Show:
SINGERS
MUSICIANS
POETS
ARTIST
ICONS
100
This singer was given the nickname "Lady Day".
Who is Billie Holiday?
100
Before the 1920s, jazz was very much music for a group of people. This musician changed that in the 1920s by playing as a soloist (a person on their own standing out from the group).
Who is Louis Armstrong?
100
She became a noted figure of the Harlem Renaissance, with her poetry published in the NAACP's The Crisis magazine and Alaine Locke's New Negro,and her artwork gracing the covers of The Crisis and Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life.
Who Gwendolyn Bennett?
100
He was the first major African American abstract expressionist.
Who is Norman Lewis?
100
This actor started his career as a vaudeville performer, transitioning to Broadway and to Hollywood films in the 1930s and 1940s. His delicate tap-dance style and cheerful demeanor made him a favorite of both black and white audiences.
Who is Bill "Bojangles" Robinson?
200
She was the first African-American woman to sign a long-term movie contract with a major studio.
Who is Lean Horne?
200
At the age of 22, this musician joined Duke Ellington's band as associate arranger and second pianist, and for nearly three decades worked in close collaboration with the leader .
Who is Billy Staryhorn?
200
This poet wrote from 1926 to 1967. In that time he wrote more than 60 books, including poems, novels, short stories, plays, children's poetry, musicals, operas, and autobiographies. He was the first African American to support himself as a writer, and he wrote from his own experience.
Who is Langston Hughes?
200
In 1924, the sculpture of her nephew, Gamin, won the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship which gave her the opportunity to study in Paris for one year.
Who is Augusta Savage?
200
In 1955, she became the first African American to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera.
Who is Marian Anderson?
300
Before the Great Depression, she was the highest-paid black entertainer in the world, collecting as much as $2,000 per week to sing her songs.
Who is Bessie Smith?
300
This musician became known for a "tricky" left hand that could play against time and deftly sway tempo before falling into line.
Who is Earl Hines?
300
Her first book, Violets and Other Tales (1895), was published when she was just 20
Who is Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson?
300
His artisic name was taken from the corrupted pronounciation of Peyton Hedgeman by a commanding sergeant during World War I.
Who is Palmer Hayden?
300
He was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University (1895).
Who is W.E.B. Du Bois?
400
she became the first woman to sing “St. Louis Blues” on the stage
Who is Ethel Waters?
400
In 1956, this musician became the first African-American performer to host a variety television series.
Who is Nat King Cole?
400
In 1912, she began to submit reviews, essays, poems and short stories for The Crisis, a magazine founded by W.E.B. Du Bois.
Who is Jessie Fauset?
400
He studied art at the Institute of Chicago and in 1928, became the second African American artist to have a solo exhibition in New York City.
Who is Archibald Motley?
400
The Actor, singer and civil rights activist was once considered for a U.S. vice presidential spot on Henry A. Wallace's 1948 Progressive Party ticket.
Who is Paul Robeson?
500
Her recording career lasted a mere six years, she recorded more than 100 songs, including “Bo-Weavil Blues.”
Who is Ma Rainey?
500
This musician didn’t just write jazz. He also wrote film music, popular music, religious music, and even some music that could be called classical.
Who is Duke Ellington?
500
More than thirty of her poems were published in her lifetime, making her an important figure of the black literary and cultural movement of the 1920s—the Harlem Renaissance—and only the second African American poet to be included in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (1973).
Who is Anne Spencer?
500
BONUS:This artist is probably best known for his painting, "Funeral Procession," which was displayed in the living room in the popular television sit-com, THE COSBY SHOW.
Who is Ellis Wilson?
500
In the early 1930s, this singers onstage moves were captured by animators who put him in several Betty Boop cartoons, including one called Minnie the Moocher.
Who is Cab Calloway?