The People Who Paved the Way

Trailblazers

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

All A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Earl G. Graves Sr.

Earl Gilbert Graves Sr. created the blueprint for Black economic empowerment when he founded Black Enterprise magazine in 1970. For five decades, the publication has been the authoritative voice on Black business, wealth building, and corporate America — educating, inspiring, and holding accountable. His annual BE 100s list of the largest Black-owned businesses became the […]

Eartha Kitt

Music

Eartha Mae Kitt was a singer, actress, dancer, and activist who refused to be one thing — and did everything with a purring, electrifying intensity that made her impossible to ignore. Her recording of “Santa Baby” is a holiday standard. Her portrayal of Catwoman on the 1960s Batman series was iconic. And her 1968 confrontation […]

Ed Bradley

Media & Entertainment

Edward Rudolph Bradley Jr. was one of the most respected journalists in American television history — a 60 Minutes correspondent for 26 years whose reporting combined investigative rigor with a cool, understated style that let the stories speak for themselves. He won 19 Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the […]

Edna Lewis

Business & Entrepreneurship

Edna Lewis was the grande dame of Southern cooking — a chef and author who single-handedly elevated the food traditions of the rural Black South from folk cooking to a recognized American cuisine worthy of the world’s attention. Her 1976 cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking, is considered one of the greatest American cookbooks ever […]

Ella Baker

Civil Rights & Activism

Ella Josephine Baker was the most important civil rights leader most people have never heard of. She worked behind the scenes for over five decades, organizing with the NAACP, co-founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference alongside Martin Luther King Jr., and mentoring the young activists of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. While others stood at […]

Ella Fitzgerald

Music

The First Lady of Song — Ella Fitzgerald's voice was a once-in-a-century instrument that mastered every genre from jazz to pop and set the standard for vocal excellence that still stands.

Emmett Till

Civil Rights & Activism

Emmett Louis Till was fourteen years old when he was lynched in Money, Mississippi, in August 1955, murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, made the agonizing decision to hold an open-casket funeral in Chicago, insisting the world see what hatred had done to her son. Tens of thousands filed […]

Ernest Everett Just

Science & Technology

A pioneering cell biologist whose groundbreaking research on egg fertilization was so far ahead of its time that the white scientific establishment refused to take it seriously — Ernest Just was one of America's most brilliant and tragic scientific minds.

Ethel Payne

Media & Entertainment

Ethel Lois Payne was known as the “First Lady of the Black Press” — a journalist whose pointed questions at White House press briefings made presidents uncomfortable and made history. As a correspondent and later columnist for the Chicago Defender, one of the most influential Black newspapers in America, she asked Eisenhower about civil rights […]

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