Trailblazers

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Mary Wilson

Music

Mary Wilson was a founding member of The Supremes, the most successful female group in music history and a cornerstone of the Motown sound that shaped American popular culture. From 1959 until 1977, Wilson was the only member who remained with the group through every era, every lineup change, and every evolution — she was […]

Maya Angelou

Literature

Poet, memoirist, and voice of a generation — Maya Angelou turned pain into power and gave the world words that heal, challenge, and endure.

Medgar Evers

Civil Rights & Activism

The NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi, Medgar Evers investigated racial violence, organized voter registration drives, and gave his life for the cause of civil rights at age 37.

Mellody Hobson

Business & Entrepreneurship

Mellody Hobson is co-CEO of Ariel Investments — one of the largest Black-owned investment firms in America — and one of the most powerful women in corporate America. She serves as chair of the board of Starbucks, making her one of the few Black women to chair the board of a Fortune 500 company. Her […]

Michael Jackson

Music

Michael Joseph Jackson — the King of Pop — was the most successful entertainer in the history of the world. Thriller remains the best-selling album of all time with over 70 million copies sold. He won 13 Grammy Awards in a single night. He invented the modern music video as an art form. And he […]

Michael Jordan

Sports

Michael Jeffrey Jordan is the standard against which every athlete in every sport is measured. Six NBA championships. Six Finals MVP awards. Five regular season MVP awards. Ten scoring titles. A career that redefined excellence, competitiveness, and the commercial potential of athletic stardom. When people debate who is the greatest basketball player of all time, […]

Michaela Coel

Media & Entertainment

Michaela Ewuraba Boakye-Collinson — Michaela Coel — created, wrote, co-directed, and starred in I May Destroy You, a limited series about sexual assault and its aftermath that was hailed as one of the greatest television achievements of the twenty-first century. She turned down a $1 million deal from Netflix because the streamer wouldn’t give her […]

Michelle Obama

Politics & Law

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama served as the 44th First Lady of the United States and became one of the most admired women in the world. Raised on the South Side of Chicago, she graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law School, then built a career in law, city government, and hospital administration before her husband entered […]

Missy Elliott

Music

Missy Elliott rewrote the rules of hip-hop and R&B as a producer, rapper, singer, and songwriter. Growing up in Portsmouth, Virginia, she survived an abusive childhood and channeled her pain into art, forming a partnership with Timbaland that produced some of the most innovative sounds in music history. Her debut Supa Dupa Fly in 1997 […]

Misty Copeland

Arts & Culture

The first African American female principal dancer with the prestigious American Ballet Theatre, Misty Copeland shattered a 75-year color barrier and redefined what a ballerina looks like.

Muhammad Ali

Sports

The greatest boxer of all time, Muhammad Ali was more than a champion — he was a cultural revolutionary who used his platform to fight for justice, peace, and the dignity of Black people worldwide.

Nannie Helen Burroughs

Education

Nannie Helen Burroughs founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, D.C., in 1909 — an institution that provided vocational, liberal arts, and religious education to Black women at a time when most doors were closed to them. She was a fierce advocate for economic independence, arguing that Black women needed practical […]

Naomi Campbell

Arts & Culture

Naomi Elaine Campbell is one of the most recognizable women on Earth — a supermodel who broke racial barriers in fashion with an elegance and ferocity that left no room for denial. She was one of the original “Big Six” supermodels of the late 1980s and ’90s (alongside Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Claudia […]

Naomi Osaka

Sports

Naomi Osaka became the first Asian-born player to hold the number-one singles ranking in tennis and won four Grand Slam titles before the age of 24. But her most courageous moment came not on the court but off it — when she withdrew from the 2021 French Open citing mental health struggles, sparking a global […]

Nat King Cole

Music

Nathaniel Adams Coles — Nat King Cole — possessed a voice so warm and intimate it felt like a personal conversation. He was one of the best-selling artists of the 1950s and 60s, with hits like “Unforgettable,” “Mona Lisa,” and “Nature Boy” defining an era of American popular music. But before he was a vocalist, […]

Nat Turner

Civil Rights & Activism

Nathaniel Turner led the most significant slave rebellion in American history on August 21, 1831, in Southampton County, Virginia. Over two days, Turner and a group of enslaved people killed approximately 55 to 65 white people — the largest number of white fatalities caused by a slave revolt in the antebellum South. The rebellion terrified […]

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Science & Technology

Neil deGrasse Tyson became the most famous astrophysicist in the world by making the universe feel accessible. As director of the Hayden Planetarium and host of “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey,” he brought science to millions who had never seen themselves reflected in the field. Growing up in the Bronx, Tyson fell in love with the […]

Nelson Mandela

Civil Rights & Activism

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela spent twenty-seven years in prison — eighteen of them on Robben Island breaking rocks in a limestone quarry — and emerged not with vengeance but with a vision of reconciliation that transformed South Africa and inspired the world. Elected as South Africa’s first Black president in 1994, Mandela dismantled apartheid through negotiation […]

Nichelle Nichols

Media & Entertainment

Nichelle Nichols played Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek — a role that changed American television and American culture. In 1966, the sight of a Black woman on the bridge of a starship, serving as a senior officer alongside white colleagues, was revolutionary. When Nichols considered leaving the show after the first season, Martin Luther King […]

Nikki Giovanni

Literature

Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni was the poet of the people — a literary force who moved as comfortably in Black barbershops and church basements as she did in university lecture halls and literary salons. From her earliest Black Arts Movement poems to her later meditative works, she spoke with a directness and warmth that made […]

Nikole Hannah-Jones

Literature

The journalist who created the 1619 Project — Nikole Hannah-Jones reframed American history by placing slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the national story.

Nina Simone

Music

The High Priestess of Soul — Nina Simone fused classical training with jazz, blues, and fury to create music that was both breathtakingly beautiful and unapologetically political.

Noah Lyles

Sports

Noah Lyles declared himself the fastest man in the world — and then proved it. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, he won the 100-meter gold medal by five thousandths of a second in one of the closest and most thrilling finishes in Olympic history. Bold, charismatic, and unafraid of the spotlight, Lyles has made himself […]

Octavia Butler

Literature

Octavia Butler was the first Black woman to gain widespread recognition in science fiction, using the genre to explore race, gender, and power with unmatched daring. A shy child in Pasadena, she found in sci-fi a space to imagine worlds unconstrained by reality. Kindred (1979) sent a modern Black woman to the antebellum South. The […]