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.

B.B. King

Music

Riley B. King — B.B. King — was the undisputed King of the Blues for over half a century, a guitarist and singer whose expressive vibrato and economical phrasing influenced every blues and rock guitarist who picked up the instrument after him. His guitar, a black Gibson ES-355 he named Lucille, became the most famous […]

Barack Obama

Politics & Law

The 44th President of the United States and the first African American to hold the highest office in the land, Barack Obama's election transformed what an entire generation believed was possible.

Barbara Jordan

Politics & Law

The first Black woman elected to the Texas State Senate and the first Southern Black woman in the U.S. Congress — Barbara Jordan's voice commanded rooms and changed the conscience of a nation.

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 […]

Bayard Rustin

Civil Rights & Activism

The brilliant strategist behind the 1963 March on Washington — Bayard Rustin was the architect of nonviolent direct action in America, whose contributions were long obscured because he was openly gay.

bell hooks

Civil Rights & Activism

Gloria Jean Watkins — bell hooks, deliberately lowercase — was one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, a scholar whose work on race, gender, class, and love transformed academic discourse and made critical theory accessible to millions of ordinary readers. Her 1981 book Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism challenged […]

Ben Haith

Arts & Culture

Ben Haith is an activist, entrepreneur, and the creator of the Juneteenth flag, the iconic symbol that has come to represent the celebration of African American emancipation. In 1997, Haith founded the National Juneteenth Celebration Foundation and designed the flag that would become synonymous with the holiday — a visual declaration that freedom deserved its […]

Benjamin Banneker

Science & Technology

A self-taught astronomer, mathematician, and farmer who helped survey the layout of Washington, D.C. — Benjamin Banneker was one of the greatest minds of colonial America and challenged Thomas Jefferson's beliefs about Black intellectual inferiority.

Berry Gordy

Business & Entrepreneurship

Berry Gordy Jr. founded Motown Records with an $800 loan from his family in 1959 and built it into the most successful independent record label in American history — a hit factory that produced more number-one singles than any label in the 1960s and broke down the racial barriers of American popular music. Motown’s sound […]

Bessie Coleman

Science & Technology

The first African American woman and first Native American to hold a pilot's license — Bessie Coleman defied every limitation placed on her to soar above them all.

Bessie Smith

Music

The Empress of the Blues — Bessie Smith's voice was so powerful it could fill a theater without a microphone, and her recordings became the foundation of American popular music.

Betty Reid Soskin

Civil Rights & Activism

Betty Charbonnet Reid Soskin was the oldest active National Park Service ranger in American history, serving at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California, until she was 100 years old. She spent her final years in uniform ensuring that the contributions of Black women to the World War II home […]

Beyoncé

Music

The most decorated Grammy artist in history — Beyoncé has transcended music to become a cultural force who uses her art to celebrate Black identity, challenge power structures, and redefine what excellence looks like.

Bill Russell

Sports

Bill Russell won eleven NBA championships in thirteen seasons with the Boston Celtics — the most dominant dynasty in professional sports history. He was the first Black head coach in any major American sport, serving as player-coach for the Celtics starting in 1966. Russell redefined basketball. Before him, the game was about scoring. He made […]

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. […]

Bryan Stevenson

Civil Rights & Activism

Bryan Stevenson is the most important civil rights lawyer in America — a man who has spent his career fighting for the people the legal system was designed to forget: the wrongly convicted, the desperately poor, children sentenced to die in prison, and the mentally ill condemned to death row. His organization, the Equal Justice […]

Carl Lewis

Sports

Carl Lewis won nine Olympic gold medals and ten World Championship golds across four consecutive Olympic Games — one of the longest sustained periods of dominance in track and field history. He matched Jesse Owens by winning the same four events at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Lewis was the master of the long jump, […]

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Carrie Mae Weems

Arts & Culture

Carrie Mae Weems is one of the most influential contemporary American artists, a photographer and multimedia artist whose work examines race, gender, class, and power with unflinching clarity and extraordinary beauty. Her landmark series The Kitchen Table Series, in which she placed herself at the center of domestic scenes that unfold around a single kitchen […]

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.

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CaShawn Thompson

Arts & Culture

CaShawn Thompson created the phrase #BlackGirlMagic in 2013 — three words that became a global cultural movement celebrating the beauty, excellence, and resilience of Black women and girls. What began as a Twitter post became a rallying cry, a hashtag with billions of impressions, a concept adopted by politicians, celebrities, and brands worldwide, and a […]

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Cathy Hughes

Business & Entrepreneurship

Cathy Liggins Hughes built the largest Black-owned radio network in the country from a single struggling AM station and became the first Black woman to chair a publicly traded corporation when Radio One went public on the NASDAQ in 1999. Today, her company — now called Urban One — encompasses radio, television (TV One), digital […]

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Cecil Williams

Arts & Culture

Cecil Williams is a photographer, civil rights documentarian, and living witness whose camera captured some of the most important moments of the Southern freedom struggle. His photographs of the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre — in which South Carolina Highway Patrol officers shot and killed three Black students during a civil rights protest at South Carolina State […]

Chadwick Boseman

Arts & Culture

The king of Wakanda — Chadwick Boseman brought Jackie Robinson, James Brown, Thurgood Marshall, and T'Challa to life on screen, all while secretly fighting cancer with a grace and dignity that defined his legacy.