Bryan Stevenson: Justice System Reformer
“Each person in our society is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done.” This is one of Bryan Stevenson’s core beliefs. Stevenson is...
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Ordinary people can do extradorinary things
Melanie Campbell: Making Sure Black Women Aren’t Invisible
On Christmas Eve in 1951, the Ku Klux Klan in Mims, Florida took a torch to the home of NAACP activists Harry and Harriette Moore. The...
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Emmanuel Acho: Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man
Emmanuel Acho’s parents emigrated from Nigeria and raised their four children in Dallas, Texas. From a young age, they instilled in him a...
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Dr. Kizzmekia S. Corbett: Developer of the prototype for the Moderna Covid-19 Vaccine
At the ripe old age of thirty-four, Dr. Kizzmekia S. Corbett used her skills as a viral immunologist to alter the course of a world-wide...
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Amanda Gorman: Youth Poet Laureate and Activist
At the age of twenty-four, Amanda Gorman has the awareness and wisdom of a woman three times her age. Born in the Watts neighborhood of...
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Marva Collins: Revolutionary Teacher of the “Unteachable”
Marva Collins became a teacher out of necessity. Growing up in segregated Alabama in the wake of the Depression, she attended a one-room...
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Steve Henson: Creator of Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing
In 1949, thirty-one year old Steve Henson and his wife, Gayle, decided to leave their home in Nebraska and head off for the unknown in...
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Joyce Ardell Jackson and Brad Lomax: Disability Rights Activists
The 1950s and 1960s saw hard earned gains in civil rights legislation. Despite enormous opposition from Deep South states, civil rights...
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Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson: NASA’s Hidden Figures
Many of the women profiled so far faced both racism and the added burden of sexism. Given the opportunity, women proved they could be...
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Edward W. Brooke, III: First Black U.S. Senator
Edward W. Brooke was born in 1919 to a middle-class family in Washington, D.C. His father was a lawyer, so the family’s income and...
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Lucille and Ruby Bridges: First Black Child to Integrate a White Elementary School
When The U.S. Supreme Court struck down school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the impact was initially both...
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The Deacons for Defense and Justice: Armed Protectors of Civil Rights
If you grew up Black in the South during the Jim Crow era, it was virtually guaranteed that in addition to experiencing discrimination...
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Georgia Gilmore: Food Activist Who Fed the Montgomery Boycotters
In 1955, a thirty-six year old single mother of six boarded a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. After she dropped her coins into the...
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Fannie Lou Hamer: The woman who was sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Fannie Lou Hamer was the youngest of twenty children, born to Mississippi sharecroppers in 1917. Even though Polio left her with a limp,...
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Bayard Rustin: Master Organizer for Civil Rights, Gay Rights and Human Rights
An entire year could be spent profiling the hundreds of civil rights leaders who worked tirelessly for abolition, desegregation, and...
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Charles Hamilton Houston: The Man Who Killed Jim Crow
As a child born to a middle-class family in 1895, Charles Hamilton Houston already had advantages that most Black children could only...
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Dorothy Dandridge: First Black Woman Nominated for Best Actress Academy Award
We’d love to have a full month profiling courageous people who broke down barriers and succeeded against all odds. But what makes stories...
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John Oliver Killens:Founding Member of the Harlem Writer’s Guild
If you’ve ever used the phrase “Kicking ass and taking names,” you have John Oliver Killens to thank for putting your feelings into...
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Dr. Charles Drew: Creator of the Life Saving Blood Bank
When Charles Drew was born in Washington, D.C. in 1904, school attendance wasn’t required. It wouldn’t become compulsory for another...
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Annie Turnbo Malone and Madam CJ Walker: Self-Made Millionaires
In 1896, the Supreme Court’s Plessy vs. Ferguson decision upheld Jim Crow laws, creating the “separate but equal” doctrine that would be...
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Paul R. Williams: Architect to the Stars
What do the homes of Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, Barbara Stanwyck and the public housing project of Langston Terrace in Washington, D.C....
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Mary McLeod Bethune: Teacher, College Founder, FDR Advisor, UN Representative and Unstoppable Force
In 1875, Mary McLeod was the fifteenth of seventeen children born to parents Samuel and Patsy, who’d been enslaved in South Carolina....
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Granville Woods: The “Black Thomas Edison”
Referred to as the “Black Thomas Edison,” Granville Woods held over sixty patents in his lifetime. Thanks to the Northwest Ordinance of...
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Rebecca Lee Crumpler: America’s First Female African American Doctor
When the letters M.D. were added to Rebecca Lee’s name in 1864, some people snarkily mused that it stood for “mule driver.” In reality,...
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Mary Walker: A formerly enslaved woman who learned to read at 116
Mary Walker was born enslaved in Alabama in 1848. Freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, Mary married, had children, and earned a living...
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Mary Lumpkin: Founder of the country’s first HBCU
If you’ve ever driven through Richmond, Virginia along I-95, you’ve no doubt noticed one of the city’s most visible landmarks: the...
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Lemuel Haynes: First Black Ordained Minister
Born in 1753 In West Hartford, Connecticut to a white woman “of some standing” and an unnamed African American man, Lemuel Haynes was the...
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Carter G. Woodson: The Father of Black History Month
“If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in...
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