Black Dancers
This dancer was know as the father of tap dance.
Who is Bill "Bojangles" Robinson?
Robinson is most famous for his appearance in the widely popular movies starring child actress Shirley Temple. In his career, Robinson appeared in a total of 14 films and six Broadway shows, sometimes in prominent roles – an enormous triumph for a black actor in his day.
He served as the first NAACP state field representative in the state of Mississippi.
Who is Medgar Evers?
In his position, he stood in the face of violence and opposition to organize voter registration drives. He was one of the state’s most accomplished civil rights leaders before he was gunned down in the driveway of his home. Evers received a hero’s burial in the Arlington National Cemetery.
This 4 star gerneral was the first African American to serve as National Security Advisor, Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff and Secretary of State.
Who is Colin Powell?
Powell served two tours of duty in Vietnam and received eleven medals for exemplary service. Between 1983 and 1986, Powell, then a Three-Star General, commanded the Fifth Corps, U.S. Army, in Frankfurt, Germany. At the age of 49, General Colin Powell was named National Security Advisor in the Ronald Reagan administration. In 1989, newly elected President George H.W. Bush appointed Powell as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He ultimately returned to the White House in 2001 as the newly appointed Secretary of State by President George W. Bush.
This politician was nominated to the US House of Representative for South Carolina in 1870.
Who is Joseph Rainey?
He was the first African American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, the first African American to preside over the House, and the longest–serving African American during the tumultuous Reconstruction period. While Rainey’s representation was symbolic, he also demonstrated the political nuance of a seasoned, substantive Representative, balancing his defense of southern blacks’ civil rights by extending amnesty to the defeated Confederates. In February 1870, Representative Benjamin F. Whittemore resigned his northeastern South Carolina seat, having been charged with selling appointments to U.S. military academies. The Republican Party nominated Rainey for the remainder of Whittemore’s term in the 41st Congress (1869–1871) and for a full term in the 42nd Congress (1871–1873). On October 19, 1870, Rainey won the full term, topping Democrat C. W. Dudley by a substantial majority (63 percent). On November 8, he defeated Dudley once again, garnering more than 86 percent of the vote.
Unable to attend college in the United States because he was black, this doctor entered Glasgow University in Scotland and earned three academic degrees, including a doctorate in medicine.
Who is James McCune Smith?
He was the first African American to earn an MD and practice in the United States. Opened what’s thought to be the country’s first African American-owned pharmacy. Used medicine and science to refute slavery’s advocates in his writing. Some of Smith's published works include "A Lecture on the Haitian Revolution" (1841) and "The Destiny of the People of Color" (1843).
This dancer is best known for his role in George Gershwin’s 1935 production Porgy and Bess, as Sportin' Life.
Who is John W. Bubbles?
Starting his career at 10 years old, Bubbles joined six-year-old dancer “Buck” Washington to create a singing-dancing-comedy act. With Buck, Bubbles became very popular. The two performed an act in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1931 and became the first black artists to perform in New York’s acclaimed Radio City Music Hall.
This heroine helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964.
Who is Fannie Lou Hamer?
Hamer was a civil rights activist whose passionate depiction of her own suffering in a racist society helped focus attention on the plight of African-Americans throughout the South. In 1964, working with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Hamer helped organize the 1964 Freedom Summer African-American voter registration drive in her native Mississippi. She also set up organizations to increase business opportunities for minorities and to provide childcare and other family services.
In 1986 he was named the first black commander of Quantico Marine Base in Virginia.
Who is Frank E. Petersen Jr.?
Petersen served as a fighter pilot in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars. In 1953 he flew sixty-four combat missions in Korea and earned six air medals as well as the Distinguished Flying Cross. In 1968, while serving in Vietnam, he became the first African American in the Marines or the Navy to command a tactical air squadron. He flew nearly 300 missions during the Vietnam War. In 1968, General Petersen earned the Purple Heart for his actions while flying a mission in North Vietnam. In 1979 Frank Petersen became the first black general in the Marine Corps. He retired as a lieutenant general in 1988.
He served as supervisor of elections, tax assessor, sheriff, superintendent of education, and sergeant at arms of the Mississippi state senate in the late 1800's.
Who is Blanche Kelso Bruce?
In 1874 the Mississippi legislature elected Bruce to the U.S. Senate where he served until 1881. In the Senate, Bruce was a member of the committees on Pensions, Manufactures, and Education and Labor. He chaired the Committee on River Improvements and the Select Committee to Investigate the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company. He supported desegregation of the army, protection of African American voting rights, and more humane treatment of Native Americans. Bruce encouraged increasing the disposition of western land grants to African Americans. On February 14, 1879, Bruce became the first African American to preside over the Senate.
She treated freed slaves after the Civil War and published one of the first medical books written by an African American.
Who is Rebecca Crumpler?
In 1852 she worked as a nurse, in Charlestown Massachusetts, for eight years (because the first formal school for nursing only opened in 1873, she was able to perform such work without any formal training). In 1860, she was admitted to the New England Female Medical College. When she graduated in 1864, Crumpler was the first African American woman in the United States to earn an M.D. degree, and the only African American woman to graduate from the New England Female Medical College, which closed in 1873.
She was one of the first black women to leave her mark on the dance world.
Who is Josephine Baker?
Her legacy is synonymous with sensuality, bravery and uninhibited passion. This free and bold behavior led her to perform across the country with The Jones Family Band and The Dixie Steppers in 1919. By the time she sashayed onto a Paris stage during the 1920s, she was confident in her abilities and performed with a comic, yet sensual appeal that took Europe by storm.
He won his first case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, Chamber v. Florida.
Who is Thurgood Marshall?
He is known as the first Black Justice of the United States Supreme Court but he is really defined by his work as a civil rights lawyer which redefined life in the United States. He won his first case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, Chamber v. Florida and would argue another 31 in front of the high court. The most famous of these, and perhaps the most important, was the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the case which ended legal segregation within the United States. While the Brown was his most famous victory in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, he, in fact, won 29 of the 32 cases he argued in front of the Court.
This 4 star general was the first African American four-star general in the U.S. Army.
Who is Roscoe Robinson Jr.?
In 1982, he became only the second black military officer to be promoted to four-star general and the first to do so in the U.S. Army. He last served in the Army as the U.S. representative to the NATO Military Committee and then retired in 1985 after thirty-one years of military service.
He won election to the Louisiana State Senate in 1868 and became the president pro tempore of the state senate.
Who is P. B. S. (Pinckney Benton Stewart) Pinchback?
Was an American publisher and politician, a Union Army officer, and the first African American to become governor of a U.S. state. A Republican, Pinchback served as the 24th Governor of Louisiana from December 9, 1872, to January 13, 1873. He was one of the most prominent African-American officeholders during the Reconstruction Era.
Following medical school, this doctor, take a position at Washington, DC’s Freedman’s Hospital, now known as Howard University Hospital.
Who is Louis Tompkins Wright?
Graduated fourth in his class at Harvard Medical School. While serving in World War I, developed the intradermal injection vaccination technique. He joined the U.S. Army, and served as first lieutenant in the Army Medical Corps, stationed in France, where he was given charge of the surgery wards at a field hospital. At the end of his military career, he was discharged as a captain and was given a Purple Heart after a phosgene gas–based German assault. In 1948, became the first clinician to study the use of the drug Aureomycin in humans.
Some dance historians have named her the most important women of African American dance.
Who is Katherine Dunham?
Dunham was one of the first modern dance pioneers in her own right, combining cultural, grounded dance movements with elements of ballet. Dunham, who was born in Illinois, began her formal study of dance in Chicago where she trained with modern and contemporary ballet pioneers while simultaneously studying anthropology. In the 1930s, she completed a 10-month investigation into the dance cultures of the Caribbean. She brought what she learned back to America, developing a new revolutionary aesthetic that merged the rhythms of cultural dances with certain components of ballet.
This former slave is known as one of the most influential African American leaders of the 19th Century.
Who is Fredrick Douglas?
Known for his powerful oration skills, Douglass became an outspoken abolitionist and wrote about his experiences as a slave in an autobiography. He also toured the Northeast and Midwest speaking out against slavery.
“Knowledge is the pathway from slavery to freedom.” – Frederick Douglass
Between July 1950 and July 1951, this 4 star general, flew 101 missions over Korea and became part of the first generation of jet combat pilots.
Who is Daniel “Chappie” James, Jr.?
He flew an additional 78 missions between 1966 and 1967 in the Vietnam War. On September 1, 1975, Daniel James, Jr. became the highest ranking black officer in the history of the United States military when he was named Commander of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) in Colorado and promoted to the rank of Four-Star General. He would retain this command until his retirement on February 1, 1978.
This politician was elected mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah in 2010, having previously served on its City Council.
Who is Mia Love?
Ludmya "Mia" Love is an American political commenter and politician who served as the U.S. Representative for Utah's 4th congressional district from 2015 to 2019. Love ran for Congress in Utah's 4th congressional district, losing narrowly to incumbent Democratic Party U.S. Representative Jim Matheson. Love ran for Congress again and was elected in 2014, defeating Democratic opponent Doug Owens; she fended off Owens a second time to win re-election in 2016. She ran for re-election in 2018, but was defeated by Democrat Ben McAdams, losing by 694 votes out of almost 270,000. Love was the first black female Republican elected to Congress.
He was the first African American to earn an MD from Columbia University in 1940.
Who is Charles R. Drew?
In 1938, Drew received a Rockefeller Fellowship to study at Columbia University and train at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. Drew developed a method for processing and preserving blood plasma, or blood without cells. Plasma lasts much longer than whole blood, making it possible to be stored or "banked" for longer periods of time. He discovered that the plasma could be dried and then reconstituted when needed. His research served as the basis of his doctorate thesis, "Banked Blood," and he received his doctorate degree in 1940. During World War II , Drew was asked to head up a special medical effort known as "Blood for Britain." He organized the collection and processing of blood plasma from several New York hospitals, and the shipments of these life-saving materials overseas to treat causalities in the war. According to one report, Drew helped collect roughly 14,500 pints of plasma. In 1941, Drew spearheaded another blood bank effort, this time for the American Red Cross.
This brother duo lite up the screen in movies like Kid Millions (1934), Down Argentine Way (1940), and St. Louis Woman (1946).
Who are The Nicholas Brothers (Fayard Nicholas and Harold Nicholas)?
They got their first big gig at the Cotton Club in 1932, with Fayard at 18 and Harold at just 11 years old. Following appearances with big bands, they became very successful in Hollywood. The brothers have received Kennedy Center Honors and have had the documentary The Nicholas Brothers: We Dance and Sing made in their honor.
He was the first official African American labor union.
Who is A. Philip Randolph?
Randolph was a labor leader and social activist. During World War I, Randolph tried to unionize African American shipyard workers and elevator operators, and co-launched a magazine designed to encourage demand for higher wages. He later founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which by 1937 would become the first official African American labor union. In the 1940s, Randolph's abilities as an organizer had grown to such lengths that he became the driving force in ending racial discrimination in government defense factories and desegregating the armed forces, both done via presidential decree.
This 4 star admiral served as President Carter's naval aid from 1976-1979.
Who is Joseph Paul Reason?
Reason was the first African American to attain the rank of four-star admiral in the United States Navy. When Reason was elevated to four-star Admiral in 1996, he was made Commander in Chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet composed of more than 190 ships, 1,300 aircraft, and 120,000 personnel at 17 naval bases, a post he held until he retired from the service in 1999.
She was the first black candidate for a major party's nomination for President of the United States.
Who is Shirley Anita Chisholm?
Chisholm was an American politician, educator, and author. In 1968, she became the first black woman elected to the United States Congress, and she represented New York's 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In the 1972 United States presidential election, she became the first black candidate for a major party's nomination for President of the United States, and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, as well as the first woman to appear in a United States presidential debate. In 2015, Chisholm was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
This doctor was the first person in the state of Arkansas to become board certified in pediatric endocrinology.
Who is Jocelyn Elders?
Elders joined the Army and trained in physical therapy at the Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. After discharge in 1956 she enrolled at the University of Arkansas Medical School on the G.I. Bill. Elders did an internship in pediatrics at the University of Minnesota, and in 1961 returned to the University of Arkansas for her residency. Elders became chief resident in charge of the all-white, all-male residents and interns. She earned her master's degree in biochemistry in 1967, became an assistant professor of pediatrics at the university's Medical School in 1971, and full professor in 1976. Appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993 as the Surgeon General of the US—the first African American and the second woman to hold this post.