Trailblazers

Chaka Khan

Music

Yvette Marie Stevens — Chaka Khan — earned the title “Queen of Funk” through a voice of such explosive power and improvisational agility that it turned every song into a master class in vocal freedom. From her groundbreaking work with the band Rufus in the 1970s to her solo career spanning five decades, Khan has […]

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Charles Drew

Science & Technology

The father of the blood bank — Charles Drew pioneered techniques for storing and processing blood plasma that saved countless lives during World War II and beyond.

Charles Hamilton Houston

Politics & Law

Charles Hamilton Houston was “the man who killed Jim Crow” — the legal strategist who devised the litigation campaign that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education and the end of legal segregation in America. As the first Black editor of the Harvard Law Review and the dean of Howard University School of Law, he […]

Charlotte E. Ray

Politics & Law

Charlotte E. Ray was the first Black woman to earn a law degree in the United States and the first woman admitted to the bar in the District of Columbia. In 1872, she graduated from Howard University School of Law — reportedly applying under the name “C.E. Ray” so the admissions committee would not know […]

Cicely Tyson

Arts & Culture

Cicely Tyson was one of the most honored actresses in American history, known for choosing roles that elevated Black women and told stories of substance. Over a career spanning seven decades, she refused parts that diminished or stereotyped Black people — even when it meant turning down work. Her performance in “Sounder” (1972) earned her […]

Claudette Colvin

Civil Rights & Activism

Nine months before Rosa Parks, a 15-year-old girl named Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus — and history almost forgot her name.

Coco Gauff

Sports

Cori “Coco” Gauff announced herself to the world at 15 years old when she defeated Venus Williams at Wimbledon in 2019 — a moment that felt like the passing of a generational torch in real time. By 19, she had won the U.S. Open, becoming the youngest American woman to win a Grand Slam singles […]

Colin Kaepernick

Sports

Colin Rand Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem before an NFL preseason game on September 1, 2016, and never played in the NFL again. His protest against police brutality and racial injustice — initially sitting, then kneeling at the suggestion of former Green Beret Nate Boyer — cost him his career, made him the most […]

Colin Powell

Politics & Law

Colin Luther Powell was the first Black Secretary of State, the first Black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the first Black National Security Advisor — the highest-ranking Black official in the history of the United States government at each appointment. His career spanned four decades of public service, from Vietnam combat officer […]

Colonel Charles Young

Military & Service

Charles Young was the third Black graduate of West Point, the first Black military attaché in U.S. history, and the highest-ranking Black officer in the Army — until the military forced him into early retirement in 1917 to prevent him from becoming the first Black general. The official reason was high blood pressure; the real […]

Colson Whitehead

Literature

The first author to win back-to-back Pulitzer Prizes for fiction in over 60 years — Colson Whitehead has reimagined the American novel with works that fuse history, imagination, and the Black experience into stories of extraordinary power.

Constance Baker Motley

Politics & Law

Constance Baker Motley was the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary, the first Black woman elected to the New York State Senate, and the first woman to serve as Manhattan Borough President. Before all of that, she was the legal architect of the civil rights movement — writing the original complaint in Brown […]

Coretta Scott King

Civil Rights & Activism

Far more than a wife, Coretta Scott King was a leader in her own right — an activist, author, and architect of the modern civil rights movement who carried the torch of justice for decades after her husband's assassination.

Cornel West

Civil Rights & Activism

Cornel Ronald West is America’s most prominent public intellectual — a philosopher, professor, and provocateur whose work spans academic philosophy, political activism, music, and the relentless pursuit of what he calls “prophetic justice.” His 1993 book Race Matters became a bestseller and established him as the most visible Black intellectual since James Baldwin, addressing the […]

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 […]

Crispus Attucks

Civil Rights & Activism

On the cold night of March 5, 1770, Crispus Attucks became the first person killed in the Boston Massacre — and by extension, the first casualty of the American Revolution. A man of African and Wampanoag descent who had escaped slavery two decades earlier, Attucks led a group of colonists in confronting British soldiers on […]

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Daisy Bates

Civil Rights & Activism

Daisy Lee Gatson Bates was the strategist, protector, and fierce guardian behind the Little Rock Nine — the nine Black students who desegregated Central High School in Arkansas in 1957. As president of the Arkansas NAACP, Bates recruited and prepared the students, coached them in nonviolent resistance, and literally walked them through screaming mobs. When […]

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Dapper Dan

Arts & Culture

Daniel Day — Dapper Dan — created a fashion revolution from a storefront in Harlem that was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because the luxury fashion brands whose logos he reimagined wouldn’t sell to Black customers. His custom leather goods, fur coats, and outfits adorned with oversized Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and […]

David Adjaye

Arts & Culture

Sir David Frank Adjaye designed the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. — the most significant cultural building constructed in America in the twenty-first century. The museum’s bronze-clad corona, inspired by the three-tiered crowns of Yoruba art, rises at the foot of the Washington Monument, placing […]

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David Steward

Business & Entrepreneurship

David L. Steward founded World Wide Technology in 1990 and built it into the largest Black-owned business in America, with annual revenues exceeding $17 billion. WWT is a technology solutions provider that serves some of the world’s largest corporations and government agencies, partnering with companies like Cisco, Dell, and Microsoft to design and implement complex […]

Dawn Staley

Sports

Dawn Michelle Staley has built the most dominant dynasty in women’s college basketball as head coach at the University of South Carolina, winning three NCAA championships and establishing the Gamecocks as the standard by which every program is measured. Before she was a coaching legend, she was one of the greatest point guards in basketball […]

Daymond John

Business & Entrepreneurship

Daymond Garfield John turned $40 worth of fabric into a billion-dollar brand. FUBU — For Us, By Us — began in 1992 in John’s mother’s house in Hollis, Queens, where he sewed hats and T-shirts and sold them on street corners. Within a decade, FUBU had generated over $6 billion in global retail sales and […]

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 […]