Trailblazers

Lisa Leslie

Sports

Lisa Leslie is a basketball legend who shattered barriers in women’s sports and became the first player to dunk in a WNBA game. A three-time WNBA MVP, four-time Olympic gold medalist, and two-time WNBA champion, Leslie was the most dominant player in women’s basketball for over a decade — and she did it all while […]

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Lisa Price

Business & Entrepreneurship

Lisa Price started making hair and body products in her Brooklyn kitchen in 1993, mixing fragrances inspired by her love of music and her mother Carol. What began as a hobby sold at church flea markets became Carol’s Daughter — one of the most beloved and influential Black beauty brands in history. Price built the […]

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Lonnie Johnson

Science & Technology

A NASA engineer who invented the Super Soaker — one of the top 20 bestselling toys of all time — and is now developing revolutionary clean energy technology that could change the world.

Lorraine Hansberry

Literature

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was 29 years old when A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway on March 11, 1959, making her the first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway and the youngest American playwright to win the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. The play — about a Black family’s struggle […]

Louis Armstrong

Music

Louis Armstrong didn’t just play jazz — he essentially invented what jazz solos could be. Born in New Orleans in 1901, he learned cornet at the Colored Waifs Home and became the most influential musician in jazz history. His recordings with the Hot Five and Hot Seven in the late 1920s are considered among the […]

Madam C.J. Walker

Business & Entrepreneurship

Born to parents who had been enslaved, Sarah Breedlove became Madam C.J. Walker and built a beauty empire that made her the first self-made female millionaire in American history.

Mae C. Jemison

Science & Technology

The first African American woman to travel into space, Mae Jemison didn't just break a barrier — she opened a universe of possibility for every Black girl who ever looked up at the stars.

Magic Johnson

Sports

Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr. reinvented the point guard position with a 6’9″ frame, a court vision that bordered on clairvoyance, and a smile that made basketball feel like joy incarnate. His rivalry with Larry Bird — beginning in the 1979 NCAA championship game and continuing through the 1980s Lakers-Celtics wars — saved the NBA from […]

Malcolm X

Civil Rights & Activism

One of the most influential and electrifying voices in American history — Malcolm X challenged a nation to confront its racism and gave Black people a language of self-determination, pride, and unapologetic power.

Mamie Till-Mobley

Civil Rights & Activism

The mother whose unbearable grief changed America — Mamie Till-Mobley insisted on an open casket for her murdered son Emmett Till so the world could see what racism had done, igniting the civil rights movement.

Marcus Garvey

Civil Rights & Activism

The father of Pan-Africanism and founder of the largest mass movement in Black history — Marcus Garvey told millions of Black people worldwide that they were descended from kings and queens, and they believed him.

Marcus Samuelsson

Business & Entrepreneurship

Marcus Samuelsson is the most celebrated Black chef in America — a James Beard Award winner, restaurateur, and culinary storyteller who has made Harlem the center of a global food narrative. His flagship restaurant, Red Rooster Harlem, is both a dining destination and a community institution, blending African American, African, Caribbean, and Swedish cuisines in […]

Mari Copeny

Civil Rights & Activism

Amariyanna “Mari” Copeny — Little Miss Flint — was eight years old when she wrote a letter to President Obama about the Flint water crisis and he wrote back, then came to Flint. Her advocacy for clean water in her hometown has continued for over a decade, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars, distributing water […]

Marian Anderson

Music

A voice that comes once in a hundred years — Marian Anderson shattered racial barriers in classical music and delivered one of the most powerful performances in American history on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

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Mark Dean

Science & Technology

Mark Dean is one of the most important engineers in personal computing history. As lead engineer at IBM, he co-invented the ISA bus that allowed peripherals to connect to PCs. He holds three of IBM original nine patents for the personal computer. Dean led the team that created the first gigahertz processor chip in 1999, […]

Marley Dias

Education

Marley Emelia Dias was eleven years old when she launched #1000BlackGirlBooks — a campaign to collect and donate 1,000 books featuring Black girl protagonists — because she was tired of reading about “white boys and their dogs” in school. The campaign went viral, ultimately collecting over 13,000 books, and established Dias as one of the […]

Marsai Martin

Media & Entertainment

Marsai Martin became the youngest executive producer in Hollywood history at age 14 when she produced the Universal Pictures comedy Little (2019). She pitched the concept — a woman magically transformed back into her 13-year-old self — to the head of Universal’s film division and starred in the film alongside Issa Rae and Regina Hall. […]

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Marsha P. Johnson

Civil Rights & Activism

A key figure in the Stonewall uprising and tireless advocate for LGBTQ+ rights — Marsha P. Johnson was a revolutionary whose courage helped launch the modern gay rights movement and whose compassion saved countless lives on the streets of New York.

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Marshall “Major” Taylor

Sports

Marshall “Major” Taylor became the first Black world champion in any sport when he won the cycling sprint world championship in Montreal in 1899. He was just twenty years old. In an era of open, violent racism, he dominated a sport that tried everything to keep him out. Competitors boxed him in during races, knocked […]

Martin Luther King Jr.

Civil Rights & Activism

Martin Luther King Jr. was the moral conscience of America — a Baptist minister and activist whose philosophy of nonviolent resistance dismantled legal segregation, secured voting rights for Black Americans, and earned him the Nobel Peace Prize at age 35. His “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered before 250,000 people at the March on Washington […]

Marva Collins

Education

Marva Collins walked away from Chicago failing public school system in 1975 and opened Westside Preparatory School in her own home with 5,000 dollars of her pension. Using classical education methods and an unwavering belief that every child could learn, she transformed children who had been labeled learning disabled into students reading Shakespeare and Tolstoy. […]

Marvin Gaye

Music

Marvin Pentz Gaye transformed popular music with a single album. When Motown released What’s Going On in 1971 — over Berry Gordy’s objections — it shattered the boundary between pop and protest, proving that commercially successful music could also be spiritually deep, politically engaged, and artistically uncompromising. The album addressed war, poverty, ecology, and systemic […]

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Mary Jackson

Science & Technology

NASA's first Black female engineer — Mary Jackson broke barriers in aeronautics research and then broke them again by fighting to open doors for every woman and person of color who came after her.

Mary McLeod Bethune

Education

From a one-room schoolhouse to the White House — Mary McLeod Bethune founded a college, advised presidents, and became the most influential Black woman in American government during the New Deal era.