In celebration of black history month which will hold in February, I did a research on some of the known and unknown African American heros from history. Writing about this people has made me appreciate them more.
1.
Harriet Tubman:
- She served as a Conductor and instructor of the underground railroad.
- Harriet Tubman guided over 300 slaves to freedom.
- She worked as a spy during the civil war.
John Lewis
- Lewis, the wiz, was one of the 13 original Freedom Riders.
- He was one of the leaders who organized the 1963 March on Washington, which led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
- At 25, witty Lewis led over 600 nonviolent protesters across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. This March led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
- In 2011, Lewis was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom– the nation's highest civilian honor– by the President, Barack Obama, for his 50 years on the civil rights movement's front lines.
2.
Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK)
In 1963, MLK joined the March on Washington with a charge. He helped lead over 200,000 people to the Lincoln Memorial overlooking the immemorial Washington Monument. The March with a charge helped to gain civil and economic equality for African-Americans. It was here where MLK made his historic "I Have a Dream" speech, which called for an end to racism and related problems.
MLK led a boycott to the Montgomery bus system after African American Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white person. The boycott, which lasted over a year, eventually led to a Supreme Court ruling naming segregated buses unconstitutional. He was arrested, abused, and threatened for leading the protest; his home was also bombed.
In 1964, he was honored with a Nobel prize for peace. After his years of historic accomplishment without violence. At 35, King was the youngest man ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Stacy Abrams
Stacy the lacy Abrams, was 29 when she got appointed as the deputy city attorney of Atlanta.
Abrams, who impacted with a bam and glam, represented the 89th district for the Georgia House of Representatives for a decade. She prevented what could have been the largest tax increase in Georgia history, and she stopped the Georgia HOPE Scholarship from being reduced or becoming an old story.
Abram became the first Black woman major-party gubernatorial nominee in United States history in 2017.
3.
Alice coachman
Alice Coachman is worthy of being celebrated. She caught the attention of many people in 1939 when she broke the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) high school and college women's high-jump records while barefoot and afoot.
She won the AAU outdoor high-jump championship for the next nine years, winning three indoor high-jump championships.
Alice also excelled in the sprints and basketball.
Lebron
The highflyer player, Lebron plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami Heat, and Los Angeles Lakers.
Lebron James, who is full of brains, broke records by being the only NBA history player to have competed in ten NBA finals and won NBA championships with three franchises as Finals MVP.
He possesses four NBA championships, four NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) Awards, two olympic gold medals and four Finals MVP Awards.
4.
Serena Williams
Serena, the celebrity American tennis player, changed the face of women's tennis with her genius and saline style of play.
She has won more Grand Slam singles titles than any other woman or man during the open era in any arena.
Serena won the Australian Open in 2003 and thus completed a career Grand Slam by having won all four of the slam's component tournaments.
Serena, won her fifth Wimbledon singles title in 2012. She became the second woman (behind Steffi Graf) to win a career Golden Slam.
Jackie Robinson
In 1947, Jackie Robinson brought about integrating professional sports in America by breaking the color barrier and disintegration in baseball.
In his ten year career, Robinson has risen to become one of baseball's most exciting and scintillating players. He led the Brooklyn Dodgers to six pennants and one World Series Championship.
In his rookie year of eligibility, Jackie was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.
He became the first black vice president of a major American corporation, opening doors for black Americans.
5.
Booker T Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American bookworm, educator, author, and orator who became one of the most famous African American leaders in the late 19th and early 20th century.
At age 25, Washington led the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, and he upheld the institute, uplifting it to a nationally renowned university with around 1,500 students.
Booker T's numerous contributions booked his honor. He became the first black American to be depicted on a U.S. postage stamp and coin.
Myron Rolle
Myron Rolle, a Rhode scholarship winner, became the first major-college football player of his generation to win what is considered the world's most prestigious postgraduate academic scholarship.
In 2013, he announced his intentions to leave the NFL; he then went to medical school. Rolle is now a Global Neurosurgery Fellow at Harvard Medical School.
6.
Bethune Cookman
Born Mary Jane McLeod on July 10, 1875, to enslaved parents, Samuel and Patsy McIntosh McLeod, Bethune expressed an interest in learning to read and write. In 1923, Bethune established Bethune-Cookman College.
In 1935 she founded the National Council of New Negro Women
In 1936, she was vital organizer and developer for the Federal Council on Negro Affairs, an advisory board to President Roosevelt
Ruby Bridges
Ruby bridges played a role in building the bridge between blacks and violent segregationists. When she was only six, Ruby Bridges became the first African American student to integrate an elementary school in the South.
When Ruby was two years old, her parents moved their family to New Orleans, Louisiana, searching for better work opportunities. Here they faced the problems of segregation.
Entrance exams were created by the school district for African American students to see whether they could compete academically at the all-white school. Ruby and five other students passed the exam.
7.
Oprah
Oprah Winfrey, who holds the reins for media and entertainment, hosted her first episode of the WLS-TV program A.M. Chicago in 1984. In 1985 however, the show was retitled The Oprah Winfrey Show 1985. In 1986, Oprah's show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, entered national syndication.
In 1985, Oprah Winfrey won an Oscar nod for her supporting role in the Steven Spielberg film The Color Purple. She has also appeared in projects as the 1998 film Beloved, the 2014 drama Selma and the television series Greenleaf.
In terms of Philanthropy, Oprah soars. The Oprah foundation has donated over 400 million to support the less privileged. In addition to education, it has always endorsed grassroots organizations to lift the most vulnerable in their communities.
Tyler Perry
Tyler Perry is a very merry and exemplary media personality. He was the first African-American to possess a significant and accessible film and T.V. studio.
His first movie project, Diary of a mad black woman, won several NAACP awards.
The well-known billionaire and entertainment mogul is famous for a long history of lifting marginalized communities on-and-offscreen.
8.
Robert F. Smith
Robert Frederick Smith is strictly known as the owner, chairman, and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, a multi-billion-dollar private equity and wealth management company that employs over thirty thousand people worldwide and focuses on the growth of firms that develop enterprise software.
According to Forbes, Robert Smith is number 163 on the list of the wealthiest people in the United States in 2019 and number 355 on the Billionaires List.
In 2016, Robert Smith's prominence and emergence as an entrepreneur, investor, and business leader earned him the Jackie Robinson Foundation ROBIE Achievement in Industry Award, also the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Chair's Award for "outstanding contributions as an investor and entrepreneur" and his "long-standing commitment to improving the social conditions and living conditions of communities around the world.
Sheila Johnson
Sheila Crump Johnson is a brazen American businesswoman and co-founder of BET. She is also the owner of Salamander Hotels and Resorts and the first black American woman to attain a net worth of at least one billion dollars.
Sheila is reported to be the first black American woman to be an owner or partner in the professional sports franchises: the Washington Capitals (NHL), the Washington Wizards (NBA), and the Washington Mystics (WNBA).
Sheila received the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medalist in 2012; in 2018, she also received the Lincoln Medal, which is given by Ford's Theatre Society.
In May 2019, The Lincoln Academy of Illinois granted Sheila the Order of Lincoln Award, the highest honor bestowed by the State of Illinois.
9.
Mae C. Jemison
The sensational Mae C. Jemison is the first African American female astronaut.
She is a physician who, on June 4, 1987, became the first black American woman to be admitted into NASA's astronaut training program.
In 1992, she flew into space and became the first African American woman in space.
Mae has received several honorary doctorates, which includes the 1988 Essence Science and Technology Award, the Ebony Black Achievement Award in 1992, and a Montgomery Fellowship from Dartmouth College in 1993. In 1990, Mae was also named Gamma Sigma Gamma Woman of the year.
Bessie
Orphaned at the age of 9 and nicknamed the empress of the blues, in the 1920s, Bessie Williams became one of the best and earliest stars of recorded music. She was a leading figure of what came to be called classic blues, which is majorly dominated by African American women.
Bessie was the highest-paid African American artist working in music and the first African American superstar.
In 1989, Bessie received the Grammy lifetime award. An award given to individuals who contributed immensely to arts and entertainment.
10.
Tuskegee Airmen
The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of active air fighters, who were the first African American soldiers to complete their training and join the U.S. Air Army.
These masters of the air, called airmen, were trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, and they flew more than 15,000 individual sorties in Europe and North Africa during World War II.
The airmen have more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses.
There are about 1007 documented Tuskegee Airmen, and they fought in world war 11.
11.
Madam C J Walker
Madam C. J. Walker was a big achiever who is regarded as the first black woman millionaire in America. She became rich, thanks to her homemade line of hair care products for black women.
She was named Sarah Breedlove by her parents, who had been slaves, and she was inspired to create her hair products after an experience with hair loss, which led to the creation of what was referred to as the "Walker system" of hair care.
Madam C.J was a self-made millionaire who used her money to fund scholarships for women at the Tuskegee Institute and donated large parts of her wealth to the NAACP, the black YMCA, and other charities.
Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie George Johnson is known as a brawny American inventor, aerospace engineer, and entrepreneur, whose work history includes a U.S. Air Force term of service, NASA, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
In 1990, Lonnie invented the Super Soaker water gun 1990, which has been among the world's best-selling toys ever since.
Lonnie can be described as wholly. He teamed up with scientists from Tulane University and Tuskegee University to develop a method of transforming heat into electricity to make green energy cheaper.
At the moment, Lonnie has two technology-development companies namely: Excellatron Solid State, LLC and Johnson Electro-Mechanical Systems (JEMS). They both currently operate in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood of Atlanta.
12
Shirley Jackson was a famous American writer known for the short story 'The Lottery,' and 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle.' She is said to have written six memoirs and over 200 short stories. Homely Shirley's first novel, The Road Through The Wall, was published in 1948
She studied at the University of Rochester and then Syracuse University, where she became fiction editor of the campus humor magazine.
In 1940, her works appeared in The New Yorker, Redbook, The Saturday Evening Post, and The Ladies Home Journal.
Her book "the possibility of Evil" won the Edgar Award for Best Short story in 1966.
George W Carver
George Washington Carver was clever also a prominent American scientist and inventor in the early 1900s. Clever Carver developed hundreds of products using peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans.
Carver was the first African American student to earn his Bachelor of Science in 1894 at Iowa State. His professors were so pleased and impressed by his work on the fungal infections common to soybean plants that he was asked to remain as part of the faculty to work on his master's degree in 1896).
Carver was determined to help the agriculture of the rural south. Today he is well known as a leading agricultural scientist.
13
Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama, First Lady extraordinaire, supports military families and helps working women balance their careers and families. Michelle encourages arts education and healthy living for children and families across the country.
Michelle has earned widespread publicity on healthy eating by planting and creating the first White House vegetable garden since Eleanor Roosevelt served as First Lady.
After her husband defeated the Republican Candidate, John McCain, Mrs. Michelle Obama became the first African-American First Lady of the United States.
In 1993, Michelle Obama, in a bid to serve her community and her neighbors, became the Founding Executive Director of the Chicago Chapter of Public Allies, an American Nonprofit Organization that helps youths and Young Adults from all backgrounds, stage of education, and professional experiences to develop skills for future careers in the public sector.
Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice, the rising star of her time, is the first African American woman to serve as the United States' national security adviser and the first Black woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State.
In 2012, Condoleezza and South Carolina businesswoman Darla Moore became the first women to become members of the Augusta National Golf Club, located in Augusta, Georgia.
At 35, she was the youngest person to advise President George H.W. Bush on Soviet strategy. Also, in 1993, She became Stanford's youngest provost during a budget crisis.
14
Barrack Obama
Obama put in place Health Care Reform after five presidents failed to create universal health insurance. He signed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and since then, more than twenty million Americans have gained coverage.
Obama rescued the Economy when he signed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 to spur economic growth.
He also passed Wall Street Reform in 2010 to re-regulate the financial sector after its practices caused the Great Recession.
Thurgood Marshall
Justice Thurgood Marshall was able to stop the discrimination against African Americans and begin a significant part of the civil rights movement. His most important achievement was winning a legal case when he was a lawyer in 1954.
While practicing as an attorney, Marshall broke records when he took on and argued a record-breaking 32 cases before the Supreme Court, winning 29 of them. Marshall won more cases before the high court than any other person.
Marshall's passionate support for individual and civil rights guided his decisions. Most historians regard him as an influential figure in creating social policies and upholding laws to protect minorities.
