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

Langston Hughes

The poet laureate of Black America — Langston Hughes gave voice to the beauty, struggle, and dreams of a people through jazz-inflected poetry that changed literature forever.

Leah Lange Chase — the Queen of Creole Cuisine — transformed Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in New Orleans into both a culinary institution and a civil rights landmark. During the 1950s and ’60s, when segregation laws made it illegal for Black and white people to eat together, Dooky Chase’s became the meeting place where civil rights […]

LeBron James

Sports

More than an athlete — LeBron James is a four-time NBA champion, billionaire entrepreneur, and community builder who opened a public school for at-risk children in his hometown of Akron.

Lena Horne

Music

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was the first Black woman to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio — and then spent her career fighting the industry that hired her. MGM signed her in 1942 but largely confined her to musical numbers that could be easily cut when films were shown in Southern theaters. […]

Lena Waithe

Media & Entertainment

Lena Waithe became the first Black woman to win a Primetime Emmy Award for comedy writing when she won for the “Thanksgiving” episode of Master of None in 2017 — an episode she wrote based on her own experience of coming out to her family. That single half-hour of television established her as one of […]

Lewis Howard Latimer

Science & Technology

Lewis Howard Latimer was the Renaissance man of the electrical age — an inventor, engineer, draftsman, poet, and painter who worked alongside the two greatest inventors of the nineteenth century: Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison. Latimer drafted the patent drawings for Bell’s telephone in 1876 and later developed the carbon filament that made Edison’s […]

Lisa Leslie

Sports

Lisa Leslie is a basketball legend who shattered barriers in women’s sports and became the first player to dunk in a WNBA game. A three-time WNBA MVP, four-time Olympic gold medalist, and two-time WNBA champion, Leslie was the most dominant player in women’s basketball for over a decade — and she did it all while […]

Lisa Price

Business & Entrepreneurship

Lisa Price started making hair and body products in her Brooklyn kitchen in 1993, mixing fragrances inspired by her love of music and her mother Carol. What began as a hobby sold at church flea markets became Carol’s Daughter — one of the most beloved and influential Black beauty brands in history. Price built the […]

Lonnie Johnson

Science & Technology

A NASA engineer who invented the Super Soaker — one of the top 20 bestselling toys of all time — and is now developing revolutionary clean energy technology that could change the world.

Lorraine Hansberry

Literature

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was 29 years old when A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway on March 11, 1959, making her the first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway and the youngest American playwright to win the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. The play — about a Black family’s struggle […]

Louis Armstrong

Music

Louis Armstrong didn’t just play jazz — he essentially invented what jazz solos could be. Born in New Orleans in 1901, he learned cornet at the Colored Waifs Home and became the most influential musician in jazz history. His recordings with the Hot Five and Hot Seven in the late 1920s are considered among the […]

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