Trailblazers

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Daisy Bates

Civil Rights & Activism

Daisy Lee Gatson Bates was the strategist, protector, and fierce guardian behind the Little Rock Nine — the nine Black students who desegregated Central High School in Arkansas in 1957. As president of the Arkansas NAACP, Bates recruited and prepared the students, coached them in nonviolent resistance, and literally walked them through screaming mobs. When […]

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Dapper Dan

Arts & Culture

Daniel Day — Dapper Dan — created a fashion revolution from a storefront in Harlem that was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because the luxury fashion brands whose logos he reimagined wouldn’t sell to Black customers. His custom leather goods, fur coats, and outfits adorned with oversized Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and […]

David Adjaye

Arts & Culture

Sir David Frank Adjaye designed the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. — the most significant cultural building constructed in America in the twenty-first century. The museum’s bronze-clad corona, inspired by the three-tiered crowns of Yoruba art, rises at the foot of the Washington Monument, placing […]

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David Steward

Business & Entrepreneurship

David L. Steward founded World Wide Technology in 1990 and built it into the largest Black-owned business in America, with annual revenues exceeding $17 billion. WWT is a technology solutions provider that serves some of the world’s largest corporations and government agencies, partnering with companies like Cisco, Dell, and Microsoft to design and implement complex […]

Dawn Staley

Sports

Dawn Michelle Staley has built the most dominant dynasty in women’s college basketball as head coach at the University of South Carolina, winning three NCAA championships and establishing the Gamecocks as the standard by which every program is measured. Before she was a coaching legend, she was one of the greatest point guards in basketball […]

Daymond John

Business & Entrepreneurship

Daymond Garfield John turned $40 worth of fabric into a billion-dollar brand. FUBU — For Us, By Us — began in 1992 in John’s mother’s house in Hollis, Queens, where he sewed hats and T-shirts and sold them on street corners. Within a decade, FUBU had generated over $6 billion in global retail sales and […]

Debbie Allen

Media & Entertainment

Deborrah Kaye Allen is a choreographer, dancer, actress, director, and producer who has shaped American entertainment for five decades — from her iconic role as Lydia Grant on Fame (“You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying — in sweat.”) to her work as a director and executive producer […]

Delroy Lindo

Media & Entertainment

Delroy Lindo is a British-American actor of Jamaican descent whose commanding presence and extraordinary range have made him one of the most respected performers of his generation. From his Shakespearean stage work to his iconic film roles in Malcolm X, Crooklyn, Clockers, Get Shorty, and Da 5 Bloods, Lindo brings intelligence, intensity, and deep humanity […]

Denzel Washington

Media & Entertainment

Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. is the most acclaimed Black actor in the history of cinema — a performer of such depth, range, and charisma that he has been the number-one box office draw in America multiple times over a career spanning four decades. He has won two Academy Awards (Glory, 2001’s Training Day), been nominated […]

Desmond Tutu

Civil Rights & Activism

Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu was the moral conscience of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and a global symbol of nonviolent resistance to injustice. As the first Black Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, he used his pulpit to speak truth to the apartheid regime when doing so could cost one’s life. In 1984, he was […]

Diahann Carroll

Media & Entertainment

Diahann Carroll was the first Black woman to star in her own network television series in a non-stereotypical role when Julia premiered on NBC in 1968. She played a nurse and single mother — a portrayal so radical for its time that it generated both celebration and controversy. For the first time, American television showed […]

Diana Ross

Music

Diane Ernestine Earle Ross — Diana Ross — is one of the most successful entertainers in American history. As lead singer of the Supremes, she became the face of Motown Records and helped bring Black popular music to mainstream white audiences in the 1960s. The Supremes recorded twelve number-one singles — more than any American […]

Diane Nash

Civil Rights & Activism

One of the most fearless leaders of the civil rights movement — Diane Nash led the Nashville sit-ins at 22, saved the Freedom Rides from failure, and was a key strategist behind the Selma voting rights campaign.

Dominique Dawes

Sports

Dominique Dawes was a member of the legendary “Magnificent Seven” — the 1996 U.S. Women’s Gymnastics team that won the first ever team gold medal for the United States at the Atlanta Olympics. She was the first Black woman to win an Olympic gold medal in gymnastics. Dawes competed in three consecutive Olympic Games (1992, […]

Don Cornelius

Business & Entrepreneurship

Donald Cortez Cornelius created Soul Train — the longest-running first-run nationally syndicated program in television history, airing from 1971 to 2006. For 35 years, Soul Train was the heartbeat of Black popular culture, showcasing every major Black musical artist from James Brown to Beyoncé and broadcasting Black joy, fashion, dance, and style into living rooms […]

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Don Peebles

Business & Entrepreneurship

R. Donahue “Don” Peebles is one of the most successful real estate developers in America and the founder of the Peebles Corporation, one of the largest Black-owned real estate development companies in the country. His portfolio includes luxury residential towers, hotels, and mixed-use developments in New York, Miami, Washington, D.C., and other major cities, with […]

Donald Glover

Media & Entertainment

Donald McKinley Glover operates at the intersection of comedy, music, acting, writing, and directing with a creative restlessness that refuses to let any single medium contain him. As Childish Gambino, he won Grammy Awards for “This Is America,” a song and music video that became a cultural earthquake — a searing commentary on gun violence […]

Doris Miller

Military & Service

Doris “Dorie” Miller was a Navy messman — the only rating available to Black sailors in 1941 — who became the first Black American to receive the Navy Cross for his actions during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. When the attack began, Miller carried wounded sailors to safety, including his […]

Dorothy Dandridge

Media & Entertainment

Dorothy Jean Dandridge was the first Black woman nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress — for her role in Carmen Jones (1954) — and one of the most beautiful and talented performers of her generation. Hollywood wanted her face but not her full humanity: she was offered only roles that traded on her […]

Dorothy Height

Civil Rights & Activism

The godmother of the civil rights movement — Dorothy Height led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years and was the only woman at the table with King, Wilkins, Young, and Randolph during the movement's defining moments.

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Dr. Alexa Canady

Science & Technology

Dr. Alexa Irene Canady became the first Black female neurosurgeon in the United States in 1981. In a field dominated by white men, she broke through with skill, composure, and an unshakable commitment to her patients — most of them children. Born in Lansing, Michigan, Canady initially doubted whether medicine was for her after experiencing […]

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Dr. Daniel Hale Williams

Science & Technology

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performed the first successful open-heart surgery in 1893 — without the benefit of antibiotics, blood transfusions, or modern anesthesia. The patient, James Cornish, had been stabbed in the chest and was dying. Williams opened his chest, repaired the pericardium, and Cornish lived for another twenty years. Williams also founded Provident Hospital […]

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Dr. Gladys West

Science & Technology

Dr. Gladys West is one of the hidden figures behind the Global Positioning System. As a mathematician at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia, she programmed an IBM computer to model the shape of the Earth with unprecedented precision — work that became foundational to GPS technology. Born in Sutherland, Virginia in 1930, […]

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Dr. Jane Cooke Wright

Science & Technology

Dr. Jane Cooke Wright pioneered the use of chemotherapy to treat cancer at a time when the field barely existed — and she did it as a Black woman in a medical establishment that doubted both her race and her gender at every turn. Her research on the drug methotrexate led to breakthroughs in treating […]