Trailblazers

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 […]

Desmond Tutu

Civil Rights & Activism

Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu was the moral conscience of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and a global symbol of nonviolent resistance to injustice. As the first Black Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, he used his pulpit to speak truth to the apartheid regime when doing so could cost one’s life. In 1984, he was […]

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 […]

Diana Ross

Music

Diane Ernestine Earle Ross — Diana Ross — is one of the most successful entertainers in American history. As lead singer of the Supremes, she became the face of Motown Records and helped bring Black popular music to mainstream white audiences in the 1960s. The Supremes recorded twelve number-one singles — more than any American […]

Diane Nash

Civil Rights & Activism

One of the most fearless leaders of the civil rights movement — Diane Nash led the Nashville sit-ins at 22, saved the Freedom Rides from failure, and was a key strategist behind the Selma voting rights campaign.

Dominique Dawes

Sports

Dominique Dawes was a member of the legendary “Magnificent Seven” — the 1996 U.S. Women’s Gymnastics team that won the first ever team gold medal for the United States at the Atlanta Olympics. She was the first Black woman to win an Olympic gold medal in gymnastics. Dawes competed in three consecutive Olympic Games (1992, […]

Don Cornelius

Business & Entrepreneurship

Donald Cortez Cornelius created Soul Train — the longest-running first-run nationally syndicated program in television history, airing from 1971 to 2006. For 35 years, Soul Train was the heartbeat of Black popular culture, showcasing every major Black musical artist from James Brown to Beyoncé and broadcasting Black joy, fashion, dance, and style into living rooms […]

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Don Peebles

Business & Entrepreneurship

R. Donahue “Don” Peebles is one of the most successful real estate developers in America and the founder of the Peebles Corporation, one of the largest Black-owned real estate development companies in the country. His portfolio includes luxury residential towers, hotels, and mixed-use developments in New York, Miami, Washington, D.C., and other major cities, with […]

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 […]

Doris Miller

Military & Service

Doris “Dorie” Miller was a Navy messman — the only rating available to Black sailors in 1941 — who became the first Black American to receive the Navy Cross for his actions during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. When the attack began, Miller carried wounded sailors to safety, including his […]

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 […]

Dorothy Height

Civil Rights & Activism

The godmother of the civil rights movement — Dorothy Height led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years and was the only woman at the table with King, Wilkins, Young, and Randolph during the movement's defining moments.

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Dr. Alexa Canady

Science & Technology

Dr. Alexa Irene Canady became the first Black female neurosurgeon in the United States in 1981. In a field dominated by white men, she broke through with skill, composure, and an unshakable commitment to her patients — most of them children. Born in Lansing, Michigan, Canady initially doubted whether medicine was for her after experiencing […]

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Dr. Daniel Hale Williams

Science & Technology

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performed the first successful open-heart surgery in 1893 — without the benefit of antibiotics, blood transfusions, or modern anesthesia. The patient, James Cornish, had been stabbed in the chest and was dying. Williams opened his chest, repaired the pericardium, and Cornish lived for another twenty years. Williams also founded Provident Hospital […]

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Dr. Gladys West

Science & Technology

Dr. Gladys West is one of the hidden figures behind the Global Positioning System. As a mathematician at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia, she programmed an IBM computer to model the shape of the Earth with unprecedented precision — work that became foundational to GPS technology. Born in Sutherland, Virginia in 1930, […]

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Dr. Jane Cooke Wright

Science & Technology

Dr. Jane Cooke Wright pioneered the use of chemotherapy to treat cancer at a time when the field barely existed — and she did it as a Black woman in a medical establishment that doubted both her race and her gender at every turn. Her research on the drug methotrexate led to breakthroughs in treating […]

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Dr. Joycelyn Elders

Science & Technology

Dr. Minnie Joycelyn Elders made history in 1993 when President Bill Clinton appointed her as the first Black Surgeon General of the United States — and made even bigger news when she was fired for speaking honestly about public health. Her candid advocacy for comprehensive sex education, contraception access, and frank discussion of human sexuality […]

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Dr. Mamie Phipps Clark

Science & Technology

Dr. Mamie Phipps Clark, along with her husband Kenneth, conducted the famous “doll study” that proved segregation psychologically damaged Black children. Their research showed that Black children in segregated schools overwhelmingly preferred white dolls and associated negative attributes with Black dolls — devastating evidence of internalized racism. This research was cited by the Supreme Court […]

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Dr. Patricia Bath

Science & Technology

Dr. Patricia Era Bath invented the Laserphaco Probe in 1986, a device that uses laser technology to remove cataracts — revolutionizing eye surgery worldwide. She was the first Black woman to receive a medical patent and the first Black person to complete an ophthalmology residency at New York University. Bath grew up in Harlem, where […]

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Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler

Science & Technology

Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first Black woman to earn a medical degree in the United States when she graduated from New England Female Medical College in 1864. She achieved this in the middle of the Civil War, in a country that considered her less than human. After the war, Crumpler moved to Richmond, […]

Duke Ellington

Music

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington composed over 3,000 works across a career spanning more than fifty years, making him the most prolific and arguably the most important composer in the history of American music. From “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” to “Take the ‘A’ Train” to the sacred concerts of […]

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Dwayne McDuffie

Arts & Culture

Dwayne McDuffie was a comic book writer, animator, and media visionary who co-founded Milestone Comics in 1993 to create a universe of superheroes that reflected the diversity of the real world. Frustrated by the comic book industry’s near-total exclusion of characters of color, McDuffie didn’t just complain — he built an entire company and a […]

Earl G. Graves Sr.

Business & Entrepreneurship

Earl Gilbert Graves Sr. created the blueprint for Black economic empowerment when he founded Black Enterprise magazine in 1970. For five decades, the publication has been the authoritative voice on Black business, wealth building, and corporate America — educating, inspiring, and holding accountable. His annual BE 100s list of the largest Black-owned businesses became the […]

Eartha Kitt

Music

Eartha Mae Kitt was a singer, actress, dancer, and activist who refused to be one thing — and did everything with a purring, electrifying intensity that made her impossible to ignore. Her recording of “Santa Baby” is a holiday standard. Her portrayal of Catwoman on the 1960s Batman series was iconic. And her 1968 confrontation […]