The People Who Paved the Way

Trailblazers

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

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Ralph Bunche

Ralph Bunche

Civil Rights & Activism

Ralph Johnson Bunche became the first African American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for successfully mediating the 1949 Arab-Israeli armistice agreements. A diplomat, scholar, and key architect of the United Nations, Bunche demonstrated that Black excellence had no borders — operating on the world stage at a time when he couldn’t eat […]
Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison

Literature

Ralph Waldo Ellison wrote one novel — Invisible Man, published in 1952 — and it was enough to secure his place as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century. The book won the National Book Award and has been consistently ranked among the greatest American novels ever written. Its opening line […]
Ray Charles

Ray Charles

Music

Ray Charles Robinson — Ray Charles — invented soul music by fusing the sacred sounds of the Black church with the secular rhythms of blues and jazz, a combination so audacious that some called it blasphemous and others recognized it as genius. His 1954 hit “I Got a Woman” took a gospel melody and put […]
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Reginald Lewis

Business & Entrepreneurship

The first African American to build a billion-dollar company — Reginald Lewis executed the largest leveraged buyout of an international company by a Black businessman and proved that Black excellence has no ceiling in the world of high finance.
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Richard Wright

Literature

Richard Nathaniel Wright wrote with a fury that forced white America to confront the reality of Black life in ways it had never been forced to before. His 1940 novel Native Son was the first book by a Black author to be selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club, and it sold 250,000 copies in its first […]
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Richelieu Dennis

Business & Entrepreneurship

Richelieu Dennis built Sundial Brands — the parent company of SheaMoisture and Nubian Heritage — from a folding table on 125th Street in Harlem into a natural beauty empire that he sold to Unilever in 2017 for an estimated $1.6 billion. Then he did something unusual: he used the proceeds to create the New Voices […]
Rihanna

Rihanna

Business & Entrepreneurship

Robyn Rihanna Fenty transcended music stardom to become one of the most successful entrepreneurs of her generation. Through Fenty Beauty, Savage X Fenty, and her broader portfolio, she built an enterprise valued over 1 billion dollars. Fenty Beauty launched in 2017 with 40 foundation shades, immediately exposing how the beauty industry had ignored darker skin […]
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Robert F. Smith

Business & Entrepreneurship

The wealthiest African American in history — Robert F. Smith built a private equity empire and stunned the world when he pledged to pay off the student loan debt of an entire graduating class at Morehouse College.
Robert L. Johnson

Robert L. Johnson

Business & Entrepreneurship

Robert Louis Johnson founded BET — Black Entertainment Television — in 1980 and built it into the first cable network targeting Black audiences, eventually selling it to Viacom in 2001 for approximately $3 billion. The sale made him the first Black billionaire in American history. BET changed the media landscape by proving that Black audiences […]
Robert Smalls

Robert Smalls

Politics & Law

An enslaved man who commandeered a Confederate warship and sailed his family to freedom — Robert Smalls became a war hero, businessman, and U.S. Congressman.
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Robin Roberts

Media & Entertainment

Robin René Roberts is co-anchor of Good Morning America — the most-watched morning news program in America — and one of the most trusted journalists in the country. She has anchored the show through some of the most significant news events of the twenty-first century while also publicly battling two life-threatening illnesses: breast cancer in […]
Romare Bearden

Romare Bearden

Arts & Culture

Romare Howard Bearden transformed the art of collage into a vehicle for telling the Black American story with unmatched visual poetry. His works — vibrant assemblages of cut paper, photographs, fabric, and paint — capture the rhythms of jazz, the rituals of the rural South, the energy of Harlem, and the spiritual depth of Black […]
Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks

Civil Rights & Activism

The mother of the civil rights movement — Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama sparked a revolution that changed America forever.
Ruby Bridges

Ruby Bridges

Civil Rights & Activism

Ruby Nell Bridges was six years old when she walked through a screaming mob of white protesters to become the first Black child to integrate an all-white elementary school in the Deep South. On November 14, 1960, flanked by four federal marshals, she walked into William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans and into history. […]
Ruby Dee

Ruby Dee

Media & Entertainment

Ruby Dee was an actress, poet, playwright, and civil rights activist whose career spanned eight decades and whose talent was matched only by her courage. She appeared in the original Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun, the landmark film adaptation alongside Sidney Poitier, and continued working until she was 91, earning an Academy […]
Ruth Carter

Ruth Carter

Arts & Culture

Ruth E. Carter is the most acclaimed costume designer in Hollywood history and the first Black person to win the Academy Award for Best Costume Design — which she won twice, for Black Panther in 2019 and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in 2023. Her work doesn’t just dress characters; it builds worlds, blending African traditions, […]
Ryan Coogler

Ryan Coogler

Media & Entertainment

Ryan Kyle Coogler directed Black Panther — the highest-grossing film by a Black director in history and a cultural event that transcended cinema. The 2018 Marvel film grossed $1.35 billion worldwide and was nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning three. It proved that a film centered on Black characters, Black culture, and African aesthetics could […]

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