Black Music
Who is the 'King of Pop'?
Michael Jackson
This minister and activist delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech during the 1963 March on Washington.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
In 1947, he became the first Black player in Major League Baseball, playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Jackie Robinson
In 2021, she made history as the first woman and the first person of African and South Asian descent to serve as Vice President of the United States.
Kamala Harris
He portrayed the iconic T’Challa in the 2018 blockbuster Black Panther and received a posthumous Oscar nomination for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
Chadwick Boseman
The first Black woman to headline Coachella in 2018
Beyonce
This Act ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
With 30 World Championship medals and 11 Olympic medals, she is the most decorated gymnast of all time.
Simone Biles
In 2022, she became the first Black woman to serve as an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Kentanji Brown Jackson
This actress and director is the first Black woman to be nominated for the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series.
Quinta Brunson
An American guitarist, bandleader, and singer known as "The Godfather of Go-Go Music"
Chuck Brown
This lawyer argued Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court and later became its first Black justice.
Thurgood Marshall
This athlete was the first American man in track and field history to win four gold medals in a single Olympics, a feat he accomplished in Berlin in 1936.
Jesse Owens
In 1992, this engineer and physician became the first Black woman to travel into space aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Mae Jemison
In 2012, this Shonda Rhimes-produced show made the a Black woman the first to headline a network drama in nearly 40 years.
Scandal
This jazz trumpeter and vocalist co-wrote "Strange Fruit," a haunting protest song against lynching.
Billie Holiday
This constitutional amendment, ratified in 1868, grants "equal protection of the laws" to all citizens.
The first Black starting quarterback in modern professional American football.
Marlin Briscoe
She was the first African American woman to have a book of poetry published in London in 1773.
Phillis Wheatley
In 1964, he became the first Black man to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field.
Sidney Poitier
This composer and educator co-wrote "Lift Every Voice and Sing," which is widely known as the Black National Anthem.
James Weldon Johnson
Nine months before Rosa Parks, this 15-year-old was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus.
Claudette Colvin
This track star, nicknamed the "World’s Fastest Woman" in the 1960s, was the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics despite suffering from polio as a child.
Wilma Rudolph
In 1851, this former slave gave her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.
Sojourner Truth
In 1940, she became the first Black person to win an Academy Award for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind.
Hattie McDaniel