Firsts
The first Black person to serve as vice president of the United States
Who is Kamala Harris?
This person said, "The time is always right to do what is right."
Who is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?
This rapper and entrepreneur's legal name is Shawn Corey Carter.
This racist attack on a church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 caused the death of four young girls.
What is the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing?
This author wrote the Florida-based novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Who is Zora Neale Hurston?
The first Black person to serve as Secretary of State of the United States
Who is Colin Powell?
This person said, "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
Who is President Barack Obama?
This singer won five Grammy Awards in one night in the 1990s.
Who is Lauryn Hill?
This person urged his fellow Black Americans to protect themselves against white aggression “by any means necessary,” a stance that often put him at odds with the nonviolent teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Who is Malcolm X (Born Malcolm Little)?
Writers Ta-Nehisi Coates, Roxane Gay, and Yona Harvey have all written original stories that contribute to the larger mythos of this comic book hero.
Who is the Black Panther?
The first Black woman to win a Nobel prize for literature
Who is Toni Morrison?
This person said, "If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
Who is Shirley Chisholm?
Who is Barry Bonds?
The Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision reversed the decision of this previous court case.
This novel by Alice Walker, published in the 1980s, was later adapted into a film and musical of the same name.
What is The Color Purple?
The first Black American to be portrayed on a United States postage stamp
Who is Booker T. Washington?
This person said, "Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations."
Who is astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison?
This singer wasn't able to perform in Washington, D.C.'s Constitution Hall in 1939 because of the Daughters of the American Revolution's discriminatory "whites only" policy, but First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt intervened, allowing her to perform at the Lincoln Memorial that year instead.
Who is Marian Anderson?
This person was the first Black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi in 1962.
Who is James Meredith?
This author was also the first Black staff photographer for Life magazine.
Who is Gordon Parks?
The first Black golfer to earn a PGA Tour card
Who is Charlie Sifford?
This person said, "I am America. I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me -- Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me.”
Who is Muhammad Ali?
These two HBCUs played in the first Black intercollegiate football game in 1892.
Who are Biddle College (now Johnson C. Smith University) and Livingstone College?
This young woman's refusal to give up her seat on the bus to a white person in Montgomery, Alabama occurred nine months before Rosa Parks launched the Montgomery bus boycott by doing the same thing.
Who is Claudette Colvin?
In 1950, this poet was the first Black person to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Who is Gwendolyn Brooks?