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

Octavia Butler

Octavia Butler was the first Black woman to gain widespread recognition in science fiction, using the genre to explore race, gender, and power with unmatched daring. A shy child in Pasadena, she found in sci-fi a space to imagine worlds unconstrained by reality. Kindred (1979) sent a modern Black woman to the antebellum South. The […]

Opal Lee

Civil Rights & Activism

Opal Lee — the “Grandmother of Juneteenth” — walked from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C., at the age of 89 to campaign for making Juneteenth a federal holiday. She walked two and a half miles each day — symbolizing the two and a half years it took for enslaved people in Texas to learn […]

Opal Tometi

Civil Rights & Activism

Opal Ayo Tometi co-founded the Black Lives Matter Global Network alongside Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors in 2013 — building the digital infrastructure and organizational framework that transformed a hashtag into the largest social movement in American history. As a writer, strategist, and human rights advocate, Tometi brought her experience in immigration justice and international […]

Oprah Winfrey

Media & Entertainment

From rural poverty to media mogul — Oprah Winfrey became the most influential woman in television history, building a billion-dollar empire while lifting millions through the power of storytelling and empathy.

Oscar Micheaux

Media & Entertainment

Oscar Devereaux Micheaux was the first major Black filmmaker in America — a self-taught writer, director, producer, and distributor who made over 40 films between 1919 and 1948, creating a parallel Black cinema industry when Hollywood offered nothing but degrading stereotypes. His 1919 film The Homesteader was the first feature-length film produced by a Black […]

Ossie Davis

Media & Entertainment

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee were the first couple of Black theater — artists, activists, and partners whose work on stage, screen, and in the civil rights movement spanned six decades. Davis was an actor, director, playwright, and activist whose eulogy for Malcolm X in 1965 remains one of the most powerful pieces of oratory […]

Otis Boykin

Science & Technology

Otis Frank Boykin invented the precision resistor that made the implantable cardiac pacemaker possible — a device that has saved millions of lives worldwide. His improved electrical resistors were also used in guided missiles, computers, and radios, making him one of the most consequential Black inventors of the twentieth century, even as his name remained […]

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Trailblazers

Octavia Butler

Opal Lee

Opal Tometi

Oprah Winfrey

Oscar Micheaux

Ossie Davis

Otis Boykin

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