted in FDR desegregating war plants and organizing the Fair Employment Practices Commission. Later went on to help MLK organize the the 1963 March on Washington.
A Philip Randolph
This Detroit native is a retired neurosurgeon and politician who served as the 17th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2017 to 2021. He is pioneer in the field of neurosurgery, leading a 70-member surgical team that separated conjoined twins. He was also a candidate for President of the United States in the 2016 Republican primaries.
Ben Carson
In 1993, this Beloved African American novelist became the first black woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize for Literature.
Toni Morrison
This American blues singer and musician who was an important figure in the post-war blues scene, and is often cited as the "father of modern Chicago blues". His style of playing has been described as "raining down Delta beatitude".
Muddy Waters
This American author and social activist who was Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College. She is best known for her writings on race, feminism, and class. This writer is All About Love, while critiquing the patriarcy, masculinity, and American culture as a whole.
Bell Hooks
An American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement was born into slavery, and once freed, dedicated her life to combating prejudice and violence, and the fight for equality, especially for women. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 2020, she was posthumously honored with a Pulitzer Prize special citation "[f]or her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching."
Ida B. Wells
This African American mathematician used hidden figures to develop calculations of orbital mechanics. This NASA employee was critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights. In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom and in 2019, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress.
Katherine Johnson
This African American singer, jazz pianist, and actor, was the first black Network television show host. In 1956, this jazz and pop vocalist hosted a musical variety show. Although the show only lasted one season, it opened the door to many other African Americans getting their own opportunity to host a nationally syndicated program.
Nat King Cole
An American contemporary painter, silhouettist, print-maker, installation artist, filmmaker, and professor who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes.
Kara Elizabeth Walker
This American science fiction author was a multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, she became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. An FX series on Hulu is based on her first 1979 novel with the same name. One could say that the show is kindred to this author's famous book.
Octavia E. Butler
African-American woman who became widely known as the oldest surviving open lesbian, and LGBT rights activist. Her Detroit home was also known in the African American community as the "gay spot". It was a central location for gay and lesbian parties, and also served as a refuge for African American gays and lesbians. She supported those who needed books, food, or assistance with college tuition. Throughout her life, this woman was an advocate of the rights of gays and lesbians, and of African Americans. A center in Detroit named for her still works today to provide services to the LGBTQIA+ community.
Ruth Ellis
This Inventor and a successful patent draftsman worked as a draftsman at a patent firm where he not only learned mechanical drawing, but worked closely with Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. He worked with Bell directly to help create the telephone, and he became an indispensible member of Edison’s team in the creation of the light bulb.
Along with helping two of the most well-known inventors of all-time, he came up with his own inventions, such as an improved bathroom in railroad cars and an early air conditioning unit.
Lewis Howard Latimer
This African-American cardiologist founded Provident Hospital in 1891. It was the first non-segregated hospital in the United States which also had an associated nursing school for African Americans. In 1893, he performed the first successful open-heart surgery.
Daniel Hale Williams
This African American photographer, composer, author, poet, and film director, became prominent in U.S. glamour photography and documentary photojournalism in the 1940s through 1970s—particularly in issues of civil rights, poverty and African Americans. He is credited as one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century.
Gordan Parks