| A | B |
|---|
| Shirley Chism | first African American elected to Congress |
| Bayard Rustin | organized the March on Washington in August 1963 |
| Claudette Colvin | the first woman to be detained for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 |
| Annie Lee Cooper | The Selma, Alabama, native played a crucial part in the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement |
| Dorothy Height | hailed the “godmother of the women’s (rights) movement,” |
| Jesse Owens | won four gold medals at the Olympics and set a world record in the long jump |
| Bessie Coleman | the first licensed Black pilot in the world |
| Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler | the first Black female doctor in the United States. |
| Henrietta Lacks | her cells would go on to advance medical research for years to come, as they had the unique ability to double every 20-24 hours |
| Benjamin O. Davis Sr. | the first Black general in the American military. |
| Ella Baker | her biggest contribution to the movement was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which prioritized nonviolent protests |
| Phillis Wheatley | the first African American and third woman to publish a book of poems, |
| Rose Marie McCoy | she wrote and produced some of the biggest pop songs in the 1950s for singers like Elvis Presley |
| Marian Anderson | she’s considered one of the greatest opera singers in the world, |
| Dr. Mae Jemison | the first African American woman who orbited into space aboard the shuttle Endeavour. |
| Ruby Bridges | at six years old when she became the first African American student to attend William Frantz Elementary in Louisiana at the height of desegregation. |
| Minnie Riperton | heralded for her whistle register, which is the highest the human voice is capable of reaching. |
| Jane Bolin | the first Black woman to attend Yale Law School in 1931 |
| Gordon Parks | the first African American on the staff of LIFE magazine, and later he would be responsible for some of the most beautiful imagery in the pages of Vogue |
| Alice Coachman | the first African American woman from any country to win an Olympic Gold Medal at the 1948 Summer Olympics |
| Gwendolyn Brooks | is considered to be one of the most revered poets of the 20th century. She was the first Black author to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1950 for Annie Allen |
| Ethel Waters | the first African American to star in her own TV show in 1939 |
| Robert Sengstacke Abbott | without Abbott's creative vision paved the way for many of the Black publications of today—such as Ebony, Essence, Black Enterprise, and Upscale |
| Maria P. Williams | the first black woman to write, produce, and act in her own movie in 1923 entitled Flames of Wrath |
