MUSICIANS
This “Queen of Soul” recorded the anthem “Respect.”
Who is Aretha Franklin?
This scientist developed hundreds of products from peanuts and promoted crop rotation.
Who is George Washington Carver?
This Los Angeles activist founded Beauty 2 The Streetz to serve unhoused residents.
Who is Shirley Raines?
This poet wrote “Still I Rise.”
Who is Maya Angelou?
This lawyer became the first African American Supreme Court Justice in 1967.
Who is Thurgood Marshall?
This Harlem Renaissance jazz legend recorded “Strange Fruit,” a haunting protest song about lynching.
Who is Billie Holiday?
This NASA mathematician calculated launch windows for Project Mercury and Apollo 11.
Who is Katherine Johnson?
This educator co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960.
Who is Ella Baker?
This author wrote The Souls of Black Folk in 1903.
Who is W. E. B. Du Bois?
In 1992, this Illinois attorney became the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
Who is Carol Moseley Braun?
This rapper became the first hip-hop billionaire in 2019, largely through his Armand de Brignac and Roc Nation ventures.
Who is Jay-Z?
This Howard University professor helped develop the IBM PC and holds three original patents for the computer.
Who is Mark Dean?
This Mississippi activist helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964.
Who is Fannie Lou Hamer?
This novelist won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 for works including Beloved.
Who is Toni Morrison?
This Massachusetts senator became the first African American elected to the U.S. Senate by popular vote in 1966.
Who is Edward Brooke?
This funk pioneer created the P-Funk collective Parliament-Funkadelic.
Who is George Clinton?
This physicist was the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in nuclear physics in 1973.
Who is Shirley Ann Jackson?
This Chicago organizer founded My Block, My Hood, My City to expand youth opportunities.
Who is Jahmal Cole?
This political philosopher wrote The Fire Next Time in 1963.
Who is James Baldwin?
This Reconstruction-era senator from Mississippi was the first African American to serve a full term in the U.S. Senate.
Who is Blanche K. Bruce?
This classical composer, born in 1937, became the first African American to have an opera performed at the Metropolitan Opera in 1986 with X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.
Who is Anthony Davis?
This biochemist’s research on melanin advanced understanding of skin protection and melanoma.
Who is Marie Maynard Daly?
This prison reform advocate and founder of JustLeadershipUSA works to cut the U.S. prison population in half.
Who is Glenn E. Martin?
This Black feminist scholar coined the term “intersectionality” in 1989.
Who is Kimberlé Crenshaw?
This activist-scholar was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list in 1970 before later becoming a professor.
Who is Angela Davis?