Trailblazers

Ava DuVernay

Media & Entertainment

The first Black woman nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Director and the first to direct a $100 million film — Ava DuVernay has used her camera to tell stories of Black life, justice, and liberation that Hollywood refused to tell.

Barry Jenkins

Media & Entertainment

Barry Lamar Jenkins directed Moonlight — the film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2017 (after the most infamous envelope mix-up in Oscar history) and proved that a quiet, poetic story about a queer Black boy growing up poor in Miami could be recognized as the best film in the world. Made […]

Cree Summer

Media & Entertainment

Cree Summer is an actress and voice artist who has been the voice behind some of the most iconic animated characters of the past three decades. From Penny on Inspector Gadget to Susie Carmichael on Rugrats, Elmyra on Tiny Toon Adventures, and Numbuh 5 on Codename: Kids Next Door, Summer has given life to characters […]

Debbie Allen

Media & Entertainment

Deborrah Kaye Allen is a choreographer, dancer, actress, director, and producer who has shaped American entertainment for five decades — from her iconic role as Lydia Grant on Fame (“You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying — in sweat.”) to her work as a director and executive producer […]

Delroy Lindo

Media & Entertainment

Delroy Lindo is a British-American actor of Jamaican descent whose commanding presence and extraordinary range have made him one of the most respected performers of his generation. From his Shakespearean stage work to his iconic film roles in Malcolm X, Crooklyn, Clockers, Get Shorty, and Da 5 Bloods, Lindo brings intelligence, intensity, and deep humanity […]

Denzel Washington

Media & Entertainment

Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. is the most acclaimed Black actor in the history of cinema — a performer of such depth, range, and charisma that he has been the number-one box office draw in America multiple times over a career spanning four decades. He has won two Academy Awards (Glory, 2001’s Training Day), been nominated […]

Diahann Carroll

Media & Entertainment

Diahann Carroll was the first Black woman to star in her own network television series in a non-stereotypical role when Julia premiered on NBC in 1968. She played a nurse and single mother — a portrayal so radical for its time that it generated both celebration and controversy. For the first time, American television showed […]

Donald Glover

Media & Entertainment

Donald McKinley Glover operates at the intersection of comedy, music, acting, writing, and directing with a creative restlessness that refuses to let any single medium contain him. As Childish Gambino, he won Grammy Awards for “This Is America,” a song and music video that became a cultural earthquake — a searing commentary on gun violence […]

Dorothy Dandridge

Media & Entertainment

Dorothy Jean Dandridge was the first Black woman nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress — for her role in Carmen Jones (1954) — and one of the most beautiful and talented performers of her generation. Hollywood wanted her face but not her full humanity: she was offered only roles that traded on her […]

Ed Bradley

Media & Entertainment

Edward Rudolph Bradley Jr. was one of the most respected journalists in American television history — a 60 Minutes correspondent for 26 years whose reporting combined investigative rigor with a cool, understated style that let the stories speak for themselves. He won 19 Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the […]

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Ethel Payne

Media & Entertainment

Ethel Lois Payne was known as the “First Lady of the Black Press” — a journalist whose pointed questions at White House press briefings made presidents uncomfortable and made history. As a correspondent and later columnist for the Chicago Defender, one of the most influential Black newspapers in America, she asked Eisenhower about civil rights […]

Gwen Ifill

Media & Entertainment

Gwendolyn L. Ifill was the most trusted journalist in America and the first Black woman to host a nationally televised public affairs program when she became the anchor of PBS’s Washington Week in 1999. She later co-anchored the PBS NewsHour alongside Judy Woodruff, becoming one of the most authoritative voices in broadcast journalism. She moderated […]

Halle Berry

Media & Entertainment

Halle Maria Berry became the first Black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress on March 24, 2002, for her performance in Monster’s Ball. Her tearful acceptance speech — “This moment is so much bigger than me” — acknowledged the generations of Black actresses who had been denied the recognition they deserved. Over […]

Harry Belafonte

Media & Entertainment

Harold George Belafonte Jr. was an entertainer who used his fame as a weapon for justice with more consistency and courage than perhaps any other artist in American history. His 1956 album Calypso was the first LP by a single artist to sell over a million copies. But Belafonte would have traded every record sale […]

Jordan Peele

Media & Entertainment

Jordan Haworth Peele transformed the horror genre and proved that Black stories could dominate the box office when he wrote and directed Get Out (2017) — a social thriller about anti-Black racism disguised as liberal hospitality that grossed $255 million on a $4.5 million budget. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, becoming […]

Lena Waithe

Media & Entertainment

Lena Waithe became the first Black woman to win a Primetime Emmy Award for comedy writing when she won for the “Thanksgiving” episode of Master of None in 2017 — an episode she wrote based on her own experience of coming out to her family. That single half-hour of television established her as one of […]

Marsai Martin

Media & Entertainment

Marsai Martin became the youngest executive producer in Hollywood history at age 14 when she produced the Universal Pictures comedy Little (2019). She pitched the concept — a woman magically transformed back into her 13-year-old self — to the head of Universal’s film division and starred in the film alongside Issa Rae and Regina Hall. […]

Michaela Coel

Media & Entertainment

Michaela Ewuraba Boakye-Collinson — Michaela Coel — created, wrote, co-directed, and starred in I May Destroy You, a limited series about sexual assault and its aftermath that was hailed as one of the greatest television achievements of the twenty-first century. She turned down a $1 million deal from Netflix because the streamer wouldn’t give her […]

Nichelle Nichols

Media & Entertainment

Nichelle Nichols played Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek — a role that changed American television and American culture. In 1966, the sight of a Black woman on the bridge of a starship, serving as a senior officer alongside white colleagues, was revolutionary. When Nichols considered leaving the show after the first season, Martin Luther King […]

Oprah Winfrey

Media & Entertainment

From rural poverty to media mogul — Oprah Winfrey became the most influential woman in television history, building a billion-dollar empire while lifting millions through the power of storytelling and empathy.

Oscar Micheaux

Media & Entertainment

Oscar Devereaux Micheaux was the first major Black filmmaker in America — a self-taught writer, director, producer, and distributor who made over 40 films between 1919 and 1948, creating a parallel Black cinema industry when Hollywood offered nothing but degrading stereotypes. His 1919 film The Homesteader was the first feature-length film produced by a Black […]

Ossie Davis

Media & Entertainment

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee were the first couple of Black theater — artists, activists, and partners whose work on stage, screen, and in the civil rights movement spanned six decades. Davis was an actor, director, playwright, and activist whose eulogy for Malcolm X in 1965 remains one of the most powerful pieces of oratory […]

Phylicia Rashad

Media & Entertainment

Phylicia Rashad is an actress, singer, and stage director who became one of the most beloved figures in American television as Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show. Her portrayal of a strong, intelligent, loving Black mother and successful attorney changed the way Black families were represented on television, offering millions of viewers an image of […]

Quinta Brunson

Media & Entertainment

Quinta Brunson created, wrote, and stars in Abbott Elementary — the most acclaimed network comedy of the 2020s and a show that has revitalized the broadcast sitcom at a moment when everyone had declared it dead. The series, set in an underfunded predominantly Black elementary school in Philadelphia, won three Emmy Awards in its first […]