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30 Black Americans To Celebrate During Black History Month, Juneteenth and Beyond
1. Claudette Colvin
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2. Robert Sengstacke Abbott
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3. Shirley Chisholm
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Hailed as one of the most influential Black media publishers, Johnson got his start working for Supreme Life Insurance Company collecting weekly news clippings for his manager, which sparked his idea for his first publication, Negro Digest. In 1942, with a $500 loan and $6,000 raised through subscriptions, Johnson launched his dream project, which later became Black World. Three years later, he launched Ebony. In 1951, he created Jet, a weekly news magazine featuring the Jet Beauty of the Week. Johnson also expanded from magazines into book publishing and owned Fashion Fair Cosmetics, the premier cosmetics company that catered to darker skin tones before there was Fenty.
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5. Dorothy Height
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6. Don Cornelius
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With a distinctive baritone and demanding stature, Don Cornelius helped to shift Black culture into the spotlight with the creation of the show Soul Train. The "Hippest Trip in America" was picked up for national syndication in 1971, with its first episode featuring performers Gladys Knight & The Pips, Eddie Kendricks, Bobby Hutton and Honey Cone. The dance show exposed Black acts to a larger national audience, featuring Soul Train dancers, the Scramble Board, the Soul Train Line and Cornelius' famous catchphrase "Love, Peace and Soul." The combination of performances and interviews proved to be a formula that worked. The show is one of the longest-running syndicated shows that ran until 2006.
7. Alice Coachman
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The landscape of Hollywood has the work of many Black women, including Ava DuVernay, Issa Rae and Shonda Rhimes, to name a few. Maria P. Williams paved the way as the first Black woman to produce, write and act in her own silent crime movie in 1923, The Flames of Wrath. To distribute the film, she formed the Western Film Producing Company and Booking Exchange with her husband. The former Kansas City teacher was also an activist and detailed her leadership skills in her 1916 book, My Work and Public Sentiment.
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9. Ethel Waters
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Ethel Waters first entered the entertainment business in the 1920s as a blues singer before making history. Waters was the first to integrate Broadway, appearing in Irving Berlin's As Thousands Cheer, and eventually became the highest-paid performer on Broadway. In addition to becoming the first African American to star in her own television variety show in 1939, The Ethel Waters Show., she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the film Pinky in 1950. Also in 1950, Waters was the first Black actress to star in a television series, Beulah, which aired on ABC. In 1962, she became the first African American woman to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by a Leading Lady for the show Route 66.
10. Bayard Rustin
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11. Ruby Bridges
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Ruby Bridges was the first African American child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis on November 14, 1960. She was six years old at the time. Despite intimidation and discrimination, Bridges never missed a day of school. Bridges has written two books on her experience and has been honored with the Carter G. Woodson Book Award. In 1999, she also set up The Ruby Bridges Foundation to promote equality in education. Bridges is also a lifelong activist for racial equality. In 1999, Ruby established The Ruby Bridges Foundation to promote tolerance and create change through education. In 2000, she was made an honorary deputy marshal in a ceremony in Washington, DC.
12. Gordon Parks
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Gordon Parks was one of the most prolific figures behind a camera in the 20th century. His photojournalism from the 1940s through the 1970s captured aspects of American life, including issues like civil rights, poverty and race relations. Parks was the first African American on the staff of LIFE magazine, and he was also responsible for some of the most beautiful imagery in the pages of Ebony, Glamour and Vogue. He later went on to co-found Essence magazine. In 1969, Parks became the first African American to write and direct a major Hollywood studio feature film, The Learning Tree, based on his bestselling semi-autobiographical novel. His next film, Shaft, helped to shape the blaxploitation era in the '70s. Parks once said: "I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera."
13. Madam C.J. Walker
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While Madam C.J. Walker may be known as the first Black female millionaire, she didn't get there without the likes of her employer, Annie Turnbo Malone, who was also a millionaire. Her contributions to the hair care industry have been overshadowed by Walker's success. Malone was a chemist and entrepreneur. She developed a hair product to straighten African American women's hair without damaging it and eventually created a line of hair care and beauty products. She and her assistants sold the products door to door, giving demonstrations before business took off after the World Fair in 1904. Malone established Poro College, a cosmetology school and training center in St. Louis in 1918. She had thirty-two branches of the school throughout the country in the mid-50s.
15. Alvin Ailey
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Alvin Ailey was an acclaimed dancer and choreographer who earned global recognition for his impact on modern dance. After honing his technique at the Lester Horton Dance Theater and acting as its director until its 1954 disbandment, Ailey had the desire to choreograph his own ballets and works that differed from the traditional pieces of the time. This inspired him to start the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1958, a multiracial troupe that provided a platform for talented Black dancers and traveled around the world. His most popular piece, "Revelations," is an ode to the Southern Black Church. He died in 1989, but in 2014, he posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor, in recognition of his contributions and commitment to civil rights and dance in America.
16. Ella Baker
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17. Mae Jemison
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Mae Jemison was the first African American woman who orbited into space aboard the shuttle Endeavour in 1992. The team made 127 orbits around the Earth over the course of eight days. Jemison is also a physician, teacher, a Peace Corps volunteer and president of a tech company, the Jemison Group. She continues to work towards the advancement of young women of color, getting more involved in technology, engineering and math careers.
18. Sister Rosetta Tharpe
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Max Robinson became the first Black person to anchor the nightly network news in 1978. Robinson got his start in 1959 when he was hired to read the news at a station in Portsmouth, Virginia. The station owner hired him as a news-reader but was told he couldn't show his face. When Robinson protested, he was fired. He moved to Washington to work as a reporter and later co-anchored the evening news, making him the first Black anchor in a major U.S. city. ABC News took notice and named him one of three co-anchors on World News Tonight. He was also one of the 44 founders of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ).
20. Dr. Patricia Bath
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Dr. Patricia Bath, an ophthalmologist and laser scientist, was not only the first female African-American doctor to patent a medical device but also the first person to invent a surgery that greatly advanced treatment for cataracts. Dr. Bath invented the Laserphaco Probe in 1981, which used lasers to treat cataracts more precisely and less painfully. The invention was able to recover vision for people who had been blind or vision impaired for decades.
21. Ethel L. Payne
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Fritz Pollard was the first African American head coach in the National Football League (NFL). He was 5 feet, 9 inches and 165 pounds, what most would consider small for the sport. He attended Brown University and was the school's first Black player. After serving in World War I, he joined the Akron Pros of the American Professional Football Association, which later became the NFL. He was one of only two Black players in the league. In 1921, while still playing, the team named him its coach. Over the course of his career, he coached four different teams and founded a Chicago football team of all African American players. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005.
23. Maya Angelou
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After being diagnosed with cervical cancer at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1951, a sample of Lacks's cancer cells was taken without her consent by a researcher. She died later that year at 31 years old. Her cells would go on to advance medical research for years to come, as they had the unique ability to double every 20-24 hours. "They have been used to test the effects of radiation and poisons, to study the human genome, to learn more about how viruses work and played a crucial role in the development of the polio vaccine," Johns Hopkins said.
25. Wally Amos
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Ida B. Wells was an African American journalist, abolitionist and feminist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s. She owned the newspaper The Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and was a vocal critic of segregated schools. Later, she became active in the anti-lynching campaign in 1892 after multiple friends were lynched, according to the National Park Service, even visiting the White House to advocate for reforms. In 1896, she formed the National Association of Colored Women. Wells is also considered a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Most recently, Wells was immortalized with a Barbie doll modeled after her.
27. Jesse Owens
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28. Bessie Coleman
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Rebecca Lee Crumpler was the first Black female doctor in the United States. After attending the prestigious Massachusetts private school West-Newton English and Classical School, she worked as a nurse for eight years until applying to medical school in 1860 at the New England Female Medical College. PBS reported that she worked as a physician for the Freedmen's Bureau for the State of Virginia. She later practiced in Boston's predominantly Black neighborhood at the time, Beacon Hill and published A Book of Medical Discourses in Two Parts.
30. Marsha P. Johnson
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