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

Halle Berry

Halle Maria Berry became the first Black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress on March 24, 2002, for her performance in Monster’s Ball. Her tearful acceptance speech — “This moment is so much bigger than me” — acknowledged the generations of Black actresses who had been denied the recognition they deserved. Over […]

Hank Aaron

Sports

Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron held the Major League Baseball all-time home run record for 33 years — 755 home runs hit with a quiet consistency that was the antithesis of spectacle but the essence of greatness. When he broke Babe Ruth’s record on April 8, 1974, he did so while receiving death threats so serious […]

Harriet Tubman

Civil Rights & Activism

Known as the Moses of her people, Harriet Tubman escaped slavery and returned south 13 times to lead approximately 70 enslaved people to freedom through the Underground Railroad.

Harry Belafonte

Media & Entertainment

Harold George Belafonte Jr. was an entertainer who used his fame as a weapon for justice with more consistency and courage than perhaps any other artist in American history. His 1956 album Calypso was the first LP by a single artist to sell over a million copies. But Belafonte would have traded every record sale […]

Hattie McDaniel

Arts & Culture

Hattie McDaniel became the first Black person to win an Academy Award when she received Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mammy in “Gone with the Wind” in 1940. She accepted the award at a segregated ceremony — seated at a small table at the back of the room, away from her castmates. McDaniel […]

Hebru Brantley

Arts & Culture

Hebru Brantley creates Black superheroes. His signature characters — Flyboy, a goggled young aviator, and Lil Mama, his fearless companion — populate a vibrant Afrofuturist universe rendered in bold colors, graphic lines, and a visual language that draws equally from comic books, street art, Japanese anime, and the legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen. In Brantley’s […]

Herman J. Russell

Business & Entrepreneurship

Herman Jerome Russell built the largest Black-owned construction company in America and quietly became one of the most influential power brokers in Atlanta — a city he helped construct, literally and figuratively. H.J. Russell & Company built the Georgia Dome, Hartsfield-Jackson Airport terminals, the Carter Presidential Center, and dozens of other landmarks. At its peak, […]

Hiram Revels

Politics & Law

Hiram Rhodes Revels was the first Black member of the United States Congress — elected to the U.S. Senate from Mississippi in 1870, during Reconstruction. He occupied the seat previously held by Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, making his election one of the most symbolically powerful moments in American history. A formerly enslaved […]

Huey P. Newton

Civil Rights & Activism

Huey Percy Newton co-founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in October 1966 alongside Bobby Seale in Oakland, California. What began as armed citizen patrols monitoring police brutality evolved into one of the most significant political organizations of the twentieth century, with chapters across the nation and revolutionary community programs that included free breakfasts, health […]

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