“The Pan African History is a History of Overcoming and Perseverance”

Africa - Europe – Caribbean – South America
Central America – North America

Researching the Diaspora’s Culture and History
– “Village by Village!”

​Who's Who in African American History

People of African Descent have greatly contributed to the achievements of cultures across the globe. Wherever man dwells, Africa’s people have, directly or indirectly, contributed to that advancement. The world has limited knowledge of and ignores the countless historical achievements of many Black men and women who faced enslavement, violence, and prejudice on their roads to greatness. From early inventors, authors, and entrepreneurs to civil rights activists and politicians, the scope of Black history is far older and more significant than the March on Washington or “I Have a Dream.”
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Pan African History began with these words,
                                        “In The Beginning!”
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The names in Pan African Cultural Heritage ‘Who’s Who’ section of the Pan African Cultural Heritage Library are also a small sample of the known ancestors.  All efforts will be made to search for and post credible information about the People and Achievers of Pan Africa!

A
Kyle Abraham
American dancer and choreographer

Kyle Abraham, (born August 14, 1977, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.), American contemporary dancer and choreographer who founded (2006) the company Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion (A/I/M; later A.I.M.). He was a master at mixing hip-hop, street, and modern dance styles.

Abraham grew up in a middle-class African American neighbourhood in Pittsburgh. He began dancing when he was cast in a high-school musical. Having discovered his vocation late in life—for a dancer—Abraham decided to become a choreographer rather than a performer, although he was to excel at both professions. After earning a B.F.A....more

Cannonball Adderley
American musician

Cannonball Adderley, byname of Julian Edwin Adderley, (born September 15, 1928, Tampa, Florida, U.S.—died August 8, 1975, Gary, Indiana), one of the most prominent and popular American jazz musicians of the 1950s and ’60s whose exuberant music was firmly in the bop school but which also employed the melodic sense of traditional jazz. A multi-instrumentalist, Adderley is best-known for his work on alto saxophone and for his recordings with Miles Davis and with his own small groups...more

King Sunny Ade
Nigerian musician

King Sunny Ade, original name Sunday Adeniyi, (born September 22, 1946, Oshogbo, Nigeria), Nigerian popular musician in the vanguard of the development and international popularization of juju music—a fusion of traditional Yoruba vocal forms and percussion with Western rock and roll...more

Shaun Alexander
American football player

Shaun Alexander, (born Aug. 30, 1977, Florence, Ky., U.S.), American professional gridiron football player who was one of the most prolific touchdown scorers in National Football League (NFL) history.

Named a high-school All-American by Parade magazine and USA Today in 1995, Alexander earned the nickname “Mr. Touchdown” early in his career. He went on to star at the University of Alabama (1996–99), where ...more

Gene Ammons
American musician

Gene Ammons, byname Jug, original name Eugene Ammons, (born April 14, 1925, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died August 6, 1974, Chicago), American jazz tenor saxophonist, noted for his big sound and blues-inflected, “soulful” improvising.

The son of outstanding boogie-woogie pianist Albert Ammons, Gene Ammons grew up in Chicago and first became nationally known as a member of Billy Eckstine’s innovative bebop big band during 1944–47; he also played in Woody Herman’s big band (1949). He and...more

Henry Armstrong
American boxer

Henry Armstrong, original name Henry Jackson, (born December 12, 1912, Columbus, Mississippi, U.S.—died October 24, 1988, Los Angeles, California), American boxer, the only professional boxer to hold world championship titles in three weight divisions simultaneously.

Armstrong fought as an amateur from 1929 to 1932. Early in his career he boxed under the name Melody Jackson. He first won the featherweight (126-pound) title by knocking out Petey Sarron in six rounds on October 29, 1937. On May 31, 1938, he took the...more

Owen Arthur
prime minister of Barbados

Owen Arthur, in full Owen Seymour Arthur, (born October 17, 1949, Barbados—died July 27, 2020, Bridgetown), Barbadian politician who served as prime minister (1994–2008) of Barbados. His economic policies significantly cut unemployment and won his party near-total control of the House of Assembly.
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Arthur was raised in the parish (subregion) of St. Peter. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and history (1971) at the University of the West Indies (UWI) campus in...more

B
Pearl Bailey
American entertainer

Pearl Bailey, in full Pearl Mae Bailey, (born March 29, 1918, Newport News, Va., U.S.—died Aug. 17, 1990, Philadelphia, Pa.), American entertainer notable for her sultry singing and mischievous humour.

Bailey, Pearl Bailey was the daughter of the Rev. Joseph James Bailey, and she attributed much of her vocal ability to her childhood singing in church. At the age of 15 she quit her high school in Philadelphia for a career as a singer and dancer. She appeared in cafés, nightclubs, and theatres in northeastern American cities, and at times she sang with big bands,..more

James Baldwin
American author

James Baldwin, in full James Arthur Baldwin, (born August 2, 1924, New York, New York—died December 1, 1987, Saint-Paul, France), American essayist, novelist, and playwright whose eloquence and passion on the subject of race in America made him an important voice, particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the United States and, later, through much of western Europe.

The eldest of nine children, he grew up in poverty in the Black ghetto of Harlem in New York City. From age 14 to 16 he was active during out-of-school hours as a preacher in a...more

Benjamin Banneker
American scientist

Benjamin Banneker, (born November 9, 1731, Banneky farm [now in Oella], Maryland [U.S.]—died October 19? [see Researcher’s Note], 1806, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.), mathematician, astronomer, compiler of almanacs, inventor, and writer, one of the first important African American intellectuals.

Banneker, a freeman, was raised on a farm near Baltimore that he would eventually inherit from his father. Although he periodically attended a one-room Quaker schoolhouse, Banneker was largely self-educated and did much of his learning through the voracious reading of borrowed books. Early on he demonstrated a particular facility for mathematics...more

Amiri Baraka
American writer

Amiri Baraka, also called Imamu Amiri Baraka, original name Everett Leroy Jones, called Leroy Jones, Leroy later changed to LeRoi, (born October 7, 1934, Newark, New Jersey, U.S.—died January 9, 2014, Newark), American poet and playwright who published provocative works that assiduously presented the experiences and suppressed anger of Black Americans in a white-dominated society.

After graduating from Howard University (B.A., 1953), Jones served in the U.S. Air Force but was dishonourably discharged after three years because he was suspected (wrongly at that time) of having communist affiliations. He attended graduate school at Columbia University, New York City, and founded (1958) the poetry magazine Yugen, which published the work of Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac;...more

Janie Porter Barrett
American welfare worker and educator

Janie Porter Barrett, née Janie Porter, (born Aug. 9, 1865, Athens, Ga., U.S.—died Aug. 27, 1948, Hampton, Va.), American welfare worker and educator who developed a school to rehabilitate previously incarcerated African-American girls by improving their self-reliance and discipline.

The daughter of former slaves, Barrett grew up largely in the home of the cultured white family who employed her mother. She graduated from Hampton Institute in Hampton, Va., in 1884 and worked for five years as a teacher before establishing an informal day-care school in her home in Hampton. Her school grew rapidly, and in 1890 it was formally organized as the Locust Street Social Settlement, the nation’s first settlement house for African-Americans. In 1902 she and her husband built a separate structure on their property to house the settlement’s numerous activities, which included clubs, classes in domestic skills, and recreation; many of these activities were funded by Northern philanthropists....more

Count Basie
American musician

Count Basie, orig. William Allen Basie, (born Aug. 21, 1904, Red Bank, N.J., U.S.—died April 26, 1984, Hollywood, Fla.), U.S. jazz pianist and bandleader. Basie was influenced by the Harlem pianists James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. In Kansas City in 1936 he formed his own band, which became known as the most refined exponent of swing. Its rhythm section was noted for its lightness, precision, and relaxation; on this foundation, the brass and reed sections developed a vocabulary of riffs and motifs. Their hit recordings included “One O’Clock Jump” and “Jumpin’ at the Woodside.” Basie’s piano style became increasingly spare and economical. His soloists included singer Jimmy Rushing, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry (“Sweets”) Edison, and saxophonist Lester Young.
​Basie’s reorganized band of the 1950s placed greater emphasis on ensemble work and developed a more powerful style built from the riffs and buoyant rhythm of the earlier group. The band achieved renewed popularity for recordings featuring vocalist Joe Williams...more

Lucius Christopher Bates
American publisher and civil rights leader

Lucius Christopher Bates, (born 1901, Mississippi, U.S.—died August 22, 1980, Little Rock, Arkansas), African American newspaper publisher and civil rights leader.

Bates was the publisher of the Arkansas State Press, a weekly pro-civil rights newspaper. In 1957, after Governor Orval Faubus called out the state’s National Guard in an attempt to thwart the racial integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, Bates and his wife, Daisy, ushered nine African American students into the school with the aid of federal troops...more

Kathleen Battle
American opera singer

Kathleen Battle, in full Kathleen Deanne Battle, (born Aug. 13, 1948, Portsmouth, Ohio, U.S.), American opera singer, among the finest coloratura sopranos of her time.

As a child and young adult Battle was both a good student and a good singer. She was awarded a scholarship to the University of Cincinnati College–Conservatory of Music in Ohio, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music education. ..more

Robert Battle
American dancer and choreographer 

Robert Battle, (born August 28, 1972, Miami, Florida, U.S.), American dancer and choreographer who was the artistic director (2011– ) of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Battle, who was raised by his great-uncle and his cousin, studied dance under Daniel Lewis and Gerri Houlihan at the New World School of the Arts, a respected arts high school in Miami. After graduation he studied at the Juilliard School in New York City, where the former Paul Taylor Dance Company star Carolyn Adams became his mentor. ..more

Dean Baquet
American journalist

Dean Baquet, (born September 21, 1956, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.), American journalist who was the first African American to serve (2014–22) as executive editor of The New York Times.

Baquet was raised in the historic Treme neighbourhood of New Orleans. A member of one of the city’s famed restaurant families, he routinely mopped the floor of his family’s Creole diner in the mornings before attending classes at St. Augustine High School. Baquet majored in English literature (1974–78) at Columbia University, New York City, but he never graduated. Instead, during a summer break from his college studies, he took an internship with his hometown’s afternoon newspaper, the States-Item; the job eventually became a full-time position. After Baquet worked in New Orleans for nearly a decade, he moved (1984) to the Chicago Tribune as its deputy metropolitan editor and chief investigative reporter. Four years later he won a Pulitzer Prize for leading a team of three other reporters whose exposé unearthed corruption in the Chicago city council...more

Elgin Baylor
American basketball player

Elgin Baylor, (born September 16, 1934, Washington, D.C., U.S.—died March 22, 2021, Los Angeles, California), American professional basketball player who is regarded as one of the game’s greatest forwards. His graceful style enabled him to score and rebound with seeming ease.

Baylor, 6 feet 5 inches (1.96 metres) tall, was an All-American (1958) at Seattle University, where he played from 1955 to 1958, guiding the team to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship tournament finals in 1958...more

Bob Beamon
American athlete

Bob Beamon, (born August 29, 1946, Bronx, New York, U.S.), American long jumper, who set a world record of 8.90 metres (29.2 feet) at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. The new record surpassed the existing mark by an astounding 55 cm (21.65 inches) and stood for 23 years, until Mike Powell of the United States surpassed it in 1991.

Beamon began jumping at Jamaica High School (Long Island, New York). He attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College (Greensboro), the University of Texas at El Paso, and Adelphi University (Long Island), where he also played basketball...more

Louise Beavers
American actress

Louise Beavers, (born March 8, 1902, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.—died Oct. 26, 1962, Hollywood, Calif.), African American film and television actress known for her character roles.

Beavers first drew attention as part of an act known as the Lady Minstrels. Despite her theatrical abilities and inclinations, she went to Hollywood not as a performer but as the maid of actress Leatrice Joy. She soon, however, appeared on the silver screen, making her feature debut in Gold Diggers (1923). She continued to act in other silent films such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1927)...more

Regina Benjamin
American physician and government official

Regina Benjamin, (born October 26, 1956, Mobile, Alabama, U.S.), American physician who served as the 18th surgeon general of the United States (2009–13). Prior to her government appointment, she had spent most of her medical career serving poor families in a shrimping village on the Gulf Coast of Alabama.

Benjamin received a B.S. (1979) from Xavier University of Louisiana. After first attending (1980–82) the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, Benjamin obtained an M.D. (1984) from the University of Alabama and completed a residency in family practice at the Medical Center of Central Georgia in 1987. ...more

Chuck Berry
American musician

Chuck Berry, in full Charles Edward Anderson Berry, (born October 18, 1926, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.—died March 18, 2017, St. Charles county, Missouri), American singer, songwriter, and guitarist who was one of the most popular and influential performers in rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll music in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s.

Raised in a working-class African American neighbourhood on the north side of the highly segregated city of St. Louis, Berry grew up in a family proud of its African American and Native American ancestry. He gained early exposure to music through his family’s participation in the choir of the Antioch Baptist Church, through the blues and country-western music he heard on the radio, and through music classes, especially at Sumner High School....more

Halle Berry
American actress

Halle Berry, (born August 14, 1966, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.), American film actress, the first African American to win the Academy Award for best actress. She received the honour for her nuanced portrayal of Leticia Musgrove, a down-on-her-luck character in Monster’s Ball (2001).

Berry was a teenage finalist in national beauty pageants, worked in modeling, and began acting on television in 1989. Film roles in Jungle Fever (1991), directed by Spike Lee, and in Boomerang (1992), starring Eddie Murphy, first brought her notice. She starred with Jessica Lange in Losing Isaiah (1995), a drama about adoption, before earning acclaim for her portrayal of film star Dorothy Dandridge, the first African American to be nominated for a best-actress Oscar, in the television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999)....more

Beyoncé
American singer

Beyoncé, in full Beyoncé Giselle Knowles, (born September 4, 1981, Houston, Texas, U.S.), American singer-songwriter and actress who achieved fame in the late 1990s as the lead singer of the R&B group Destiny’s Child and then launched a hugely successful solo career...more

Edward Joseph Blackwell
American musician

Edward Joseph Blackwell, (born Oct. 10, 1929, New Orleans, La., U.S.—died Oct. 7, 1992, Hartford, Conn.), American jazz drummer who was known for his role in the development of free jazz beginning in the 1960s.

Blackwell played with rhythm-and-blues groups in New Orleans, where he was influenced by the city’s musical tradition and by such drummers as Paul Barbarin. From 1951 Blackwell lived in Los Angeles and performed with saxophonist Ornette Coleman, before moving to New York City in 1960 to become the regular drummer in Coleman’s quartet, which was at the forefront of the free jazz movement. Blackwell also performed with a number of other avant-garde musicians, including trumpeter Don Cherry and a group headed by trumpeter Booker Little and saxophonist Eric Dolphy...more

Art Blakey
American musician

Art Blakey, also called Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, (born October 11, 1919, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died October 16, 1990, New York, New York), American drummer and bandleader noted for his extraordinary drum solos, which helped define the offshoot of bebop known as “hard bop” and gave the drums a significant solo status. His style was characterized by thunderous press rolls, cross beats, and drum rolls that began as quiet tremblings and grew into frenzied explosions.

Blakey taught himself to play the piano while he was a teenager and performed on piano (and later drums) in jazz clubs in the evenings while working in the steel mills by day....more

Charles Bolden
American astronaut

Charles Bolden, in full Charles Frank Bolden, Jr., (born August 19, 1946, Columbia, South Carolina, U.S.), American astronaut who served as the first African American administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from 2009 to 2017.
Bolden received a bachelor’s degree in electrical science from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1968....more

Julian Bond
American politician and civil rights leader

Julian Bond, in full Horace Julian Bond, (born January 14, 1940, Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.—died August 15, 2015, Fort Walton Beach, Florida), U.S. legislator and Black civil rights leader, best known for his fight to take his duly elected seat in the Georgia House of Representatives.
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Bond, who was the son of prominent educators, attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he helped found a civil rights group and led a sit-in movement intended to desegregate Atlanta lunch counters. In 1960 he joined in creating the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and he later served as communications director for the group. In 1965 he won a seat in the Georgia state legislature, but the body refused to seat him because of his endorsement of SNCC’s statement opposing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War....more

Arna Bontemps
American writer

Arna Bontemps, in full Arna Wendell Bontemps, (born October 13, 1902, Alexandria, Louisiana, U.S.—died June 4, 1973, Nashville, Tennessee), American writer who depicted the lives and struggles of black Americans.

After graduating from Pacific Union College, Angwin, California, in 1923, Bontemps taught in New York and elsewhere. His poetry began to appear in the influential black magazines Opportunity and Crisis in the mid-1920s. His first novel, God Sends Sunday (1931), about a jockey who was good with horses but inadequate with people, is considered the final work of the Harlem Renaissance....more

Chadwick Boseman
American actor and playwright

Chadwick Boseman, in full Chadwick Aaron Boseman, (born November 29, 1976, Anderson, South Carolina, U.S.—died August 28, 2020, Los Angeles, California), American actor and playwright who became a highly respected movie star with several iconic roles, notably that of T’Challa/Black Panther in the groundbreaking film Black Panther (2018).

Boseman was the youngest of three children. His father worked for an agricultural conglomerate and did upholstery work on the side, and his mother was a nurse. He played basketball as a high-school student, but when a teammate was shot and killed, Boseman responded by writing a play and found that he felt called to become a storyteller....more

Carol Moseley Braun
United States senator

Carol Moseley Braun, née Carol Moseley, (born Aug. 16, 1947, Chicago, Ill., U.S.), Democratic senator from Illinois (1993–99), who in 1992 became the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

Carol Moseley attended the University of Illinois at Chicago (B.A., 1969) and received a law degree from the University of Chicago (1972). She married Michael Braun in 1973 (divorced 1986) and worked as an assistant U.S. attorney before her election to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1978.... more

Ruby Bridges
American civil rights activist

Ruby Bridges, in full Ruby Nell Bridges, married name Ruby Bridges-Hall, (born September 8, 1954, Tylertown, Mississippi, U.S.), American activist who became a symbol of the civil rights movement and who was, at age six, the youngest of a group of African American students to integrate schools in the American South...more

Lou Brock
American baseball player

Lou Brock, byname of Louis Clark Brock, (born June 18, 1939, El Dorado, Arkansas, U.S.—died September 6, 2020, St. Louis, Missouri), American professional baseball player whose career 938 stolen bases (1961–79) set a record that held until 1991, when it was broken by Rickey Henderson.

Brock followed his childhood interest in baseball by playing at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he both pitched and played in the outfield. He threw and hit left-handed. He was signed to a contract by the Chicago Cubs of the National League in 1961 and played on their farm teams before moving to the major leagues in 1962. With the Cubs his outfield playing was erratic, and his speed on the bases was unproductive; when he went into a hitting slump in 1964...more

Edward Brooke
United States senator

Edward Brooke, in full Edward William Brooke, (born October 26, 1919, Washington, D.C.—died January 3, 2015, Coral Gables, Florida), American lawyer and politician who was the first African American popularly elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served two terms (1967–79)....more

Big Bill Broonzy
American musician

Big Bill Broonzy, byname of William Lee Conley Broonzy, (born June 26, 1893, Scott, Mississippi, U.S.—died August 14, 1958, Chicago, Illinois), American blues singer and guitarist who represented a tradition of itinerant folk blues.
Broonzy maintained that he was born in 1893 in Scott, Mississippi, but some sources suggest that he was born in 1903 near Lake Dick, Arkansas. In any case, Broonzy grew up in Arkansas....more

Clifford Brown
American musician

Clifford Brown, byname Brownie, (born October 30, 1930, Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.—died June 26, 1956, Pennsylvania), American jazz trumpeter noted for lyricism, clarity of sound, and grace of technique. He was a principal figure in the hard-bop idiom.

Brown attended Delaware State College and Maryland State College and played in Philadelphia before joining, first, Tadd Dameron’s band in Atlantic City, New Jersey, then Lionel Hampton’s big band for a European tour, both in 1953...more

Ray Brown
American musician

Ray Brown, byname of Raymond Matthews Brown, (born October 13, 1926, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died July 2, 2002, Indianapolis, Indiana), American string bassist and one of the greatest of all jazz virtuosos.

Brown first made his mark at age 19 when he went to New York City to join Dizzy Gillespie’s band at a time when the modern jazz revolution, spearheaded by saxophonist Charlie Parker, was just getting under way...more

Ron Brown
American politician

Ron Brown, in full Ronald Harmon Brown, (born August 1, 1941, Washington, D.C.—died April 3, 1996, near Dubrovnik, Croatia), American politician, the first African American to be chairman (1989–93) of a major U.S. political party and the first to be appointed secretary of commerce (1993–96).

Brown’s father managed the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, which was frequented by celebrities, politicians, and the black social elite. His parents were successful and well-educated, and he was sent to exclusive primary and preparatory schools in New York City before enrolling at Middlebury College in Vermont (B.A., 1962).... more

Charles Brown
American singer

Charles Brown, (born Sept. 13, 1922, Texas City, Texas, U.S.—died Jan. 21, 1999, Oakland, Calif.), American blues singer of the late 1940s and early 1950s who was best known for his melodic ballads.
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One of the most influential singers of his day, Brown was an accomplished classical pianist whose career began in 1943 after he moved to Los Angeles. He played with...more

Hallie Quinn Brown
American educator

Hallie Quinn Brown, (born March 10, 1850, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.—died Sept. 16, 1949, Wilberforce, Ohio), American educator and elocutionist who pioneered in the movement for African American women’s clubs in the United States.

Brown was the daughter of former slaves. From 1864 she grew up in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, and in 1870 she entered Wilberforce University in Ohio. After her graduation in 1873 she taught in plantation and public schools in Mississippi and South Carolina. In 1885–87 she was dean of Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina, and during that period, in 1886, she graduated from the Chautauqua Lecture School. After four years of teaching public school in Dayton, Ohio, she served as a principal of Tuskegee Institute (1892–93) in Alabama under Booker T. Washington...more

Ruth Winifred Brown
American librarian and activist

Ruth Winifred Brown, (born July 26, 1891, Hiawatha, Kansas, U.S.—died September 10, 1975, Collinsville, Oklahoma), American librarian and activist, who was dismissed from her job at an Oklahoma library for her civil rights activities in 1950. Brown began her career as a librarian in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, in 1919. She became the president of the Oklahoma Library Association in 1931 and was a founding member of the Committee on the Practice of Democracy (COPD) in 1946. At that time the COPD was the only affiliate of the Congress of Racial Equality south of the Mason and Dixon Line...more

Ralph Bunche
American diplomat

Ralph Bunche, in full Ralph Johnson Bunche, (born Aug. 7, 1904, Detroit, Mich., U.S.—died Dec. 9, 1971, New York, N.Y.), U.S. diplomat, a key member of the United Nations for more than two decades, and winner of the 1950 Nobel Prize for Peace for his successful negotiation of an Arab-Israeli truce in Palestine the previous year.

Bunche worked his way through the University of California at Los Angeles and graduated in 1927. ...more

Solomon Burke
American singer

Solomon Burke, (born March 21, 1940, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died October 10, 2010, Haarlemmermeer, Netherlands), American singer whose success in the early 1960s in merging the gospel style of the African American churches with rhythm and blues helped to usher in the soul music era.

Born into a family that established its own church, Burke was both a preacher and the host of a gospel radio program by age 12....more

Tarana Burke
American activist and business executive

Tarana Burke, (born September 12, 1973, Bronx, New York, U.S.), American activist and business executive who founded (2006) the Me Too movement, which sought to assist survivors of sexual violence, especially females of colour...more

Harry Thacker Burleigh
American musician

Harry Thacker Burleigh, (born December 2, 1866, Erie, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died September 12, 1949, Stamford, Connecticut), American baritone and composer, a noted arranger of African American spirituals.

Burleigh studied under Antonín Dvořák at the National Conservatory of Music, New York City, and through his singing acquainted Dvořák with the traditional Black vocal music of the United States. He was a soloist in New York City at St. George’s Church (1894–1946) and at Temple Emanuel (1900–25). He composed more than 200 songs and became widely known for such arrangements as that for “Deep River.”...more

Ursula Burns
American executive

Ursula Burns, (born September 20, 1958, New York, New York, U.S.), American business executive who served as CEO (2009–16) and chairman (2010–17) of the international document-management and business-services company Xerox Corporation. She was the first African American woman to serve as CEO of a Fortune 500 company and the first female to accede to the position of CEO of such a company in succession after another female.

Burns was raised in a low-income housing project on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. She was the second of three children raised by a single mother who operated a home day-care centre and took ironing and cleaning jobs to earn money to pay for Burns to attend Cathedral High School, a Roman Catholic preparatory school. Excelling at math, Burns later earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering (1980) from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University in Brooklyn. In the same year, she began pursuing a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Columbia University and joined Xerox as a summer mechanical-engineering intern through the company’s graduate engineering program for minorities, which in turn paid a portion of her educational expenses...more

Roland Burris
American politician

Roland Burris, in full Roland Wallace Burris, (born Aug. 3, 1937, Centralia, Ill., U.S.), American Democratic politician who was the first African American elected to statewide office in Illinois. His appointment as U.S. senator (2009–10) to fill the seat vacated by Pres. Barack Obama made him the fourth African American to serve in the Senate since Reconstruction.

Burris grew up in downstate Illinois, and he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Southern Illinois University in 1959...more

Kobe Bryant
American basketball player

Kobe Bryant, (born Aug. 23, 1978, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.—died Jan. 26, 2020, Calabasas, Calif.), U.S. basketball player. Bryant, whose father also played professional basketball, entered the NBA draft straight from high school. He was picked by the Charlotte Hornets in 1996 but was soon traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. When the 1996–97 season opened, he was the second youngest NBA player in history. Bryant, a shooting guard, helped the Lakers win five championships (2000–02; 2009–10). In 2008 he was named the league’s Most Valuable Player. He retired following the 2015–16 NBA season. In addition to his professional accomplishments, Bryant was a member of the Olympic gold medal-winning U.S. men’s basketball teams in 2008 and 2012. In 2015 he wrote the poem “Dear Basketball,” which served as the basis for a short film (2017) that he narrated. The work won an Academy Award for best animated short film. In 2020 Bryant died in a helicopter crash...more

Don Byas
American musician

Don Byas, byname of Carlos Wesley Byas, (born October 21, 1912, Muskogee, Oklahoma, U.S.—died August 24, 1972, Amsterdam, Netherlands), American jazz tenor saxophonist whose improvising was an important step in the transition from the late swing to the early bop eras...more
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Harry Howell Carney
American musician

Harry Howell Carney, (born April 1, 1910, Boston, Mass., U.S.—died Oct. 8, 1974, New York, N.Y.), American musician, featured soloist in Duke Ellington’s band and the first baritone saxophone soloist in jazz.

Carney learned to play the clarinet and alto saxophone from private teachers and worked with local Boston bands until Ellington heard and hired him in 1927.... more


Ben Carson
American neurosurgeon and politician

Ben Carson, in full Benjamin Solomon Carson, Sr., (born September 18, 1951, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.), American politician and neurosurgeon who performed the first successful separation of conjoined twins who were attached at the back of the head (occipital craniopagus twins). The operation, which took place in 1987, lasted some 22 hours and involved a 70-member surgical team. Carson also refined a technique known as hemispherectomy, in which one-half of the brain is removed to prevent seizures in persons with severe epilepsy. He later became active in politics and served as U.S. secretary of housing and urban development (HUD; 2017–21) in the administration of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump...more

Betty Carter
American singer

Betty Carter, original name Lillie Mae Jones, also called Lorraine Carter or Lorene Carter, (born May 16, 1930, Flint, Michigan, U.S.—died September 26, 1998, Brooklyn, New York), American jazz singer who is best remembered for the scat and other complex musical interpretations that showcased her remarkable vocal flexibility and musical imagination.

Carter studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory of Music in her native Michigan. At age 16 she began singing in Detroit jazz clubs, and after 1946 she worked in bars and theatres in the Midwest, at first under the name Lorene Carter...more

Eugenia Charles
prime minister of Dominica

Eugenia Charles, in full Dame Mary Eugenia Charles, (born May 15, 1919, Pointe Michel, Dominica—died September 6, 2005, Fort-de-France, Martinique), lawyer and politician who served as prime minister of Dominica from 1980 to 1995. She was the country’s first woman lawyer and the first woman prime minister to serve in the Caribbean.

Charles was the granddaughter of slaves. Her father’s success as a fruit exporter and later as a banker enabled Eugenia to receive an excellent education. After completing high school in Dominica, she received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto and a law degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 1949 she returned to Dominica and practiced law in Roseau...more

Ray Charles
American musician

Ray Charles, original name Ray Charles Robinson, (born September 23, 1930, Albany, Georgia, U.S.—died June 10, 2004, Beverly Hills, California), American pianist, singer, composer, and bandleader, a leading entertainer billed as “the Genius.” Charles was credited with the early development of soul music, a style based on a melding of gospel, rhythm and blues, and jazz music.

When Charles was an infant his family moved to Greenville, Florida, and he began his musical career at age five on a piano in a neighbourhood café. He began to go blind at six, possibly from glaucoma, and had completely lost his sight by age seven. He attended the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, where he concentrated on musical studies, but left school at age 15 to play the piano professionally after his mother died from cancer (his father had died when the boy was 10)...more

Wilt Chamberlain
American basketball player

Wilt Chamberlain, in full Wilton Norman Chamberlain, bynames Wilt the Stilt and the Big Dipper, (born August 21, 1936, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died October 12, 1999, Los Angeles, California), professional basketball player, considered to be one of the greatest offensive players in the history of the game. More than 7 feet (2.1 metres) tall, Chamberlain was an outstanding centre. During his 1961–62 season he became the first player to score more than 4,000 points in a National Basketball Association (NBA) season, with 4,029, averaging 50.4 points per game...more

Dave Chappelle
American comedian and actor

Dave Chappelle, byname of David Khari Webber Chappelle, (born August 24, 1973, Washington, D.C., U.S.), American comedian and actor who was best known for cocreating, writing, and starring in the groundbreaking television sketch comedy program Chappelle’s Show (2003–06)...more

Oscar Charleston
American baseball player and manager

Oscar Charleston, in full Oscar McKinley Charleston, (born October 14, 1896, Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.—died October 6, 1954, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), American baseball player and manager who was considered by many to have been the best all-around ballplayer in the history of the Negro leagues.... more

Alice Childress
American writer and actress

Alice Childress, (born Oct. 12, 1916, Charleston, S.C., U.S.—died Aug. 14, 1994, New York, N.Y.), American playwright, novelist, and actress, known for realistic stories that posited the enduring optimism of black Americans.

Childress grew up in Harlem, New York City, where she acted with the American Negro Theatre in the 1940s. There she wrote, directed, and starred in her first play, Florence (produced 1949), about a black woman who, after meeting an insensitive white actress in a railway station, comes to respect her daughter’s attempts to pursue an acting career.... more

Ta-Nehisi Coates
American author

Ta-Nehisi Coates, in full Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates, (born September 30, 1975, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.), American essayist, journalist, and writer who often explored contemporary race relations, perhaps most notably in his book Between the World and Me (2015), which won the National Book Award for nonfiction... more

Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr.
American lawyer

Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr., (born Oct. 2, 1937, Shreveport, La., U.S.—died March 29, 2005, Los Angeles, Calif.), American trial lawyer who gained international prominence with his skillful and controversial defense of O.J. Simpson, a football player and celebrity who was charged with a double murder in 1994.

In 1949 Cochran’s family moved from Louisiana to California, where he later became one of only two dozen African American students at Los Angeles High School.... more

Cozy Cole
American musician

Cozy Cole, byname of William Randolph Cole, (born October 17, 1909, East Orange, New Jersey, U.S.—died January 29, 1981, Columbus, Ohio), American jazz musician who was a versatile percussionist. A highlight of Cole’s drumming career was the 1958 hit “Topsy,” the only recording featuring a drum solo to sell more than one million copies.

Cozy ColeAfter making his recording debut (1930) with Jelly Roll Morton, Cole performed with several major bands, including Stuff Smith’s comedy-jazz group. In 1938 he joined Cab Calloway’s band, and his drumming was featured on “Crescendo in Drums,” “Paradiddle,” and “Ratamacue.”... more

Marva Collins
American educator

Marva Collins, née Marva Delores Knight, (born August 31, 1936, Monroeville, Alabama, U.S.—died June 24, 2015, Bluffton, South Carolina), American educator who broke with a public school system she found to be failing inner-city children and established her own rigorous system and practice to cultivate her students’ independence and accomplishment.

Marva Knight attended the Bethlehem Academy, a strict school that proved to have an influence on the development of her later educational methods. She studied secretarial sciences at Clark College in Atlanta but was unable to work as a secretary because of her race. From 1957 she taught bookkeeping, typing, shorthand, and business law at Monroe County Training School. She moved to Chicago in 1959 and married Clarence Collins... more

John Coltrane
American musician

John Coltrane, in full John William Coltrane, byname Trane, (born September 23, 1926, Hamlet, North Carolina, U.S.—died July 17, 1967, Huntington, New York), American jazz saxophonist, bandleader, and composer, an iconic figure of 20th-century jazz.

Coltrane’s first musical influence was his father, a tailor and part-time musician. John studied clarinet and alto saxophone as a youth and then moved to Philadelphia in 1943 and continued his studies at the Ornstein School of Music and the Granoff Studios. He was drafted into the navy in 1945 and played alto sax with a navy band until 1946; he switched to tenor saxophone in 1947...more

Anna Julia Cooper
American educator and writer

Anna Julia Cooper, née Anna Julia Haywood, (born August 10, 1858?, Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.—died February 27, 1964, Washington, D.C.), American educator and writer whose book A Voice From the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892) became a classic African American feminist text.

Cooper was the daughter of a slave woman and her white slaveholder (or his brother). In 1868 she enrolled in the newly established Saint Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute (now Saint Augustine’s University), a school for freed slaves.... more

John Conyers, Jr.
American politician

…the staff of Michigan Congressman John Conyers, Jr. She remained active in the NAACP, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference established an annual Rosa Parks Freedom Award in her honour. In 1987 she cofounded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development to provide career training for young people and… more

Misty Copeland
American dancer

​Misty Copeland, (born September 10, 1982, Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.), American ballet dancer who, in 2015, became the first African American female principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre (ABT).

Misty Copeland and her siblings grew up with a single mother whose several failed marriages resulted in financial instability. When young, Copeland moved with her family from Kansas City to San Pedro, California...more
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Don Cornelius
American television host and producer

Soul Train, American music variety television show, the first to prominently feature African American musical acts and dancers. Broadcast nationally from 1971 to 2006, it was one of the longest-running syndicated programs in American television history.

Soul Train was the brainchild of Chicago radio announcer Don Cornelius. It initially aired in 1970 on Chicago television station WCIU-TV. The show was produced in hour-long segments five afternoons a week and became a local television hit. It duplicated the environment of a dance club and featured a variety of noted musical performers as well as both professional and amateur dancers...more

Arthur Crudup 
American singer-songwriter  

Arthur Crudup, (born Aug. 24, 1905, Forest, Miss., U.S.—died March 28, 1974, Nassawadox, Va.), American blues singer-songwriter. Several of Crudup’s compositions became blues standards, and his song “That’s All Right” was transformed into a rockabilly classic by Elvis Presley at the start of his career...more

Alexander Crummell
American scholar and minister

Alexander Crummell, (born 1819, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Sept. 10/12, 1898, Point Pleasant?, N.J.), American scholar and Episcopalian minister, founder of the American Negro Academy (1897), the first major learned society for African Americans. As a religious leader and an intellectual, he cultivated scholarship and leadership among young blacks.

Crummell, born to the son of an African prince and a free mother, attended an interracial school at Canaan, N.H., and an institute in Whitesboro, N.Y., which was run by abolitionists and combined manual labour and the classical curriculum. Denied admission to the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal church in 1839 because of his race, Crummell studied theology privately and became an Episcopalian minister in 1844. He journeyed to England about 1848 to raise funds for a church for poor blacks and soon thereafter began a course of study at Queen’s College, Cambridge (A.B., 1853)...more

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Dorothy Dandridge
American singer and actress

Dorothy Dandridge, in full Dorothy Jean Dandridge, (born November 9, 1922, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.—died September 8, 1965, West Hollywood, California), American singer and film actress who was the first black woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for best actress.
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Dandridge’s mother was an entertainer and comedic actress who, after settling in Los Angeles, had some success in radio and, later, television. The young Dorothy and her sister Vivian began performing publicly as children and in the 1930s joined a third (unrelated) girl as the Dandridge Sisters, singing and dancing. In the 1940s and early ’50s Dorothy secured a few bit roles in films and developed a highly successful career as a solo nightclub singer, eventually appearing in such popular clubs as the Waldorf Astoria’s Empire Room in New York City...more

Ray Dandridge
American baseball player

Ray Dandridge, in full Raymond Emmett Dandridge, bynames Dandy and Hooks, (born August 31, 1913, Richmond, Virginia, U.S.—died February 12, 1994, Palm Bay, Florida), American professional baseball player who spent most of his career between 1933 and 1955 playing in the Negro leagues and on teams outside the United States.

Dandridge was an outstanding defensive third baseman. Although he had little power, he often posted batting averages of over .300. He began his career with Negro league teams in Detroit and Nashville in 1933, but after one season he moved on to the Newark Dodgers (later called the Eagles) of the Negro National League, where he was a star player for seven seasons during the 1930s and ’40s. ... more

Glenn Davis
American track and field athlete

Glenn Davis, in full Glenn Ashby Davis, byname Jeep, (born September 12, 1934, Wellsburg, West Virginia, U.S.—died January 28, 2009, Barberton, Ohio), American world-record holder in the 400-metre hurdles (1956–62) who was the first man to win the Olympic gold medal twice in that event.

Davis excelled in track for Barberton (Ohio) High School, often scoring more individually than entire opposing teams...more

Miles Davis
American musician

Miles Davis, in full Miles Dewey Davis III, (born May 26, 1926, Alton, Illinois, U.S.—died September 28, 1991, Santa Monica, California), American jazz musician, a great trumpeter who as a bandleader and composer was one of the major influences on the art from the late 1940s...more

Shani Davis
American athlete

Shani Davis, (born August 13, 1982, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.), American speed skater who was the first African American athlete to win an individual Winter Olympics gold medal.

Davis learned to roller-skate at age two and a year later was skating so fast that he had to be slowed by the rink’s skate guards. He switched to ice skating at age six, a few months before his mother enrolled him in a local speed-skating club. Soon thereafter Davis began to win regional competitions. .. more

Viola Davis
American actress

Viola Davis, (born August 11, 1965, Saint Matthews, South Carolina, U.S.), American actress known for her precise, controlled performances and her regal presence.
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Davis was raised in Central Falls, Rhode Island, where her father found work as a horse groom at nearby racetracks and her mother took on domestic and factory jobs. Their income was frequently insufficient to support the family, and they endured grim rat-infested apartments and occasional food shortages. ..more

Eric Dickerson
American football player

Eric Dickerson, in full Eric Demetric Dickerson, (born September 2, 1960, Sealy, Texas, U.S.), American professional gridiron football player who was one of the leading running backs in National Football League (NFL) history.

Dickerson played his college football at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in University Park, Texas, where he and Craig James formed a stellar backfield that was dubbed the “Pony Express” (after SMU’s mustang mascot). ..more

Johnny Dodds
American musician

Johnny Dodds, (born April 12, 1892, New Orleans, La., U.S.—died Aug. 8, 1940, Chicago, Ill.), African-American musician noted as one of the most lyrically expressive of jazz clarinetists.

Dodds grew up in the musically stimulating environment of New Orleans in the early years of jazz and began playing clarinet at age 17. He played in Fate Marable’s riverboat bands (1917) before becoming an integral part of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band (1920–24), one of the most closely unified of all jazz ensembles. ... more 

Kenny Dorham
American musician

Kenny Dorham, byname of McKinley Howard Dorham, (born August 30, 1924, Fairfield, Texas, U.S.—died December 5, 1972, New York, New York), American jazz trumpeter, a pioneer of bebop noted for the beauty of his tone and for his lyricism.

Dorham began playing trumpet in high school, attended Wiley College (Marshall, Texas), and was on a U.S. Army boxing team in 1942. In 1945–48 he played in a series of big bands, including those of Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, and Lionel Hampton, before joining Charlie Parker’s quintet (1948–49)... more

Rita Dove
American author
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Rita Dove, in full Rita Frances Dove, (born August 28, 1952, Akron, Ohio, U.S.), American poet, writer, and teacher who was the first African American to serve as poet laureate of the United States (1993–95).

Dove was ranked one of the top hundred high-school students in the country in 1970, and she was named a Presidential Scholar. She graduated summa cum laude from Miami University in Ohio in 1973 and studied subsequently at Tübingen University in Germany. She studied creative writing at the University of Iowa (M.F.A., 1977) and published the first of several chapbooks of her poetry in 1977... more

Ruby Dee
American actress

Ruby Dee, byname of Ruby Ann Wallace, (born October 27, 1922, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.—died June 11, 2014, New Rochelle, New York), American actress and social activist who was known for her pioneering work in African American theatre and film and for her outspoken civil rights activism. Dee’s artistic partnership with her husband, Ossie Davis, was considered one of the theatre and film world’s most distinguished.

scene from A Raisin in the SunAfter completing her studies at Hunter College (1945) in Manhattan, Dee served an apprenticeship with the American Negro Theatre and began appearing on Broadway. ... more

Snoop Dogg
American rapper and actor

Snoop Dogg, byname of Cordozar Calvin Broadus, Jr., also called Snoop Doggy Dogg and Snoop Lion, (born October 20, 1971, Long Beach, California, U.S.), American rapper and songwriter who became one of the best-known figures in gangsta rap in the 1990s and was for many the epitome of West Coast hip-hop culture.

Snoop DoggSnoop Dogg’s signature drawled lyrics took inspiration from his early encounters with the law. After high school he was in and out of prison for several years before seriously pursuing a career in hip-hop.... more

Fats Domino
American singer and pianist

​Fats Domino, byname of Antoine Domino, Jr., (born February 26, 1928, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.—died October 24, 2017, Harvey, Louisiana), American singer and pianist, a rhythm-and-blues star who became one of the first rock-and-roll stars and who helped define the New Orleans sound. Altogether his relaxed, stylized recordings of the 1950s and ’60s sold some 65 million copies, making him one of the most popular performers of the early rock era.

From a musical family, Domino received early training from his brother-in-law, guitarist Harrison Verrett. ...more

Kevin Durant
American basketball player

Kevin Durant, in full Kevin Wayne Durant, (born September 29, 1988, Washington, D.C., U.S.), American professional basketball player who won the 2013–14 National Basketball Association (NBA) Most Valuable Player (MVP) award and established himself as one of the best players of his generation while only in his early 20s.Durant was a basketball prodigy as a youth, becoming one of the best prospects in the thriving Washington, D.C.-area...more

W.E.B. Du Bois
American sociologist and social reformer

W. E. B. Du Bois, (born Feb. 23, 1868, Great Barrington, Mass., U.S.—died Aug. 27, 1963, Accra, Ghana), U.S. sociologist and civil-rights leader. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895. Two years later he accepted a professorship at Atlanta University, where he conducted empirical studies on the social situation of African Americans (1897–1910). He concluded that change could be attained only through agitation and protest, a view that clashed with that of Booker T. Washington.

His famous book The Souls of Black Folk appeared in 1903. In 1905 Du Bois founded the Niagara Movement, the forerunner of the NAACP. In 1910 he left teaching to become the NAACP’s director of research and editor of its magazine, Crisis (1910–34). He returned to Atlanta University in 1934 and devoted the next 10 years to teaching and scholarship. After a second research position with the NAACP (1944–48), he moved steadily leftward politically. In 1951 he was indicted as an unregistered agent of a foreign power (the Soviet Union); though a federal judge directed his acquittal, he was by then completely disillusioned with the U.S. In 1961 he joined the Communist Party, moved to Ghana, and renounced his U.S. citizenship...more

Ava DuVernay
American director and screenwriter

Ava DuVernay, in full Ava Marie DuVernay, (born August 24, 1972, Long Beach, California, U.S.), American director, producer, and writer whose best-known works explore the African American experience.

DuVernay graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1995 with bachelor’s degrees in English and African American studies. After working for a few years in film publicity, she started her own company to market movies...more

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Eazy-E
American musician

…Wit Attitudes) with fellow rappers Eazy-E and Ice Cube. The group’s second album, Straight Outta Compton (1988), was a breakthrough for the nascent gangsta rap movement, featuring explicit descriptions (and often glorifications) of street violence and drug dealing. While Dre appeared prominently as a rapper in N.W.A, his most-lauded role…more

Joycelyn Elders
American physician and government official
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Joycelyn Elders, née Minnie Joycelyn Jones, (born August 13, 1933, Schaal, Arkansas, U.S.), American physician and public health official who served (1993–94) as U.S. surgeon general, the first black and the second woman to hold that post.

Elders was the first of eight children in a family of sharecroppers. At age 15 she entered Philander Smith College, a historically black liberal arts college in Little Rock, Arkansas, on a scholarship from the United Methodist Church. That year she saw a doctor for the first time in her life and subsequently determined to become a physician herself... more

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Samuel David Ferguson
American religious leader

Samuel David Ferguson, (born January 1, 1842, Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.—died August 2, 1900, Cape Palmas, Liberia), first African American bishop of the Episcopal Church.

As a young boy, Ferguson moved with his family in 1848 to Liberia. There he was educated in the mission schools of the Anglican Communion and later received theological training from missionaries in other areas of West Africa....more

Rube Foster
American baseball player

Rube Foster, byname of Andrew Foster, (born September 17, 1879, Calvert, Texas, U.S.—died December 9, 1930, Kankakee, Illinois), American baseball player who gained fame as a pitcher, manager, and owner and as the “father of Black baseball” after founding in 1920 the Negro National League (NNL), the first successful professional league for African American ballplayers...more

Aretha Franklin
American singer

Aretha Franklin, in full Aretha Louise Franklin, (born March 25, 1942, Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.—died August 16, 2018, Detroit, Michigan), American singer who defined the golden age of soul music of the 1960s.

Franklin’s mother, Barbara, was a gospel singer and pianist. Her father, C.L. Franklin, presided over the New Bethel Baptist Church of Detroit, Michigan, and was a minister of national influence. ...more

E. Franklin Frazier
American sociologist

E. Franklin Frazier, in full Edward Franklin Frazier, (born September 24, 1894, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.—died May 17, 1962, Washington, D.C.), American sociologist whose work on African American social structure provided insights into many of the problems affecting the black community.

Frazier received his A.B. from Howard University (1916) and his A.M. in sociology from Clark University (1920). After being awarded a fellowship to the New York School of Social Work (1920–21), he accepted an American-Scandinavian Foundation grant to study folk high schools and the Cooperative Movement in Denmark (1921–22). He taught sociology at Morehouse College, a historically black institution in Atlanta, Georgia, where he organized the Atlanta University School of Social Work,..more

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Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
American critic and scholar

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., (born September 16, 1950, Keyser, West Virginia, U.S.), American literary critic and scholar known for his pioneering theories of African and African American literature. He introduced the notion of signifyin’ to represent African and African American literary and musical history as a continuing reflection and reinterpretation of what has come before...more

Althea Gibson
American tennis player

Althea Gibson, (born August 25, 1927, Silver, South Carolina, U.S.—died September 28, 2003, East Orange, New Jersey), American tennis player who dominated women’s competition in the late 1950s. She was the first Black player to win the French (1956), Wimbledon (1957–58), and U.S. Open (1957–58) singles championships...more

Donald Glover
American actor, writer, and musician

Donald Glover, in full Donald McKinley Glover, Jr., also known as Childish Gambino, (born September 25, 1983, Edwards Air Force Base, California, U.S.), American writer, comedian, actor, and musician who won acclaim in all his disparate arts. He was perhaps best known for the TV series Atlanta (2016–18) and for the music he released under the name Childish Gambino.
Glover grew up in Stone Mountain, Georgia,...more

Joe Greene
American football player

​Joe Greene, byname of Charles Edward Greene, also called Mean Joe Greene, (born September 24, 1946, Temple, Texas, U.S.), American professional gridiron football player who is widely considered one of the greatest defensive linemen in National Football League (NFL) history.

Greene was a consensus All-American...more
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John Howard Griffin
American author

John Howard Griffin, (born June 16, 1920, Dallas, Texas, U.S.—died September 9, 1980, Fort Worth), white American author who temporarily altered the pigment of his skin in order to experience firsthand the life of a black man in the South.

Griffin described his experience of racism in the best seller Black like Me (1961). The book...more

Charlotte Forten Grimké
American abolitionist and educator

Charlotte Forten Grimké, née Charlotte Louise Bridges Forten, (born August 17, 1837, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died July 23, 1914, Washington, D.C.), American abolitionist and educator best known for the five volumes of diaries she wrote in 1854–64 and 1885–92. They were published posthumously.

Forten was born into a prominent free Black family in Philadelphia. Her father ran a successful sail-making business. Many members of her family were active in the abolitionist movement. Early in life, Forten was educated by tutors at home. Because Philadelphia’s school system was segregated, Forten’s father sent her at age 16 to secondary school in Salem, Massachusetts, which was then known for its progressive and tolerant spirit. ...more

Bob Gibson
American baseball player

Bob Gibson, in full Pack Robert Gibson, byname Hoot, (born November 9, 1935, Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.—died October 2, 2020, Omaha), American professional right-handed baseball pitcher, who was at his best in crucial games. In nine World Series appearances, he won seven games and lost two, and he posted an earned run average (ERA) of 1.92.

At Omaha (Neb.) Technical High School Gibson was a star in basketball and track, as well as a baseball catcher. He also played basketball and baseball at Creighton University (Omaha).... more

Dick Gregory
American comedian and civil rights activist

Dick Gregory, byname of Richard Claxton Gregory, (born October 12, 1932, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.—died August 19, 2017, Washington, D.C.), American comedian, civil rights activist, and spokesman for health issues, who became nationally recognized in the 1960s for a biting brand of comedy that attacked racial prejudice.

By addressing his hard-hitting satire to white audiences, he gave a comedic voice to the rising civil rights movement. In the 1980s his nutrition business venture targeted unhealthy diets of Black Americans...more

Dizzy Gillespie
American musician

Dizzy Gillespie, byname of John Birks Gillespie, (born October 21, 1917, Cheraw, South Carolina, U.S.—died January 6, 1993, Englewood, New Jersey), American jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader who was one of the seminal figures of the bebop movement.

Gillespie’s father was a bricklayer and amateur bandleader who introduced his son to the basics of several instruments. After his father died in 1927, Gillespie taught himself the trumpet and trombone; for two years he attended the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina, where he played in the band and took music classes.... more

Brittney Griner
American basketball player

Brittney Griner, in full Brittney Yevette Griner, (born October 18, 1990, Houston, Texas, U.S.), American basketball player who is one of the game’s leading centres, especially known for her play with the Phoenix Mercury, which she helped win a WNBA championship (2014).

​Griner garnered international attention in 2022 when she was detained in Russia on a drug offense. She was later found guilty and sentenced to nine years.... more
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Adelaide Hall
American singer

Adelaide Hall, (born October 20, 1901, New York, New York, U.S.—died November 7, 1993, London, England), American-born jazz improviser whose wordless rhythm vocalizing ushered in what became known as scat singing.

The daughter of a music teacher, Hall attended the Pratt Institute in New York City. ..more

Fannie Lou Hamer
American civil-rights activist

Fannie Lou Hamer, née Townsend, (born October 6, 1917, Ruleville, Mississippi, U.S.—died March 14, 1977, Mound Bayou, Mississippi), African American civil rights activist who worked to desegregate the Mississippi Democratic Party.

The youngest of 20 children, Fannie Lou was working the fields with her sharecropper parents at the age of six. Amid poverty and racial exploitation, she received only a sixth-grade education. ..more

Fred Hampton
American activist

Fred Hampton, in full Frederick Allen Hampton, (born August 30, 1948, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—killed December 4, 1969, Chicago), American civil rights leader and deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party’s Illinois chapter who formed the city of Chicago’s first “Rainbow Coalition.” Hampton was killed during a raid on his residence by Chicago police officers.

The youngest child of Francis and Iberia Hampton, Fred was raised in the Chicago suburbs with his brother and sister....more

Frances E.W. Harper
American author and social reformer

Frances E.W. Harper, in full Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, née Frances Ella Watkins, (born September 24, 1825, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.—died February 22, 1911, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), American author, orator, and social reformer who was notable for her poetry, speeches, and essays on abolitionism, temperance, and woman suffrage.

Frances Watkins was the daughter of free black parents. She grew up in the home of an uncle whose school for black children she attended...more

Kamala Harris
vice president of the United States

Kamala Harris, in full Kamala Devi Harris, (born October 20, 1964, Oakland, California, U.S.), 49th vice president of the United States (2021– ) in the Democratic administration of Pres. Joe Biden. She was the first woman and the first African American to hold the post. She had previously served in the U.S. Senate (2017–21) and as attorney general of California (2011–17).

Her father, who was Jamaican, taught at Stanford University, and her mother, the daughter of an Indian diplomat, was a cancer researcher... more

Connie Hawkins
American basketball player

Connie Hawkins, byname of Cornelius L. Hawkins, also called the Hawk, (born July 17, 1942, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died October 6, 2017), American basketball player who is widely regarded as one of the sport’s greatest talents of the 20th century but who had limited impact on the professional leagues. Hawkins was wrongly banned by the National Basketball Association (NBA) and spent his best years wandering in the proverbial wilderness, though he made it to the league before his promise had been utterly squandered. Half-full or half-empty; was Hawkins that great or just that persistent? The answer, as with all great athletes, is never that stark... more

Carla Hayden
American librarian

Carla Hayden, in full Carla Diane Hayden, (born August 10, 1952, Tallahassee, Florida, U.S.), American librarian who, in 2016, became the first woman and the first African American to serve as the Librarian of Congress. She is also known for defending library users’ privacy and for her efforts to ensure widespread access to public libraries and their resources.

Hayden attended Roosevelt University in Chicago (B.A., political science, 1973), and she earned a master’s degree and a doctorate from the University of Chicago Graduate Library School (1977, 1987)... .more

Bob Hayes
American athlete

Bob Hayes, byname of Robert Lee Hayes, also known as “Bullet” Bob Hayes, (born December 20, 1942, Jacksonville, Florida, U.S.—died September 18, 2002, Jacksonville), American sprinter who, although he was relatively slow out of the starting block and had an almost lumbering style of running, was a remarkably powerful sprinter with as much raw speed as any athlete in history. He also was a noted American football player.

Hayes began running as a boy with his brother Ernest, who was training to be a boxer. At Matthew W. Gilbert High School in...more

Jimi Hendrix
American musician

Jimi Hendrix, byname of James Marshall Hendrix, originally John Allen Hendrix, (born November 27, 1942, Seattle, Washington, U.S.—died September 18, 1970, London, England), American rock guitarist, singer, and composer who fused American traditions of blues, jazz, rock, and soul with techniques of British avant-garde rock to redefine the electric guitar in his own image.

Though his active career as a featured artist lasted a mere four years, Hendrix altered the course of popular music and became one of...more

Taraji P. Henson
American actress

Taraji P. Henson, in full Taraji Penda Henson, (born September 11, 1970, Washington, D.C., U.S.), American actress who was best known for playing strong female characters, notably Loretha (“Cookie”) Lyon in the television drama Empire (2015–20).

Henson grew up in Washington, D.C., and in Oxon Hill, Maryland, where she and her divorced mother moved. She entered North Carolina A&T State University to pursue a degree in electrical engineering but dropped out after failing a math class. She held several temporary jobs, including one for the Department of Defense at the Pentagon....more

DuBose Heyward
American writer

DuBose Heyward, in full Edwin Dubose Heyward, (born Aug. 31, 1885, Charleston, S.C., U.S.—died June 16, 1940, Tryon, N.C.), American novelist, dramatist, and poet whose first novel, Porgy (1925), was the basis for a highly successful play, an opera, and a motion picture.

At the age of 17 Heyward worked on the waterfront, where he observed the black Americans who were to become the subject of his writing. Heyward first wrote poems: Carolina Chansons (1922), a joint publication with Hervey Allen; Skylines and Horizons (1924);... more

Gregory Hines
American dancer, actor, and choreographer

​Gregory Hines, in full Gregory Oliver Hines, (born February 14, 1946, New York, New York, U.S.—died August 9, 2003, Los Angeles, California), American tap dancer, actor, and choreographer who was a major figure in the revitalization of tap dancing in the late 20th century.

By the age of four, Hines and his older brother Maurice were taking tap lessons with renowned dancer and choreographer Henry Le Tang. The brothers soon formed the Hines Kids, a song-and-dance act that appeared in clubs across the United States.... more

M. Carl Holman
American civil rights leader

M. Carl Holman, in full Moses Carl Holman, (born June 27, 1919, Minter City, Miss., U.S.—died Aug. 9, 1988, Washington, D.C.), American civil rights leader, president of the National Urban Coalition (1971–88), who promoted the need for a mutual partnership between industry and government to foster inner-city development.
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Holman graduated magna cum laude from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo. (1942), attended the University of Chicago (M.A. 1944), and earned a master of fine arts degree from Yale University (1954). While serving on the English and humanities faculty at Clark College in Atlanta, Ga. (1948–62), he joined students in founding the black journal The Atlanta Inquirer (1960)... more

Evander Holyfield
American boxer

Evander Holyfield, byname the Real Deal, (born October 19, 1962, Atmore, Alabama, U.S.), American boxer, the only professional fighter to win the heavyweight championship four separate times and thereby surpass the record of Muhammad Ali, who won it three times.

As an amateur boxer, Holyfield compiled a record of 160–14 and won the national Golden Gloves championship in 1984. Competing as a light heavyweight at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, he was disqualified in the semifinal bout for knocking out his opponent, Kevin Barry of New Zealand, while the referee was attempting to separate the fighters...more

Shirley Horn
American musician

Shirley Horn, in full Shirley Valerie Horn, (born May 1, 1934, Washington, D.C., U.S.—died Oct. 20, 2005, Cheverly, Md.), American jazz artist whose ballads, sung in a breathy contralto to her own piano accompaniment, earned her both critical acclaim and popular renown.

Horn was raised in Washington, D.C., and attended the Junior School of Music at Howard University, where she studied classical piano. She sang in local jazz bars and rose to prominence when Miles Davis asked her to open for his act after listening to her first album, Embers and Ashes (1960). She recorded five albums in the 1960s, including several with producer Quincy Jones, while performing in jazz clubs in New York and in Europe... more

Lugenia Burns Hope
American social reformer

Lugenia Burns Hope, née Lugenia D. Burns, (born Feb. 19, 1871, St. Louis, Mo., U.S.—died Aug. 14, 1947, Nashville, Tenn.), American social reformer whose Neighborhood Union and other community service organizations improved the quality of life for blacks in Atlanta, Ga., and served as a model for the future Civil Rights Movement.

Hope gained experience as an adolescent by working, often full time, for several charitable and settlement organizations. Between 1890 and 1893 she attended the Chicago Art Institute, the Chicago School of Design, and the Chicago Business College. In 1897 she married educator John Hope...more

Pauline Hopkins
American writer and editor

Pauline Hopkins, in full Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, (born 1859, Portland, Maine, U.S.—died Aug. 13, 1930, Cambridge, Mass.), African-American novelist, playwright, journalist, and editor. She was a pioneer in her use of traditional romance novels as a medium for exploring racial and social themes. Her work reflects the influence of W.E.B. Du Bois.

Hopkins attended Boston public schools and in 1880 joined her mother and stepfather in performing her first work, a musical entitled Slaves’ Escape; or, The Underground Railroad (also called Peculiar Sam). She then spent several years touring with her family’s singing group, Hopkins’ Colored Troubadors. Her second play, One Scene from the Drama of Early Days, based on the biblical character Daniel, was also written about this time... more

John Lee Hooker
American musician

John Lee Hooker, bynames John Lee Booker, John Lee Cooker, Texas Slim, and Birmingham Sam and His Magic Guitar, (born August 22, 1917, Clarksdale, Mississippi, U.S.—died June 21, 2001, Los Altos, California), American blues singer-guitarist, one of the most distinctive artists in the electric blues idiom....more

bell hooks
American scholar

bell hooks, pseudonym of Gloria Jean Watkins, (born September 25, 1952, Hopkinsville, Kentucky, U.S.—died December 15, 2021, Berea, Kentucky), American scholar and activist whose work examined the connections between race, gender, and class. She often explored the varied perceptions of Black women and Black women writers and the development of feminist identities.

Watkins grew up in a segregated community of the American South. At age 19 she began writing what would become her first full-length book, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, which was published in 1981... more 

Charles Hamilton Houston
American lawyer and educator
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Charles Hamilton Houston, (born September 3, 1895, Washington, D.C., U.S.—died April 22, 1950, Washington, D.C.), American lawyer and educator instrumental in laying the legal groundwork that led to U.S. Supreme Court rulings outlawing racial segregation in public schools.

Houston graduated as one of six valedictorians from Amherst College (B.A., 1915). After teaching for two years at Howard University in Washington, D.C., he enlisted in the U.S. Army and was commissioned a second lieutenant in field artillery and served in France and Germany during World War I... more

Whitney Houston
American singer and actress

Whitney Houston, (born August 9, 1963, Newark, New Jersey, U.S.—died February 11, 2012, Beverly Hills, California), American singer and actress who was one of the best-selling musical performers of the 1980s and ’90s.

Whitney Houston,  The daughter of Emily (“Cissy”) Houston—whose vocal group, the Sweet Inspirations, sang backup for Aretha Franklin—and the cousin of singer Dionne Warwick, Whitney Houston began singing in church as a child. While still in high school, she sang backup for Chaka Khan and Lou Rawls and modeled for fashion magazines.... more

Jennifer Hudson
American actress and singer
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Jennifer Hudson, in full Jennifer Kate Hudson, (born September 12, 1981, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.), American actress and singer who first garnered attention on the reality television show American Idol and later earned acclaim for her music and acting. She accomplished the rare feat of winning the four major North American entertainment awards (EGOT: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony).

Hudson began singing at age seven in her Chicago church choir. As a teenager, she performed at wedding receptions and in local talent shows and musical theatre....more
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Alberta Hunter
American singer

Alberta Hunter, (born April 1, 1895, Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.—died October 17, 1984, New York, New York), American blues singer who achieved international fame in the 1930s for her vigorous and rhythmically infectious style and who enjoyed a resurgence of celebrity in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

Hunter’s father abandoned the family soon after her birth. Her mother, who worked as a domestic in a brothel, remarried about 1906, but Alberta did not get along with her new family. She ran away to Chicago about the age of 11 (the reports of dates and age vary)... more

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Jesse Jackson
American minister and activist

Jesse Jackson, original name Jesse Louis Burns, (born October 8, 1941, Greenville, South Carolina, U.S.), American civil rights leader, Baptist minister, and politician whose bids for the U.S. presidency (in the Democratic Party’s nomination races in 1983–84 and 1987–88) were the most successful by an African American until 2008, when Barack Obama captured the Democratic presidential nomination. Jackson’s life and career have been marked by both accomplishment and controversy...more

Ketanji Brown Jackson
United States jurist

Ketanji Brown Jackson, née Ketanji Onyika Brown, (born September 14, 1970, Washington, D.C.), associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 2022. She was the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

Early life and education Ketanji Onyika Brown was the first of two children of Johnny and Ellery Brown, both of whom were public school teachers at the time of her birth. The family then moved from Washington, D.C., to Miami, Florida, where her father earned a law degree from the University of Miami and became an attorney for the school board of Miami-Dade County. Her mother became a school principal... more

Mahalia Jackson
American singer
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Mahalia Jackson, (born October 26, 1911, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.—died January 27, 1972, Evergreen Park, near Chicago, Illinois), American gospel music singer, known as the “Queen of Gospel Song.”

Jackson was brought up in a strict religious atmosphere. Her father’s family included several entertainers, but she was forced to confine her own musical activities to singing in the church choir and listening—surreptitiously—to recordings of Bessie Smith and Ida Cox as well as of Enrico Caruso. When she was 16, she went to Chicago and joined the Greater Salem Baptist Church choir, where her remarkable contralto voice soon led to her selection as a soloist...more


Michael Jackson
American singer, songwriter, and dancer

Michael Jackson, in full Michael Joseph Jackson or Michael Joe Jackson (see Researcher’s Note), (born August 29, 1958, Gary, Indiana, U.S.—died June 25, 2009, Los Angeles, California), American singer, songwriter, and dancer who was the most popular entertainer in the world in the early and mid-1980s. Reared in Gary, Indiana, in one of the most acclaimed musical families of the rock era, Michael Jackson was the youngest and most talented of five brothers whom his father, Joseph, shaped into a dazzling group of child stars known as the Jackson 5. In addition to Michael, the members of the Jackson 5 were Jackie Jackson (byname of Sigmund Jackson; b. May 4, 1951, Gary), Tito Jackson (byname of Toriano Jackson; b. October 15, 1953, Gary), Jermaine Jackson (b. December 11, 1954, Gary), and Marlon Jackson (b. March 12, 1957, Gary)... more
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Milt Jackson
American musician

Milt Jackson, byname of Milton Jackson, also called Bags, (born January 1, 1923, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.—died October 9, 1999, New York, New York), American jazz musician, the first and most influential vibraphone improviser of the postwar, modern jazz era.
Jackson began playing the vibraphone (also called vibes or vibraharp) professionally at age 16. He attended Michigan State University and joined Dizzy Gillespie’s sextet in 1945; he then worked with Gillespie’s big band and later returned to play vibraphone and piano in Gillespie’s sextet (1950–52)...more

Mae Jemison
American physician and astronaut
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Mae Jemison, in full Mae Carol Jemison, (born October 17, 1956, Decatur, Alabama, U.S.), American physician and the first African American woman to become an astronaut. In 1992 she spent more than a week orbiting Earth in the space shuttle Endeavour.

Jemison moved with her family to Chicago at the age of three. There she was introduced to science by her uncle and developed interests throughout her childhood in anthropology, archaeology, evolution, and astronomy. While still a high school student, she became interested in biomedical engineering, and after graduating in 1973, at the age of 16, she entered Stanford University. There she received degrees in chemical engineering and African American studies (1977)...more

​Charles Spurgeon Johnson
American sociologist and editor

Charles Spurgeon Johnson, (born July 24, 1893, Bristol, Va., U.S.—died Oct. 27, 1956, Louisville, Ky.), U.S. sociologist, authority on race relations, and the first black president (1946–56) of Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. (established in 1867 and long restricted to black students). Earlier he had founded and edited (1923–28) the intellectual magazine Opportunity, a major voice of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

After graduation from Virginia Union University, Richmond, Johnson studied under the sociologist Robert Ezra Park at the University of Chicago and then worked for the Chicago Commission on Race Relations (1919–21). His first important writing, The Negro in Chicago (1922), was a sociological study of the race riot in that city in July 1919...more

John H. Johnson
American publisher

John H. Johnson, in full John Harold Johnson, (born January 19, 1918, Arkansas City, Arkansas, U.S.—died August 8, 2005, Chicago, Illinois), magazine and book publisher, the first African American to attain major success in those fields.

Johnson and his family settled in Chicago after visiting that city during the 1933 World’s Fair. He later became an honour student at Du Sable High School in Chicago, where he was managing editor of the school paper and business manager of the yearbook. Those experiences influenced his choice of journalism as a career. While studying at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, Johnson worked for a life insurance company that marketed to African American customers...more

Katherine Johnson
American mathematician

Katherine Johnson, née Katherine Coleman, also known as (1939–56) Katherine Goble, (born August 26, 1918, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, U.S.—died February 24, 2020, Newport News, Virginia), American mathematician who calculated and analyzed the flight paths of many spacecraft during her more than three decades with the U.S. space program. Her work helped send astronauts to the Moon...more

Magic Johnson
American basketball player

Magic Johnson, byname of Earvin Johnson, Jr., (born August 14, 1959, Lansing, Michigan, U.S.), American basketball player who led the National Basketball Association (NBA) Los Angeles Lakers to five championships.

The son of an autoworker, Johnson earned his nickname “Magic” in high school for his creative and entertaining ballhandling. He was an intense competitor who led his high school team to a state championship in 1977 and led Michigan State University to the National Collegiate Athletic Association championship in 1979—handing Larry Bird and Indiana State its only defeat of that season... more

Michael Johnson
American athlete

Michael Johnson, in full Michael Duane Johnson, (born September 13, 1967, Dallas, Texas, U.S.), American sprinter, perhaps the most eminent figure in athletics (track and field) in the 1990s. For much of the decade he was virtually unbeaten in the long sprints—the 200-metre and 400-metre races—and at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta he became the first man to win gold medals at both distances; he also set Olympic marks in both events.

In high school Johnson was one of the top 200-metre runners in Texas. After entering Baylor University in Waco, Texas, in 1986, he first began competing at 400 metres. In 1989, during his junior year, he set the indoor 200-metre U.S. record to win the national collegiate title--a title that he defended his senior year, both indoors and outdoors...more

Rafer Johnson
American athlete and executive

Rafer Johnson, in full Rafer Lewis Johnson, (born August 18, 1934, Hillsboro, Texas, U.S.—died December 2, 2020, Los Angeles, California), American athlete and actor, who won a gold medal in the decathlon at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.

Johnson competed in his first decathlon in 1954 as a sophomore at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and in 1955 he won the gold medal at the Pan American Games. Injuries forced him to settle for a silver medal in the 1956 Olympic decathlon in Melbourne, Australia, but he set a world record in 1958...more

Robert Johnson
American musician

Robert Johnson, (born c. 1911, Hazlehurst, Mississippi, U.S.—died August 16, 1938, near Greenwood, Mississippi), American blues composer, guitarist, and singer whose eerie falsetto singing voice and masterful rhythmic slide guitar influenced both his contemporaries and many later blues and rock musicians.

Johnson was the product of a confusing childhood, with three men serving as his father before he reached age seven. Little is known about his biological father (Noah Johnson, whom his mother never married), and the boy and his mother lived on various plantations in the Mississippi Delta region before settling briefly in Memphis, Tennessee, with her first husband (Robert Dodds, who had changed his surname to Spencer). The bulk of Johnson’s youth, however, was spent in Robinsonville, Mississippi, with his mother and her second husband (Dusty Willis)...more

Sargent Johnson
American artist
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Sargent Johnson, in full Sargent Claude Johnson, (born October 7, 1887, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.—died October 10, 1967, San Francisco, California), versatile American artist known especially for his paintings and sculptures of African American subjects. By his own account, he was concerned with...more

 Judy Johnson 
American baseball player and manager

Judy Johnson, byname of William Julius Johnson, (born Oct. 26, 1890, Snow Hill, Md., U.S.—died June 15, 1989, Wilmington, Del., U.S.), American professional baseball player and manager in the Negro leagues between 1918 and 1936.

A sure-handed and graceful fielder, Johnson is considered one of the best defensive third baseman ever to play baseball. He had a .309 career batting average but hit with little power. Playing with Hilldale, Johnson led the team to Eastern Colored League championships in 1923, 1924, and 1925...more

Elvin Jones
American musician

Elvin Jones, in full Elvin Ray Jones, (born September 9, 1927, Pontiac, Michigan, U.S.—died May 18, 2004, Englewood, New Jersey), American jazz drummer and bandleader who established a forceful polyrhythmic approach to the traps set, combining different metres played independently by the hands and feet into a propulsive flow of irregularly shifting accents.

Jones was mostly self-taught, though he came of a musical family that included siblings Hank and Thad, jazz pianist and trumpeter, respectively. Jones played drums in school and army bands before beginning his professional career in Detroit in 1949. In 1956 he moved to New York City, where he performed with Donald Byrd, Pepper Adams, and others, and in 1960 he joined saxophonist John Coltrane’s quartet with McCoy Tyner, pianist, and Jimmy Garrison, bassist...more

Jo Jones
American musician

Jo Jones, byname of Jonathon Jones, (born October 7, 1911, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died September 3, 1985, New York, New York), American musician, one of the most influential of all jazz drummers, noted for his swing, dynamic subtlety, and finesse.

Jones grew up in Alabama, studied music for 12 years, and became a skilled trumpeter and pianist; he toured with carnivals as a tap dancer as well as an instrumentalist. He played with Southwestern “territory bands” (i.e., those in the South, Southwest, and Midwest), including Walter Page’s Blue Devils, before joining Count Basie’s Kansas City band in 1934. With few breaks, most notably his U.S. Army service (1944–46), he remained with Basie until 1948, after which he led a freelance career. He made the first of several “Jazz at the Philharmonic” tours in 1947, occasionally led his own groups, and recorded with swing-era contemporaries such as Billie Holiday, Teddy Wilson, Buck Clayton, and Lester Young... more

Marion Jones
American athlete

Marion Jones, (born October 12, 1975, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), American athlete, who, at the 2000 Olympic Games, became the first woman to win five track-and-field medals at a single Olympics. In 2007, however, she admitted to having used banned substances and subsequently returned the medals.

Jones early displayed talent on the track, and her family moved several times during her adolescence so that she could compete on prominent junior-high and high-school teams. By the time she was 12, Jones had begun competing internationally. She was also an accomplished high-school basketball player, winning California’s Division I Player of the Year award in 1993. She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a basketball scholarship, and in 1994 she helped the women’s basketball team win the national title...more

Philly Joe Jones
American musician

Philly Joe Jones, byname of Joseph Rudolph Jones, (born July 15, 1923, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died August 30, 1985, Philadelphia), American jazz musician, one of the major percussionists of the bop era, and among the most recorded as well.
Instructed by his mother, a piano teacher, Jones began playing drums as a child. During the 1940s he accompanied visiting artists such as Dexter Gordon and Fats Navarro in local clubs and toured with Lionel Hampton and Joe Morris. Moving to New York, he worked with composer-bandleader Tadd Dameron (1953–54) and enjoyed a busy freelance career before the most important association of his career, with the Miles Davis quintet (1955–58)...more

Florence Griffith Joyner
American athlete

Florence Griffith Joyner, in full Delorez Florence Griffith Joyner, née Delorez Florence Griffith, byname FloJo, (born December 21, 1959, Los Angeles, California, U.S.—died September 21, 1998, Mission Viejo, California), American sprinter who set world records in the 100 metres (10.49 seconds) and 200 metres (21.34 seconds) that have stood since 1988.

Florence Griffith JoynerGriffith started running at age seven, chasing jackrabbits to increase her speed. In 1980 she entered the University of California, Los Angeles (B.A., 1983), to train with coach Bob Kersee. At the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, she won a silver medal in the 200-metre race and quickly became a media celebrity with her 6-inch (15-cm) decorated fingernails and eye-catching racing suits. Disappointed with her performance, however, she went into semiretirement. In 1987 she rededicated herself to the sport, adopting an intense weight-training program and altering her starting technique. ..more

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Ibram X. Kendi
American author

​Ibram X. Kendi, in full Ibram Xolani Kendi, original name Ibram Henry Rogers, (born August 13, 1982, Queens, New York, U.S.), American author, historian, and activist who studied and wrote about racism and antiracism in the United States. Through his books and speeches, he asserted that racist policies and ideas are deeply ingrained in American society.

He was born Ibram Henry Rogers to parents who were student activists interested in liberation theology and the “Black Power” movement. While he was a teenager, the family moved to Manassas, Virginia. He majored in journalism at Florida A&M University and focused on sports reporting before concentrating on racial justice. In 2004 he graduated with a double major in journalism and African American studies. Rogers then worked at The Virginian Pilot newspaper before pursuing an advanced degree in African American studies at Temple University in Philadelphia...more

Alan Keyes
American diplomat, commentator, and politician

Alan Keyes, in full Alan Lee Keyes, (born August 7, 1950, New York City, New York, U.S.), American diplomat, radio commentator, and politician who was one of the most prominent African American conservatives in the late 20th and the early 21st century. He sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.
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Keyes received a bachelor’s degree (1972) and a doctorate (1979) in government studies from Harvard University. In 1978 he joined the U.S. State Department as a foreign service officer. In 1983 he was appointed ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council in the administration of President Ronald Reagan...more

John Oliver Killens
American writer and activist

John Oliver Killens, (born January 14, 1916, Macon, Georgia, U.S.—died October 27, 1987, Brooklyn, New York), American writer and activist known for his politically charged novels—particularly Youngblood (1954)—and his contributions to the Black Arts movement and as a founder of the Harlem Writers Guild.

From an early age Killens was exposed to African American writers and thinkers. His father encouraged him to read Langston Hughes, and his mother introduced him to the work of poet and novelist Paul Laurence Dunbar. Growing up in Georgia under Jim Crow law had a profound impact on Killens’s political and social outlook and provided source material for his writings...more

B.B. King
American musician

B.B. King, byname of Riley B. King, (born September 16, 1925, near Itta Bena, Mississippi, U.S.—died May 14, 2015, Las Vegas, Nevada), American guitarist and singer who was a principal figure in the development of blues and from whose style leading popular musicians drew inspiration.
King, B.B.King was reared in the Mississippi Delta, and gospel music in church was the earliest influence on his singing. ..more
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Don King
American boxing promoter

Don King, in full Donald King, (born August 20, 1931, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.), American boxing promoter known for his flamboyant manner and outrageous hair styled to stand straight up. He first came to prominence with his promotion of the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” bout between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo).
While growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, King considered becoming a lawyer. To finance his college education, he became a numbers runner (i.e., a courier of illegal betting slips), and in a short time he was one of the leading racketeers in Cleveland. King attended Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) in Cleveland for a year but quit to concentrate on his numbers business...more
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Willie Lanier
American football player

Willie Lanier, in full Willie Edward Lanier, (born August 21, 1945, Clover, Virginia, U.S.), American professional gridiron football player who was an outstanding defensive player for the Kansas City Chiefs in the 1960s and ’70s, overturning the stereotype that African Americans could not handle the key defensive position of middle linebacker... more

Kristin Hunter Lattany
American writer

Kristin Hunter Lattany, in full Kristin Elaine Hunter Lattany, née Kristin Elaine Eggleston, (born September 12, 1931, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died November 14, 2008, Magnolia, New Jersey), American novelist who examined black life and race relations in the United States in both children’s stories and works for adults.

Lattany began writing for The Pittsburgh Courier, an important African American newspaper, when she was 14 and continued until the year after she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951 with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education. She married writer Joseph Hunter in 1952 (divorced 1962). After briefly working as a teacher, she became an advertising copywriter.  Kristin Hunter 


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Norman Lewis
American painter

Norman Lewis, in full Norman Wilfred Lewis, (born July 23, 1909, New York, New York, U.S.—died August 27, 1979, New York City), Abstract Expressionist painter and teacher who diverged from his native Harlem community of artists in choosing abstraction over representation as his mode of expression...more


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Huey P. Newton
American activist

Huey P. Newton, in full Huey Percy Newton, (born February 17, 1942, Monroe, Louisiana, U.S.—died August 22, 1989, Oakland, California), American political activist, cofounder (with Bobby Seale) of the Black Panther Party (originally called Black Panther Party for Self-Defense).... more

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Jesse Owens
American athlete

Jesse Owens, byname of James Cleveland Owens, (born September 12, 1913, Oakville, Alabama, U.S.—died March 31, 1980, Phoenix, Arizona), American track-and-field athlete who set a world record in the running broad jump (also called long jump) that stood for 25 years and who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. His four Olympic victories were a blow to Adolf Hitler’s intention to use the Games to demonstrate Aryan superiority... more

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Brock Peters
American actor

Brock Peters, pseudonym of George Fisher, (born July 2, 1927, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Aug. 23, 2005, Los Angeles, Calif.), American actor who employed his powerful bass voice and strong presence in portrayals of a wide range of characters, notably in the role of Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)....more


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Jimmy Rushing
American singer

Jimmy Rushing, byname of James Andrew Rushing, (born August 26, 1903?, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S.—died June 8, 1972, New York, New York), American blues and jazz singer who was best known for performing with the Count Basie Orchestra....more


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Diana Sands
American actress

Diana Sands, (born Aug. 22, 1934, New York City, N.Y., U.S.—died Sept. 21, 1973, New York City, N.Y.), American stage and screen actress who won overnight acclaim for her portrayal of the younger sister in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959)...more


Wayne Shorter
American musician and composer

Wayne Shorter, (born August 25, 1933, Newark, New Jersey, U.S.), American musician and composer, a major jazz saxophonist, among the most influential hard-bop and modal musicians and a pioneer of jazz-rock fusion music....more


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Doris Ulmann
American photographer

Doris Ulmann, (born May 29, 1882, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Aug. 28, 1934, New York City), American photographer known for her portraits of people living in rural parts of the American South.

Born into a well-to-do New York family, Ulmann received a progressive education at the Ethical Culture School and took courses in psychology and law at Columbia University.... more

Gene Upshaw
American football player

Gene Upshaw, byname of Eugene Thurman Upshaw, Jr., (born Aug. 15, 1945, Robstown, Texas, U.S.—died Aug. 20, 2008, near Lake Tahoe, Calif.), American professional gridiron football player and labour union director. Upshaw was a Hall of Fame offensive lineman for the Oakland Raiders of the National Football League (NFL) before serving as the executive director of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA; 1983–2008)...more

Usher
American musician

Usher, in full Usher Terry Raymond IV, (born October 14, 1978, Dallas, Texas, U.S.), American musician whose smooth vocals and sensual ballads helped establish him as a rhythm-and-blues superstar in the late 1990s.

As a youngster in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Usher sang in church choirs but sought entry into the mainstream music industry by entering talent shows. At age 12 he moved with his mother and brother to Atlanta, and two years later he secured a recording contract with LaFace Records. The album Usher was released in 1994, with the 15-year-old singer moving beyond his choirboy background by proclaiming that “it’s only a sexual thing” on the slow-groove single “Can U Get wit It.”...more
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Melvin Van Peebles
American author and filmmaker

Melvin Van Peebles, original name Melvin Peebles, (born August 21, 1932, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died September 21, 2021, New York, New York), American filmmaker who wrote, directed, and starred in Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), a groundbreaking film that spearheaded the rush of African American action films known as "blaxploitation" in the 1970s. He also served as the film’s composer and editor....more

Dorothy Vaughan
American mathematician

Dorothy Vaughan, née Dorothy Johnson, (born September 20, 1910, Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.—died November 10, 2008, Hampton, Virginia), American mathematician and computer programmer who made important contributions to the early years of the U.S. space program and who was the first African American manager at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which later became part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)... more



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Jimmy Yancey
American musician

Jimmy Yancey, byname of James Edward Yancey, (born February 20, 1898?, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died September 17, 1951, Chicago), American blues pianist who established the boogie-woogie style with slow, steady, simple left-hand bass patterns. These became more rapid in the work of his students Albert Ammons and Meade “Lux” Lewis, who popularized the “Yancey Special” bass pattern. Yancey was also known for the unpredictable inventiveness of his right hand.

Yancey was largely a self-taught pianist with some instruction from his brother Alonzo. He had a childhood career as a singer and dancer, touring American vaudeville circuits and European music halls, giving a command performance for King George V of England in 1913. Returning to Chicago, Yancey performed at small taverns and informal gatherings....  more

Lester Young
American musician

Lester Young, in full Lester Willis Young, byname Pres or Prez, (born Aug. 27, 1909, Woodville, Miss., U.S.—died March 15, 1959, New York, N.Y.), American tenor saxophonist who emerged in the mid-1930s Kansas City, Mo., jazz world with the Count Basie band and introduced an approach to improvisation that provided much of the basis for modern jazz solo conception....more


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Who's Who in Pan African Diaspora History

Africa - Europe – Caribbean – South America
Central America – North America
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​"I am not African because I was born in Africa, but because Africa was born in me".

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah
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Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola
Nigerian entrepreneur and politician

Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, (born August 24, 1937, Abeokuta, Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria—died July 7, 1998, Abuja, Nigeria), Nigerian business executive, philanthropist, and politician who is hailed as a figure of democratic change in Nigeria....more

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Usain Bolt
Jamaican athlete

Usain Bolt, (born Aug. 21, 1986, Montego Bay, Jam.), Jamaican sprinter. An athletics (track and field) prodigy, Bolt won the 200-metre event at the 2002 world junior championships at age 15. In May 2008 he set the 100-metre-dash world record, which he broke the following August while capturing a gold medal at the Beijing Olympic Games. Bolt won additional Olympic gold medals in the 200 metres and the 4 × 100-metre relay, both in world record time. At the London 2012 Olympic Games, he again won the 100-metre and 200-metre events, becoming the first person to win both races in consecutive Olympiads. He also won a gold as a member of the 4 × 100-metre relay at the London Games. Four years later, he won golds in all three of those events, at the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games, becoming the first man in history to complete the “triple triple.”...more


Mangosuthu G. Buthelezi
South African politician

Mangosuthu G. Buthelezi, (born Aug. 27, 1928, Mahlabatini, Natal, S.Af.), Zulu chief and leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party. Descended from Cetshwayo, he assumed leadership of the Buthelezi clan in 1953. He was elected head of the nonindependent black state of KwaZulu in 1972 and revived Inkatha in 1975 after breaking with the African National Congress (ANC). Rejecting full independence for KwaZulu, he worked within the white establishment to end apartheid. In 1990–94 he engaged in a fierce struggle for leadership with the ANC; thousands were killed in Inkatha-ANC clashes. Following the 1994 national elections, he was appointed minister of home affairs by Nelson Mandela; he held the post until 2004...more

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Cesaria Evora
Cabo Verdean singer

Cesaria Evora, (born August 27, 1941, Mindelo, Cape Verde—died December 17, 2011, Mindelo), Cape Verdean singer who was known for her rich, haunting voice....more


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Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara
president of The Gambia

Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara, (born May 16, 1924, Barajally, MacCarthy Island, The Gambia—died August 27, 2019, Fajara), politician and veterinarian who was The Gambia’s prime minister from 1962 to 1970 and its president from 1970 until he was overthrown in 1994...more

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Jomo Kenyatta
president of Kenya

Jomo Kenyatta, (born c. 1894, Ichaweri, British East Africa—died Aug. 22, 1978, Mombasa, Kenya), First prime minister (1963–64) and then president (1964–78) of independent Kenya. Of Kikuyu descent, Kenyatta left the East African highlands c. 1920 to become a civil servant and political activist in Nairobi. He opposed a union of the British colonial territories of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika. In 1945 he helped organize the sixth Pan-African Congress, attended by such figures as W.E.B. Du Bois and Kwame Nkrumah (see Pan-African movement)...more

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Festus Mogae
president of Botswana

Festus Mogae, Festus Gontebanye Mogae, (born August 21, 1939, Serowe, Bechuanaland Protectorate [now Botswana]), economist and politician who served as president of Botswana (1998–2008)....more


Jan Ernst Matzeliger
Dutch inventor

Jan Ernst Matzeliger, (born Sept. 15, 1852, Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana [now Suriname]—died Aug. 24, 1889, Lynn, Mass., U.S.), inventor best known for his shoe-lasting machine that mechanically shaped the upper portions of shoes....more


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Lynden Pindling
prime minister of The Bahamas

Lynden Pindling , in full Sir Lynden Oscar Pindling, (born March 22, 1930, Nassau, Bahamas, British West Indies—died August 26, 2000, Nassau, Bahamas), Bahamian politician who, as prime minister (1967–92), guided the Bahamas to independence in 1973 and was considered the country’s founding father...more

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Bayard Rustin
American civil-rights activist

Bayard Rustin, (born March 17, 1912, West Chester, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died August 24, 1987, New York, New York), American civil rights activist who was an adviser to Martin Luther King, Jr., and who was the main organizer of the March on Washington in 1963....more

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Haile Selassie I
emperor of Ethiopia

Haile Selassie , orig. Tafari Makonnen, (born July 23, 1892, near Harer, Eth.—died Aug. 27, 1975, Addis Ababa), Emperor of Ethiopia (1930–74). Tafari was a son of Ras (Prince) Makonnen, a chief adviser to Emperor Menilek II. After Menilek’s daughter, Zauditu, became empress (1917), Ras Tafari (who had married Menilek’s great-granddaughter) was named regent and heir apparent to the throne. When Zauditu died in 1930, Tafari took the name of Haile Selassie (“Might of the Trinity”) to mark his imperial status. As emperor he sought to modernize his country and steer it into the mainstream of African politics. He brought Ethiopia into the League of Nations and the UN and made Addis Ababa the centre for the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union)...more


Siaka Stevens
president of Sierra Leone

Siaka Stevens, (born Aug. 24, 1905, Moyamba, Sierra Leone—died May 29, 1988, Freetown), Sierra Leonean prime minister (1967 and 1968–71) and president (1971–85) who survived in office despite attempted coups, a burdensome national debt, and almost continual charges of gross mismanagement and governmental corruption...more

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Tchicaya U Tam’si
Congolese poet

Tchicaya U Tam’si, pseudonym of Gérald Félix Tchicaya, (born August 25, 1931, Mpili, near Brazzaville, French Equatorial Africa [now in Congo]—died April 21 or 22, 1988, Bazancourt, Oise, France), Congolese French-language writer and poet whose work explores the relationships between victor and victim....more

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