Trailblazers

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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Edna Lewis

Business & Entrepreneurship

Edna Lewis was the grande dame of Southern cooking — a chef and author who single-handedly elevated the food traditions of the rural Black South from folk cooking to a recognized American cuisine worthy of the world’s attention. Her 1976 cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking, is considered one of the greatest American cookbooks ever […]

Ella Baker

Civil Rights & Activism

Ella Josephine Baker was the most important civil rights leader most people have never heard of. She worked behind the scenes for over five decades, organizing with the NAACP, co-founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference alongside Martin Luther King Jr., and mentoring the young activists of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. While others stood at […]

Ella Fitzgerald

Music

The First Lady of Song — Ella Fitzgerald's voice was a once-in-a-century instrument that mastered every genre from jazz to pop and set the standard for vocal excellence that still stands.

Emmett Till

Civil Rights & Activism

Emmett Louis Till was fourteen years old when he was lynched in Money, Mississippi, in August 1955, murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, made the agonizing decision to hold an open-casket funeral in Chicago, insisting the world see what hatred had done to her son. Tens of thousands filed […]

Ernest Everett Just

Science & Technology

A pioneering cell biologist whose groundbreaking research on egg fertilization was so far ahead of its time that the white scientific establishment refused to take it seriously — Ernest Just was one of America's most brilliant and tragic scientific minds.

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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 […]

Faith Ringgold

Arts & Culture

Faith Ringgold transformed the American quilt — a domestic craft traditionally associated with women’s labor — into one of the most powerful storytelling mediums in contemporary art. Her painted story quilts, which combine acrylic painting, quilted fabric borders, and narrative text, hang in the most prestigious museums in the world and have inspired millions of […]

Fannie Barrier Williams

Civil Rights & Activism

Fannie Barrier Williams was an educator, activist, and public intellectual who fought for Black women’s inclusion in the institutions and opportunities of American life during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1893, she delivered a landmark address at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, speaking to an international audience about the unique challenges […]

Fannie Lou Hamer

Civil Rights & Activism

A sharecropper who became one of the most powerful voices of the civil rights movement — Fannie Lou Hamer told America she was "sick and tired of being sick and tired" and fought for voting rights with her life.

Florence Griffith Joyner

Sports

Florence Griffith Joyner — Flo-Jo — is the fastest woman who ever lived. Her world records in the 100 meters (10.49) and 200 meters (21.34), set at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, have stood for over 35 years and may never be broken. She won three gold medals and a silver at those Games. But Flo-Jo […]

Fred Hampton

Civil Rights & Activism

Fred Hampton was twenty-one years old when he was assassinated by Chicago police in a predawn raid on December 4, 1969 — but in his brief life, he had already become one of the most effective organizers the Black Panther Party ever produced. As chairman of the Illinois chapter, Hampton built the Rainbow Coalition, an […]

Frederick Douglass

Civil Rights & Activism

Born into slavery, Frederick Douglass taught himself to read and became the most powerful orator and abolitionist of the 19th century — proof that freedom is not given but seized.

Gabby Douglas

Sports

Gabrielle Douglas became the first Black woman to win the Olympic all-around gold medal in gymnastics at the 2012 London Games. She was also part of the gold-medal winning “Fierce Five” team, making her the first American gymnast to win both individual all-around and team gold at the same Olympics. Douglas left her family in […]

Garrett A. Morgan

Science & Technology

Garrett Augustus Morgan was an inventor whose creations saved countless lives — yet whose contributions were often obscured because of the color of his skin. He invented the three-position traffic signal, which he patented in 1923 and later sold to General Electric for $40,000. He also invented a smoke hood — an early gas mask […]

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General Benjamin O. Davis Sr.

Military & Service

Benjamin Oliver Davis Sr. became the first Black general in the United States Army on October 25, 1940 — a milestone achieved after 42 years of service in a military that systematically humiliated him at every rank. He endured being assigned to posts where he would supervise no white soldiers, being excluded from officers’ clubs, […]

George Washington Carver

Science & Technology

George Washington Carver was born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri, around 1864, and became one of the most important agricultural scientists in American history. His research at Tuskegee Institute revolutionized Southern agriculture by promoting alternatives to cotton — which had devastated the soil — and developing hundreds of products from peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans. […]

Gladys Knight

Music

Gladys Maria Knight — the Empress of Soul — has been performing since she was four years old, when she won the Ted Mack Amateur Hour television competition. Over seven decades later, she remains one of the most respected and beloved voices in American music, with hits that have soundtracked generations: “Midnight Train to Georgia,” […]

Gordon Parks

Arts & Culture

A self-taught photographer who became the first Black director in Hollywood — Gordon Parks used his camera as a weapon against poverty, racism, and injustice.

Granville T. Woods

Science & Technology

Granville Tailer Woods held over 60 patents and was known as the “Black Edison” — though Edison himself tried to claim credit for Woods’s inventions, losing in court twice. Woods’s most important innovation was the Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph in 1887, which allowed moving trains to communicate with each other and with stations, dramatically reducing […]

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 […]

Gwendolyn Brooks

Literature

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks became the first Black person to win the Pulitzer Prize — for her 1949 poetry collection Annie Allen — and spent the next six decades proving that poetry could be simultaneously literary and accessible, experimental and rooted in community. Her work gave voice to the ordinary heroism of Black life on Chicago’s […]

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 […]

Hank Aaron

Sports

Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron held the Major League Baseball all-time home run record for 33 years — 755 home runs hit with a quiet consistency that was the antithesis of spectacle but the essence of greatness. When he broke Babe Ruth’s record on April 8, 1974, he did so while receiving death threats so serious […]