Trailblazers

Jim Brown

Sports

Jim Brown is widely considered the greatest football player who ever lived. In nine seasons with the Cleveland Browns, he led the league in rushing eight times, never missed a game, and retired at 29 as the NFL’s all-time leading rusher — a record that stood for decades. But Brown walked away from football at […]

John Coltrane

Music

A spiritual seeker who played the saxophone like a prayer — John Coltrane pushed jazz into uncharted territory with an intensity and beauty that transformed American music forever.

John H. Johnson

Business & Entrepreneurship

John Harold Johnson built the most influential Black media empire in American history with a $500 loan secured by his mother’s furniture. In 1942, he founded Negro Digest, followed by Ebony in 1945 and Jet in 1951 — magazines that became the mirror in which Black America saw itself reflected with dignity, beauty, and aspiration. […]

John Lewis

Politics & Law

The conscience of the Congress — John Lewis was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, arrested over 40 times, and spent 60 years in "good trouble" fighting for justice and voting rights.

Jordan Chiles

Sports

Jordan Chiles has become one of the most beloved gymnasts in the world — not just for her athletic excellence but for the genuine joy, sisterhood, and grace she brings to competition. As a member of the gold medal-winning U.S. women’s gymnastics team at the 2024 Paris Olympics, she captivated audiences with her powerful tumbling, […]

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 […]

Josephine Baker

Arts & Culture

Josephine Baker left America because America couldn’t contain her — and then she spent the rest of her life fighting to change the country that had rejected her. Born in St. Louis in 1906, she arrived in Paris in 1925 and became the most famous entertainer in Europe almost overnight. Her performances at the Folies […]

Josh Gibson

Sports

Josh Gibson was the greatest power hitter in baseball history — a statement that is not hyperbole but mathematical fact. Playing in the Negro Leagues from 1930 to 1946, Gibson hit nearly 800 home runs and batted over .350 for his career, numbers that dwarf anything achieved in the major leagues. He was called “the […]

Joy Buolamwini

Science & Technology

Joy Adowaa Buolamwini is the computer scientist who proved that artificial intelligence is racist — and forced the tech industry to reckon with it. As a graduate student at MIT, she discovered that facial recognition systems from major tech companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon failed to accurately identify darker-skinned faces, particularly those of Black […]

Judith Jamison

Arts & Culture

Judith Jamison is a dancer, choreographer, and artistic director who became the most celebrated figure in American modern dance and carried the legacy of Alvin Ailey into the 21st century. Her iconic performance of Ailey’s solo Cry — a 16-minute tour de force dedicated “to all Black women everywhere, especially our mothers” — is one […]

Kamala Harris

Politics & Law

Kamala Devi Harris has been the first at every stage of her career — first Black woman elected District Attorney of San Francisco, first Black woman elected Attorney General of California, first Black and first South Asian woman elected to the U.S. Senate from California, and first woman, first Black person, and first person of […]

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Sports

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. — retired as the NBA’s all-time leading scorer with 38,387 points, a record that stood for nearly four decades. His skyhook, an elegant and virtually unblockable shot released from above his 7’2″ frame, was the most devastating weapon in basketball history. But Abdul-Jabbar’s legacy extends far beyond […]

Katherine Dunham

Arts & Culture

Katherine Mary Dunham was the mother of Black concert dance — a choreographer, dancer, anthropologist, and activist who created an entirely new dance technique rooted in the movement traditions of the African diaspora. The Dunham Technique, which fuses African, Caribbean, and modern dance forms, is still taught in studios worldwide and has influenced virtually every […]

Katherine Johnson

Science & Technology

A NASA mathematician whose orbital calculations were critical to America's first crewed spaceflights — Katherine Johnson computed the trajectory that put John Glenn into orbit and brought him safely home.

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Kellee Edwards

Media & Entertainment

Kellee Edwards is a travel show host, adventurer, and licensed pilot who became the first Black woman to host a travel show on a major television network when her series Mysterious Islands premiered on the Travel Channel in 2017. She is also a skydiver with over 2,000 jumps and a scuba diver — using every […]

Kendrick Lamar

Music

The first rapper to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music — Kendrick Lamar has elevated hip-hop into high art while never losing touch with the streets of Compton that made him.

Ketanji Brown Jackson

Politics & Law

The first Black woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court — Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation in 2022 was a historic moment that moved a nation to tears.

Kizzmekia Corbett

Science & Technology

The immunologist who was the scientific lead behind the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine — Kizzmekia Corbett's decade of coronavirus research helped save millions of lives during the pandemic.

Langston Hughes

Literature

The poet laureate of Black America — Langston Hughes gave voice to the beauty, struggle, and dreams of a people through jazz-inflected poetry that changed literature forever.

Leah Chase

Business & Entrepreneurship

Leah Lange Chase — the Queen of Creole Cuisine — transformed Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in New Orleans into both a culinary institution and a civil rights landmark. During the 1950s and ’60s, when segregation laws made it illegal for Black and white people to eat together, Dooky Chase’s became the meeting place where civil rights […]

LeBron James

Sports

More than an athlete — LeBron James is a four-time NBA champion, billionaire entrepreneur, and community builder who opened a public school for at-risk children in his hometown of Akron.

Lena Horne

Music

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was the first Black woman to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio — and then spent her career fighting the industry that hired her. MGM signed her in 1942 but largely confined her to musical numbers that could be easily cut when films were shown in Southern theaters. […]

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 […]

Lewis Howard Latimer

Science & Technology

Lewis Howard Latimer was the Renaissance man of the electrical age — an inventor, engineer, draftsman, poet, and painter who worked alongside the two greatest inventors of the nineteenth century: Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison. Latimer drafted the patent drawings for Bell’s telephone in 1876 and later developed the carbon filament that made Edison’s […]