The People Who Paved the Way

Trailblazers

Pioneers, barrier-breakers, and history-makers who changed what's possible.

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Anna Julia Cooper

Anna Julia Haywood Cooper was a scholar, educator, and activist who in 1892 published A Voice from the South — one of the first works of Black feminist theory — and in 1925 became the fourth Black American woman to earn a Ph.D., receiving her doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris at the age of […]

Booker T. Washington

Education

Booker Taliaferro Washington was born into slavery in 1856 and rose to become the most influential Black leader of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As founder and principal of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, he built an educational institution from the ground up. His philosophy centered on economic advancement through vocational education and entrepreneurship. […]

Carter G. Woodson

Education

The father of Black History — Carter G. Woodson created Negro History Week (now Black History Month) and devoted his life to ensuring that the contributions of African Americans would never be erased from the historical record.

Marley Dias

Education

Marley Emelia Dias was eleven years old when she launched #1000BlackGirlBooks — a campaign to collect and donate 1,000 books featuring Black girl protagonists — because she was tired of reading about “white boys and their dogs” in school. The campaign went viral, ultimately collecting over 13,000 books, and established Dias as one of the […]

Marva Collins

Education

Marva Collins walked away from Chicago failing public school system in 1975 and opened Westside Preparatory School in her own home with 5,000 dollars of her pension. Using classical education methods and an unwavering belief that every child could learn, she transformed children who had been labeled learning disabled into students reading Shakespeare and Tolstoy. […]

Mary McLeod Bethune

Education

From a one-room schoolhouse to the White House — Mary McLeod Bethune founded a college, advised presidents, and became the most influential Black woman in American government during the New Deal era.

Nannie Helen Burroughs

Education

Nannie Helen Burroughs founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, D.C., in 1909 — an institution that provided vocational, liberal arts, and religious education to Black women at a time when most doors were closed to them. She was a fierce advocate for economic independence, arguing that Black women needed practical […]

Septima Clark

Education

The mother of the civil rights movement's Citizenship Schools — Septima Clark taught thousands of Black Southerners to read so they could register to vote, building the movement's grassroots foundation.

W.E.B. Du Bois

Education

The first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard, W.E.B. Du Bois was a scholar, activist, and intellectual architect of the modern civil rights movement who co-founded the NAACP.

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Trailblazers

Anna Julia Cooper

Booker T. Washington

Carter G. Woodson

Marley Dias

Marva Collins

Mary McLeod Bethune

Nannie Helen Burroughs

Septima Clark

W.E.B. Du Bois

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