| A | B |
|---|
| Rosa Parks | refused to give up her seat on a bus |
| Martin Luther King, Jr. | civil rights leader and author of "I have a dream" speech |
| Jackie Robinson | first African American in major league baseball |
| Jackie Joyner-Kersee | Olympic athlete |
| Mary McLeod Bethune | great supporter of education, founded a school, started organizations to help African Americans |
| Maya Angelou | world-respected historian, actress, dancer, civil rights activist and author |
| Thurgood Marshall | first African American United States Supreme Court Justice |
| Ralph Bunche | first African American to win Nobel Prize |
| Bessie Coleman | first African American female pilot to receive an international pilot's license |
| George Washington Carver | a sickly child of slave parents, grew up to be one of the world's most famous scientists; taught farmers importance of crop rotation and developed products made from peanuts |
| Madame C.J. Walker | first self-made woman millionaire in the United States; created line of beauty prodcts |
| Marian Anderson | first African American to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera |
| Crispus Attucks | Patriot, first American to die for his country |
| Jack Johnson | world heavyweight champion |
| Guion Bluford | Astronaut, first African American to orbit the earth in a NASA space shuttle mission |
| Gwendolyn Brooks | first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize |
| Benjamin O. Davis | first African American to become a General in the US Army |
| Matthew Henson | first African American to reach the North Pole |
| Alain Leroy Locke | first African American to become a Rhodes Scholar; wrote many books on African American art and culture |
