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Jupiter Hammon
Jupiter Hammon, the first published African American poet, was born into slavery at Henry Lloyd’s estate on Lloyd Neck, Long Island, New York. Hammon was purportedly allowed access to the manor library and was educated with the estate owner’s children, even working with Henry Lloyd in his business ventures. After Lloyd’s death, he lived with his son, Joseph Lloyd. -
Richard Allen
Richard Allen (February 14, 1760 – March 26, 1831) was a minister, educator, writer, and one of America's most active and influential black leaders. In 1794, he founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent black denomination in the United States. He opened his first AME church in 1794 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. -
George Horton
Born a slave on William Horton’s tobacco plantation, George Moses Horton taught himself to read. Around 1815 he began composing poems in his head, saying them aloud and “selling” them to an increasingly large crowd of buyers at the weekly Chapel Hill farmers market. Students at the nearby University of North Carolina bought his love poems and lent him books. -
Norbet Rilleux
Norbert Rillieux (1806-1894), widely considered to be one of the earliest chemical engineers, revolutionized sugar processing with the invention of the multiple effect evaporator under vacuum. -
Henry Blair
Henry Blair (1807–1860) was the second African American inventor to receive a patent. He was born in Glen Ross, Maryland, United States in 1807. His first invention was the Seed-Planter -
Frederick Douglas
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. -
Jan Matzeliger
Jan Ernst Matzeliger was an inventor of Surinamese and Dutch descent best known for patenting the shoe lasting machine, which made footwear more affordable. -
WEB Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois February 23, 1868 August 27 1963) was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community, and after completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. -
Robert Abbott
Robert Sengstacke Abbott (November 24, 1870 – February 29, 1940[4]) was an African-American lawyer, newspaper publisher and editor. Abbott founded The Chicago Defender in 1905, which grew to have the highest circulation of any black-owned newspaper in the country. -
Mary Bethune
Mary Jane McLeod Bethune (born Mary Jane McLeod; July 10, 1875 – May 18, 1955) was an American educator, stateswoman, philanthropist, humanitarian, and civil rights activist best known for starting a private school for African-American students in Daytona Beach, Florida and co-founding UNCF on April 25, 1944 with William Trent and Frederick D. Patterson. -
Garrett Morgan
(March 4, 1877 [sometimes given as 1879] – July 27, 1963) was an African American inventor and businessman as well as an influential political leader. Morgan's most notable invention was the gas mask originally named "smoke hood". Morgan also discovered and developed a chemical hair-processing and straightening solution. -
Percy Julian
A steroid chemist and an entrepreneur, Percy Julian ingeniously figured out how to synthesize important medicinal compounds from abundant plant sources, making them more affordable to mass-produce. -
Louis Armstrong
Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed Satchmo,Satch, and Pops,was an American trumpeter, composer, vocalist and occasional actor who was one of the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and different eras in the history of jazz.[ -
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American lawyer, serving as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African-American justice. Prior to his judicial service, he successfully argued several cases before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education. -
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The United States Congress has called her "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". -
Nelson Mandela
Rolihlahla Mandela was born into the Madiba clan in the village of Mvezo, in the Eastern Cape, on 18 July 1918. His mother was Nonqaphi Nosekeni and his father was Nkosi Mphakanyiswa Gadla Mandela, principal counsellor to the Acting King of the Thembu people, Jongintaba Dalindyebo. In 1930, when he was 12 years old, his father died and the young Rolihlahla became a ward of Jongintaba at the Great Place in Mqhekezweni. -
Shirley Chisholm
Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was the first African American woman in Congress (1968) and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties (1972). Her motto and title of her autobiography—Unbossed and Unbought—illustrated her outspoken advocacy for women and minorities during her seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. -
June Jordan
One of the most widely-published and highly-acclaimed African American writers of her generation, poet, playwright and essayist June Jordan was known for her fierce commitment to human rights and political activism. -
Marva Collins
Marva Delores Collins was an American educator who started Westside Preparatory School in the impoverished Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago in 1975. -
Mohammed Ali
Muhammad Ali ( born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016) was an American professional boxer, activist, and philanthropist. Nicknamed "The Greatest", he is widely regarded as one of the most significant and celebrated sports figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest boxers of all time. -
Alice Walker
Alice Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist. She wrote the novel The Color Purple (1982), for which she won the National Book Award for hardcover fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[2][3] She also wrote the novels Meridian (1976) and The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), among other works. -
Michael Jordan
Michael Jeffrey Jordan (born February 17, 1963), also known by his initials, MJ,is an American former professional basketball player. His biography on the official NBA website states: "By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time." Jordan was one of the most effectively marketed athletes of his generation and was considered instrumental in popularizing the NBA around the world in the 1980s and 1990s. -
Tiger Woods
ldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods (born December 30, 1975) is an American professional golfer who is among the most successful golfers of all time, and one of the most popular athletes of the 21st century. He has been one of the highest-paid athletes in the world for several years.Woods is generally considered one of the greatest golfers of all time.[ -
Duke Ellington
Born in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. Although widely considered to have been a pivotal figure in the history of jazz, Ellington embraced the phrase "beyond category" as a liberating principle and referred to his music as part of the more general category of American Music rather than to a musical genre such as jazz.