The People Who Paved the Way

Trailblazers

Pioneers, barrier-breakers, and history-makers who changed what's possible.

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B.B. King

B.B. King

Music

Riley B. King — B.B. King — was the undisputed King of the Blues for over half a century, a guitarist and singer whose expressive vibrato and economical phrasing influenced every blues and rock guitarist who picked up the instrument after him. His guitar, a black Gibson ES-355 he named Lucille, became the most famous […]
Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Politics & Law

The 44th President of the United States and the first African American to hold the highest office in the land, Barack Obama's election transformed what an entire generation believed was possible.
Barbara Jordan

Barbara Jordan

Politics & Law

The first Black woman elected to the Texas State Senate and the first Southern Black woman in the U.S. Congress — Barbara Jordan's voice commanded rooms and changed the conscience of a nation.
Barry Jenkins

Barry Jenkins

Media & Entertainment

Barry Lamar Jenkins directed Moonlight — the film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2017 (after the most infamous envelope mix-up in Oscar history) and proved that a quiet, poetic story about a queer Black boy growing up poor in Miami could be recognized as the best film in the world. Made […]
Bayard Rustin

Bayard Rustin

Civil Rights & Activism

The brilliant strategist behind the 1963 March on Washington — Bayard Rustin was the architect of nonviolent direct action in America, whose contributions were long obscured because he was openly gay.
bell hooks

bell hooks

Civil Rights & Activism

Gloria Jean Watkins — bell hooks, deliberately lowercase — was one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, a scholar whose work on race, gender, class, and love transformed academic discourse and made critical theory accessible to millions of ordinary readers. Her 1981 book Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism challenged […]
Ben Haith

Ben Haith

Arts & Culture

Ben Haith is an activist, entrepreneur, and the creator of the Juneteenth flag, the iconic symbol that has come to represent the celebration of African American emancipation. In 1997, Haith founded the National Juneteenth Celebration Foundation and designed the flag that would become synonymous with the holiday — a visual declaration that freedom deserved its […]
Benjamin Banneker

Benjamin Banneker

Science & Technology

A self-taught astronomer, mathematician, and farmer who helped survey the layout of Washington, D.C. — Benjamin Banneker was one of the greatest minds of colonial America and challenged Thomas Jefferson's beliefs about Black intellectual inferiority.
Berry Gordy

Berry Gordy

Business & Entrepreneurship

Berry Gordy Jr. founded Motown Records with an $800 loan from his family in 1959 and built it into the most successful independent record label in American history — a hit factory that produced more number-one singles than any label in the 1960s and broke down the racial barriers of American popular music. Motown’s sound […]
Bessie Coleman

Bessie Coleman

Science & Technology

The first African American woman and first Native American to hold a pilot's license — Bessie Coleman defied every limitation placed on her to soar above them all.
Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith

Music

The Empress of the Blues — Bessie Smith's voice was so powerful it could fill a theater without a microphone, and her recordings became the foundation of American popular music.
Betty Reid Soskin

Betty Reid Soskin

Civil Rights & Activism

Betty Charbonnet Reid Soskin was the oldest active National Park Service ranger in American history, serving at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California, until she was 100 years old. She spent her final years in uniform ensuring that the contributions of Black women to the World War II home […]
Beyoncé

Beyoncé

Music

The most decorated Grammy artist in history — Beyoncé has transcended music to become a cultural force who uses her art to celebrate Black identity, challenge power structures, and redefine what excellence looks like.
Bill Russell

Bill Russell

Sports

Bill Russell won eleven NBA championships in thirteen seasons with the Boston Celtics — the most dominant dynasty in professional sports history. He was the first Black head coach in any major American sport, serving as player-coach for the Celtics starting in 1966. Russell redefined basketball. Before him, the game was about scoring. He made […]
Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington

Education

Booker Taliaferro Washington was born into slavery in 1856 and rose to become the most influential Black leader of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As founder and principal of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, he built an educational institution from the ground up. His philosophy centered on economic advancement through vocational education and entrepreneurship. […]
Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson

Civil Rights & Activism

Bryan Stevenson is the most important civil rights lawyer in America — a man who has spent his career fighting for the people the legal system was designed to forget: the wrongly convicted, the desperately poor, children sentenced to die in prison, and the mentally ill condemned to death row. His organization, the Equal Justice […]

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