| Subject | Story Date | Story | Author | |
| Jackie Robinson | 2/1/2013 | He is one of my personal heroes. I can't imagine how his day to day life was, especially in the spotlight. And he actually had a lot of hatred on him from his own people because they thought Satchel Paige or Josh Gibson were better players and more deserving of getting into the major leagues. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson was an baseball player and the first black player in the modern era of Major League Baseball. He debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. He was absolutely vital to bringing an end to racial segregation in the major leagues. Blacks were related to playing only in the Negro leagues no matter how good they were. His character and talent in the face of great adversity were helpful to the Civil Rights Movement. It helped that Robinson was a fantastic baseball player. Over the course of ten seasons, he played in World Series and helped the Dodgers win the 1955 World Championship. He was also selected to six straight All-Star games from 1949 to 1954. Robinson began his career by being selected as the Rookie of the Year in 1947. He won the National League MP in 1949, another first for a black player. He was selected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962 and Major League Baseball universally retired his number 42 in 1997. MLB has adopted an annual tradition called ""Jackie Robinson Day" where all players will wear the number 42. Robinson was also the first black television analyst and the first black vice-president of a major American corporation. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. | Brian Williams | |
| Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. | 2/2/2013 | The Civil Rights museum in Memphis, TN is a great source of history. If you have not visited it, you should put it on your future travel agenda. It is one of the shining beacons of the city and a place worthy of his name-and also a place that you could visit every year and find something new. The place just has a certain feel to it that I can’t explain. It’s like it is in its own decade in time. I don’t know if any of you have seen the Boondocks episode called “Return of the King” but it does bring up a very interesting question (while being hilarious as well)-What would Dr. King think about the world today? ------------------------------------------------------------ Martin Luther King, Jr. is best remembered for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience. He has become an icon in the history of American progressivism. Dr. King was a Baptist minister and led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. In 1957, he helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and served as its first president. With this group, he led an unsuccessful struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia. However, he later led and organized nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama that attracted national attention following coverage of the police brutality During the 1963 March on Washington, King delivered his infamous "I Have a Dream" speech. This established his reputation as one of the great orators of his or any time. King received the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to combat racial inequality through nonviolence. In 1965, King and the SCLC helped organize the Selma to Montgomery marches. In the final years of his life, King began to focus more on poverty and the Vietnam war. His life was cut way too short in April of 1956, when he was assassinated by James Early Ray. King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. In 1986, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a federal holiday. | Brian Williams | |
| Condoleezza Rice | 2/3/2013 | Condoleezza Rice is a political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State. Rice was the first female African American secretary of state, as well as the second African American secretary of state (after Colin Powell). Rice was also the first female National Security Advisor. Condoleezza was also a professor of political science at Stanford University. As Secretary of State, Rice pioneered the policy of Transformational Diplomacy directed toward expanding responsible democracies throughout the world. She also chaired the Millennium Challenge Corporation's board of directors. | Brian Williams | |
| Michael Jordan | 2/4/2013 | He is undeniably the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Jeffrey Jordan also known as MJ is a former professional basketball player most known for his time with the Chicago Bulls. He helped to popularize the NBA in the United States and internationally during his playing days and remained one of the most popular athletes long after his retirement. He attended college at the University of North Carolina and was an instrumental member of their 1982 National Championship team. He joined the struggling Chicago Bulls in 1984 as the #3 pick in the draft. Jordan quickly became a star with his high scoring and high flying skills. He would often slam dunk from the free throw line in the annual dunk contest earning him the nickname "Air Jordan" and "His Airness". Not only was Jordan an unstoppable force on offense, but he excelled at defensive as well. Jordan won his first NBA championship in 1991 and there was no stopping him after that. He went on to win 6 championships (2 3-peats. Jordan's 1995-96 set the record for most wins in an NBA regular season with 72. Jordan won numerous individual honors during his playing days. He won five MVP awards, ten All-NBA First Team designations, nine All-Defensive First Team honors, fourteen NBA All-Star Game appearances, three All-Star Game MVP awards, ten scoring titles, three steals titles, six NBA Finals MVP awards, and the 1988 NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. He holds the NBA records for highest career regular season scoring average and highest career playoff scoring average. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009. | Brian Williams | |
| George Washington Carver | 2/5/2013 | George Washington Carver was an scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor. The exact day and year of his birth are unknown; he is believed to have been born into slavery in Missouri in January 1864. Carver's reputation is based on his research into and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes, which also aided nutrition for farm families. He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops both as a source of their own food and as a source of other products to improve their quality of life. The most popular of his 44 practical bulletins for farmers contained 105 food recipes using peanuts. He also developed and promoted about 100 products made from peanuts that were useful for the house and farm, including cosmetics, dyes, paints, plastics, gasoline, and nitroglycerin. He received numerous honors for his work, including the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP. During the Reconstruction-era South, monoculture of cotton depleted the soil in many areas. In the early 20th century, the boll weevil destroyed much of the cotton crop, and planters and farm workers suffered. Carver's work on peanuts was intended to provide an alternative crop. He was recognized for his many achievements and talents. In 1941, Time magazine dubbed Carver a "Black Leonardo". | Brian Williams | |
| Medgar Evers | 2/6/2013 | PLEASE go and watch the movie Ghosts of Mississippi. It is heartbreaking, informative and inspirational. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Medgar Wiley Evers was an African American civil rights activist who was heavily involved in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi. After serving in World War II, he became active in the civil rights movement. In late 1954 Evers' was named the NAACP's first field secretary for Mississippi. While holding this position, he helped organize boycotts and set up new local chapters of the NAACP. He was involved with James Meredith's efforts to enroll in the University of Mississippi in the early 1960s. Before he could accomplish all of his goals, Evers was assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith. Evers was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. His murder and resulting trials inspired civil rights protects. | Brian Williams | |
| Michael Jackson | 2/7/2013 | The King of Pop is today's subject. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Jackson was an recording artist and entertainer. He was also known by his initials, MJ. He is universally recognized as THE most successful entertainer of all time. His contributions to music and dance made him a global figure in popular culture in a career spanning over 40 years. Jackson began his career as a member of the Jackson 5 alongside his brothers. By the 1980's, he had long since been a solo act and a major player on the music scene. He latched onto the rising music video scene and his videos for "Beat It" and "Thriller" starting a revolution within the art form. He almost single-handedly brought MTV to fame. Michael Jackson gave us the dance moves, the robot and the moonwalk. His influence is heard all throughout popular music, even to this day. His Thriller album is the #1 selling album of all-time. Jackson has also won numerous Grammy and American Music awards. He totaled 13 number-one singles in his career and it is estimated that he sold over 400 million records. | Brian Williams | |
| Joe Louis | 2/8/2013 | Today's famous historical figure has an arena named after him in Detroit this place houses one of the most prolific and storied hockey franchises of all time. It is remarkable all that Joe had to go through just to be able to fight...and how huge of a deal boxing was back then. It really was used as a means to breakdown social and racial barriers. If you look at his fight history, you will see some iconic names....and a bunch of movies related to events around him (I don't think a feature film about his has been done yet) but a major flight related to one of his titles is in the movie "Cinderella Man" with Russell Crowe. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Louis was an professional boxer and the Heavyweight Champion of the World from 1937 to 1039. He is considered amongst the greatest heavyweights to ever step into the ring. His nickname was The Brown Bomber and he helped boxing reach a new level of popularity. He was known as a hardworking and honest fighter during a time when boxing was anything but. Louis successfully depending his title 25 times. He was amongst the first African Americans to become a national hero within the United States. A little known fact is the Louis also helped to integrate golf after he participated in a PGA event in 1952 under a sponsor's exemption. | Brian Williams | |
| Muhammad Ali | 2/9/2013 | Who doesn't know about "The Thrilla in Manila" or "float like a butterfly sting like a bee"? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Muhammad Ali, aka Cassius Clay, is a former professional boxer. Ali has been idolized and vilified as a cultural icon. At the age of 22, Ali captured the world heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston. Upon his refusal to join the military because of his opposition to the Vietnam war, Ali was arrested on charges of trying to evade the draft. He had his title stripped and and was unable to fight for nearly 4 years as he fought his conviction. Upon his return to the ring, Ali would go on to become the first and only three-time lineal World Heavyweight Champion. Ali's unorthodox fighting style helped him to defeat his opponents. He was involved in some of the most notable fights in boxing history - his rivalry with Joe frazier and The Thrilla in Manila against George Foreman. His nickname "The Greatest" certainly fit him. He was among the first athletes to use trash task to strike fear in his opponents before the match even began. | Brian Williams | |
| Rosa Parks | 2/10/2013 | Rosa Parks is known as one of the pioneers of the Civil Rights movement. She is often referred to as the first lady of civil rights or the mother of the freedom movement. In Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, Parks refused to give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger. While not the first crusader to do this, this particular event grabbed the attention of the nation with the peaceful demonstration. Her act of defiance and the Montgomery Bus Boycott became important symbols of the modern Civil Rights Movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Edgar Nixon, president of the local chapter of the NAACP; and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. During her life, Parks received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. | Brian Williams | |
| Booker T. Washington | 2/11/2013 | We are going a little further back with this one. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Booker T. Washington was an African American educator, author and orator. He was a dominant leader in the African American community in the US during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He spoke on behalf of the large majority of blacks who loved in the South but had lost their ability to vote through disfranchisement by southern legislatures. Washington maintained control because of his ability to gain support of numerous groups including influential whites and the black business, educational and religious communities nationwide. He advised on financial donations from philanthropists, and avoided antagonizing white Southerners with his accommodation to the political realities of the age of Jim Crow segregation. Washington attained national prominence for his Atlanta Address of 1895, which attracted the attention of politicians and the public, making him a popular spokesperson for African American citizens. He built a nationwide network of supporters in many black communities, with black ministers, educators and businessmen composing his core supporters. Washington played a dominant role in black politics, winning wide support in the black community and among more liberal whited/ He gained access to top national leaders in politics, philanthropy and education. Washington's efforts included cooperating with white people and enlisting the support of wealthy philanthropists, helping to raise funds to establish and operate thousands of small community schools and institutions of higher education for the betterment of blacks throughout the South. This work continued for many years after his death. Washington argued that the surest way for blacks to gain equal social rights was to demonstrate "industry, thrift, intelligence and property." | Brian Williams | |
| Billie Holiday | 2/12/2013 | It's amazing to see how similar her career is with Whitney Houston's. Such amazing talent but destructive behavior. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Billie Holiday was an jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Critic John Bush wrote that Holiday "changed the art of American pop vocals forever." She co-wrote only a few songs, but several of them have become jazz standards, notably "God Bless the Child", "Don't Explain", "Fine and Mellow", and "Lady Sings the Blues". She also became famous for singing "Easy Living", "Good Morning Heartache", and "Strange Fruit", a protest song which became one of her standards and was made famous with her 1939 recording. | Brian Williams | |
| Floyd Brown | 2/13/2013 | Floyd B. Brown founded the Fargo Agricultural School in Monroe County in 1919 to provide the equivalent of elementary and secondary vocational education for African American students. The school was for both day and residential students and was modeled after the Tuskegee Institute, which Brown attended, where students learned practical skills intended to help them achieve success and economic security. Brown was born in Stampley, Mississippi and was the son of tenant farmers. Brown's mother encouraged him to enter Tuskegee which he did. Brown became an ordained Baptist minister a few years later. Later, he traveled to some of the smaller counties in Arkansas and wanted to help communities that did not have proper or any school facilities. As he famously stated in his later autobiography, “I returned… with $2.85 with faith in God and the people to start my mission work.” Brown borrowed money as an initial payment for twenty acres of land a short distance southeast of Fargo. On January 1, 1920, the school opened with one teacher, Ruth Mahon, and fifteen students in a one-room school; at the same time, Brown developed a board of trustees composed of both African Americans and whites. Brown married Lillian Epps on March 5, 1921, and she also taught classes as head of the home economics department. The couple had no children. The ideology that Brown learned from Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee particularly equipped him to face the racial conflicts of the Arkansas Delta in the early 1920s. Although Brown was never known to make direct references to racial violence, he must have been aware of the Elaine Massacre of 1919, which occurred just sixty miles to the south of Fargo. Moreover, the indignities of Jim Crow and the horror of lynching were daily reminders of racial conflict for African Americans. Brown accommodated himself to segregation and to “liberal” whites in return for their support of the school. To his students, Brown argued that they must earn greater rights based on accomplishment, not confrontation, and he emphasized that they should not be ashamed to start at the bottom of the economic ladder, nor to work with their hands. Brown stressed, as had Washington, what could be done rather than what should be done. The Great Depression years compounded the school’s challenges, but it was able to survive because of its farm. By 1945, the Fargo Agricultural School owned 550 acres of land, twelve buildings constructed by faculty and students, and an enrollment of 180 day and residential students. The school’s products were sold for basic support, but Brown traveled extensively to raise additional funds from private individuals and businesses. One of the many aphorisms that Brown used, “Work Will Win,” became the title of a documentary about the school made in 1994. In addition to his other activities, Brown had a community service mission. He organized an annual Negro Farmers Conference for continuing education and groups to conduct annual maintenance of local cemeteries. In 1949, when the need for the school had diminished, Brown sold the campus to the state of Arkansas. The state used the campus for a new school, the Fargo Training School for Negro Girls. Brown served as principal until his permanent retirement in 1954. None of the original campus buildings survive. In the 1990s, alumni created the Fargo Agricultural School Museum at the School for Negro Girls site to honor Brown. The museum subsequently moved to Brinkley (Monroe County). | Brian Williams | |
| Langston Hughes | 2/14/2013 | Happy Valentine's Day! I thought today's person should be someone in an area that celebrates love in its written form. I'm not sure I've ever read any of his poetry but I know his name well. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Langston Hughes was an poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "the negro was in vogue" which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue". His first book of poetry, "The Weary Blues" was published in 1926. In 1930, his first novel, "Not Without Laughter" won the Harmon gold meal for literature. Hughes is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in "Montage of a Dream Deferred." His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Unlike other notable black poets of the period—Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Countee Cullen—Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself. In addition to leaving us a large body of poetic work, Hughes wrote eleven plays and countless works of prose, including the well-known “Simple” books: Simple Speaks His Mind, Simple Stakes a Claim,Simple Takes a Wife, and Simple's Uncle Sam. He edited the anthologies The Poetry of the Negro and The Book of Negro Folklore, wrote an acclaimed autobiography (The Big Sea) and co-wrote the play Mule Bone with Zora Neale Hurston. | Brian Williams | |
| Mary McLeod Bethune | 2/15/2013 | Bethune University is named for this particular lady. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mary McLeod Bethune was an educator and civil rights leader best known for starting a school for African American students in Daytona Beach, Florida, that eventually became Bethune-Cookman University and for being an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mary took an early interest in education while working in the fields as a young girl. She initially went to college hoping to become a missionary in Africa. When that did not materialize, she started a school for African American girls in Daytona Beach. From six students it grew and merged with an institute for African American boys and eventually became the Bethune-Cookman School. Its quality far surpassed the standards of education for African American students, and rivaled those of schools for white students. Bethune worked tirelessly to ensure funding for the school, and used it as a showcase for tourists and donors, to exhibit what educated African Americans could do. She was president of the college from 1923 to 1942 and 1946 to 1947, one of the few women in the world who served as a college president at that time. Bethune was also active in women's clubs, and her leadership in them allowed her to become nationally prominent. She worked for the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, and became a member of Roosevelt's Black Cabinet, sharing the concerns of black people with the Roosevelt administration while spreading Roosevelt's message to blacks, who had been traditionally Republican voters. Upon her death, columnist Louis E. Martin said, "She gave out faith and hope as if they were pills and she some sort of doctor." | Brian Williams | |
| Frederick Douglass | 2/16/2013 | This guy was much more than just the originator of the crazy hairstyle :) He was one of the first great African American speakers. ---------------------------------------- Frederick Douglass was an social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing. He stood as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves did not have the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Many Northerners also found it hard to believe that such a great orator had been a slave. Douglass wrote several autobiographies, eloquently describing his experiences in slavery in his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which became influential in its support for abolition. He wrote two more autobiographies, with his last, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, published in 1881 and covering events through and after the Civil War. After the Civil War, Douglass remained active in the United States' struggle to reach its potential as a "land of the free". Douglass actively supported women's suffrage. Without his approval, he became the first African American nominated for Vice President of the United States as the running mate of Victoria Woodhull on the impracticable and small Equal Rights Party ticket. Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all people, whether black, female, Native American, or recent immigrant, famously quoted as saying, "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong." At the unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington's Lincoln Park, Douglass was the keynote speaker for the dedication service on April 14, 1876. In his speech, Douglass spoke frankly about Lincoln, noting what he perceived as both the positive and negative attributes of the late President. He called Lincoln "the white man's president" and cited his tardiness in joining the cause of emancipation. He noted that Lincoln initially opposed the expansion of slavery but did not support its elimination. But Douglass also asked, "Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January 1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word?" At this speech he also said: "Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery...." The crowd, roused by his speech, gave him a standing ovation. A long-told anecdote claims that the widow Mary Lincoln gave Lincoln's favorite walking stick to Douglass in appreciation. Lincoln's walking stick still rests in Douglass' house known as Cedar Hill. | Brian Williams | |
| Marcus Garvey | 2/17/2013 | This guy should be next in line for a major motion picture! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marcus Garvey was a Jamaican political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). He founded the Black Star Line, part of the Back-to-Africa movement, which promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands. Garvey was unique in advancing a Pan-African philosophy to inspire a global mass movement and economic empowerment focusing on Africa known as Garveyism. Promoted by the UNIA as a movement of African Redemption, Garveyism would eventually inspire others, ranging from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement. The intent of the movement was for those of African ancestry to "redeem" Africa and for the European colonial powers to leave it. His essential ideas about Africa were stated in an editorial in the Negro World titled "African Fundamentalism" where he wrote: "Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality… to let us hold together under all climes and in every country…" | Brian Williams | |
| Barack Obama | 2/18/2013 | It's President's Day-a day off for most...but not for all! With that being said, I think today's person has to be... Barack Obama, our 44th President of the United States and the first African American. Obama graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, running unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives in 2000. In 2004, Obama received national attention during his campaign to represent Illinois in the United States Senate. Obama defeated both John McCain and Mitt Romney in his 2 Presidential campaigns. Some of Obama's greatest accomplishments are the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. Barack also Other major domestic initiatives in his first term include the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act; the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010; the Budget Control Act of 2011; and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. In foreign policy, Obama ended U.S. military involvement in the Iraq War and ordered the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. | Brian Williams | |
| Oprah Winfrey | 2/19/2013 | It wouldn't be a list without the QUEEN! Oprah Winfrey is a media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show "The Oprah Winfrey Show" which was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. She has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and was for a time the world's only black billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world. Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime-talk-show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated. Credited with creating a more intimate confessional form of media communication, she is thought to have popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue, which a Yale study says broke 20th-century taboos and allowed LGBT people to enter the mainstream. By the mid 1990s, she had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. Though criticized for unleashing confession culture, promoting controversial self-help ideas, and an emotion-centered approach she is often praised for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others. Born in rural poverty, then raised by a mother on welfare in a poor urban neighborhood, Winfrey became a millionaire at age 32 when her talk show went national. Oprah is now known as one the richest African Americans of the 20th century. Oprah is also a well known television and film actors having appeared in a few Oscar nominated films. | Brian Williams | |
| Harriett Tubman | 2/20/2013 | Harriet Tubman was an African American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made more than thirteen missions to rescue more than 70 slaves using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era struggled for women's suffrage. As a child in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten by masters to whom she was hired out. Early in her life, she suffered a severe head wound when hit by a heavy metal weight. The injury caused disabling seizures, narcoleptic attacks, headaches, and powerful visionary and dream experiences, which occurred throughout her life. A devout Christian, Tubman ascribed the visions and vivid dreams to revelations from God. In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her family. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Traveling by night, Tubman (or "Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger". Large rewards were offered for the return of many of the fugitive slaves, but no one then knew that Tubman was the one helping them. When the Southern-dominated Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, requiring law officials in free states to aid efforts to recapture slaves, she helped guide fugitives farther north into Canada, where slavery was prohibited. When the American Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina. After the war, she retired to the family home in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She became active in the women's suffrage movement in New York until illness overtook her. Near the end of her life, she lived in a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped found years earlier. | Brian Williams | |
| Thurgood Marshall | 2/21/2013 | Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African American justice. Before becoming a judge, Marshall was a lawyer who was best known for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education. He served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and later the United States Supreme Court. Marshall worked for a while with the NAACP in Baltimore. He won his first major civil rights case that was the first challenge of the "separate but equal" doctrine that was part of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. Marshall represented Donald Gaines Murray, a black Amherst College graduate with excellent credentials, who was denied admission to the University of Maryland Law School because of its segregation policy. Black students in Maryland wanting to study law had to accept one of three options, attend: Morgan College, the Princess Anne Academy, or out-of-state black institutions. President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961 to a new seat created on May 19, 1961 by 75 Stat. 80. A group of Senators from the South, led by Mississippi's James Eastland, held up his confirmation, so he served for the first several months under a recess appointment. Marshall remained on that court until 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to be the United States Solicitor General, the first African American to hold the office. As Solicitor General, he won 14 out of the 19 cases that he argued for the government. On June 13, 1967, President Johnson nominated Marshall to the Supreme Court following the retirement of Justice Tom C. Clark, saying that this was "the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place." Marshall was confirmed as an Associate Justice by a Senate vote of 69–11 on August 30, 1967. He was the 96th person to hold the position, and the first African American. President Johnson confidently predicted to one biographer, Doris Kearns Goodwin, that a lot of black baby boys would be named "Thurgood" in honor of this choice. | Brian Williams | |
| Colin Powell | 2/22/2013 | Remember when we thought HE might be the first black President? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Colin Powell is a statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under U.S. President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, the first African American to serve in that position. During his military career, Powell also served as National Security Advisor, Commander of the U.S. Army Forces Command and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was the first, and so far the only, African American to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was the first of two consecutive African American office-holders to hold the key Administration position of U.S. Secretary of State. Powell was a professional soldier for 35 years, holding a variety of command and staff positions and rising to the rank of General. | Brian Williams | |
| Alex Haley | 2/23/2013 | Man, I love me some ROOTS! --------------------------------- Alex Haley wan American writer. He is best known as the author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and the co-author of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. In 1976, Haley published Roots: The Saga of an American Family, a novel based on his family's history, starting with the story of Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped in the Gambia in 1767 and transported to the Province of Maryland to be sold as a slave. Haley claimed to be a seventh-generation descendant of Kunta Kinte, and Haley's work on the novel involved ten years of research, intercontinental travel and writing. He went to the village of Juffure, where Kunta Kinte grew up and which is still in existence, and listened to a tribal historian tell the story of Kinte's capture. Haley also traced the records of the ship, The Lord Ligonier, which he said carried his ancestor to America. Haley has stated that the most emotional moment of his life occurred on September 29, 1967, when he stood at the site in Annapolis, Maryland where his ancestor had arrived from Africa in chains exactly 200 years before. A memorial depicting Haley reading a story to young children gathered at his feet has since been erected in the center of Annapolis. Haley won a Special Award for the work in 1977 from the Pulitzer Board. The same year, Roots was adapted into a popular television miniseries by ABC. The serial reached a record-breaking 130 million viewers. Roots emphasized that African Americans have a long history and that not all of that history is necessarily lost, as many believed. Its popularity also sparked an increased public interest in genealogy. A few years later, a sequel called Roots: The Next Generations was developed. | Brian Williams | |
| Hattie McDaniel | 2/24/2013 | Today is Oscar Sunday. Hope you have your ballots filled out and your popcorn ready. A big deal was made about Denzel Washington and Halle Berry a few years ago winning the Best Actor and Best Actress awards. However, the road to this event was made possible almost 80 years ago by this woman..... ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Hattie McDaniel was an actress. McDaniel was the first African American to win an Academy Award. She won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind in 1939. In addition to having acted in many films, McDaniel was a professional singer-songwriter, comedian, stage actress, radio performer, and television star; she was also the first black woman to sing on the radio in America. Over the course of her career, she gained the respect of the African American show business community with her generosity, elegance, great beauty, and charm. McDaniel has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood: one for her contributions to radio at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard and one for acting in motion pictures at 1719 Vine Street. In 1975, she was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and in 2006 became the first black Oscar winner honored with a US postage stamp. | Brian Williams | |
| Malcolm X | 2/25/2013 | Back to the movies, Denzel did an AMAZING job with his portrayal of this man. ------------------------------------ Malcolm X was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers, he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans. He has been called one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history. To say Malcolm had a rough upbringing would be an understatement. His dad was killed by supremacists, his uncle was lynched and his mom was sent to a mental hospital. In 1946, at age 20, he went to prison for breaking and entering. In prison, Malcolm X became a member of the Nation of Islam; after his parole in 1952, he quickly rose to become one of its leaders. For a dozen years, Malcolm X was the public face of the controversial group. He later founded Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. In February 1965, less than a year after leaving the Nation of Islam, he was assassinated by three members of the group. Malcolm X's expressed beliefs changed substantially over time. As a spokesman for the Nation of Islam he taught black supremacy and advocated separation of black and white Americans—in contrast to the civil rights movement's emphasis on integration. After breaking with the Nation of Islam in 1964—saying of his association with it, "I did many things as a [Black] Muslim that I'm sorry for now. I was a zombie then ... pointed in a certain direction and told to march"—and becoming a Sunni Muslim, he disavowed racism and expressed willingness to work with civil rights leaders, though still emphasizing black self-determination and self-defense. | Brian Williams | |
| Maya Angelou | 2/26/2013 | Maya Angelou was an author and poet. She published six autobiographies, five books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning more than fifty years. She has received dozens of awards and over thirty honorary doctoral degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , tells of her life up to the age of seventeen, and brought her international recognition and acclaim . She was a famous lecturer and speaker and she recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Bill Clinton's inauguration. This made her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou was one of the first African American women who was able to publicly discuss her personal life. She is respected as a spokesperson of Black people and women, and her works have been considered a defense of Black culture. She has made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Her books center on themes such as racism, identity, family, and travel. Angelou is best known for her autobiographies, but she is also an established poet, although her poems have received mixed reviews. | Brian Williams | |
| Hiram Revels | 2/27/2013 | Hiram Revels was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and a politician. He was the first person of color to serve in the United States Senate, and in the U.S. Congress overall. He represented Mississippi in 1870 and 1871 during Reconstruction. During the American Civil War, he helped organize two regiments of the United States Colored Troops and served as a chaplain. At the time, the state legislature elected U.S. senators from Mississippi. In 1870 Revels was elected by a vote of 81 to 15 in the Mississippi State Senate to finish the term of one of the state's two seats in the US Senate, which had been left vacant since the Civil War. Previously, it had been held by Albert G. Brown, who withdrew from the US Senate in 1861 when Mississippi seceded. When Revels arrived in Washington, DC, Southern Democrats opposed seating him in the Senate. For the two days of debate, the Senate galleries were packed with spectators at this historic event. The Democrats based their opposition on the 1857 Dred Scott Decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that people of African ancestry were not and could not be citizens. They argued that no black man was a citizen before the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, and thus Revels could not satisfy the requirement for nine years' prior citizenship. Revels' term lasted one year, February 1870 to March 3, 1871. He quietly, persistently—although for the most part unsuccessfully—worked for equality. He spoke against an amendment proposed by Senator Allen G. Thurman (D-Ohio) to keep the schools of Washington, D.C., segregated. He nominated a young black man to the United States Military Academy; the youth was subsequently denied admission. Revels successfully championed the cause of black workers who had been barred by their color from working at the Washington Navy Yard. | Brian Williams | |
| Jesse Owens | 2/28/2013 | Jesse Owens was an track and field athlete who specialized in the sprints and the long jump. He participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, where he achieved international fame by winning four gold medals: one each in the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the long jump, and as part of the 4x100 meter relay team. He was the most successful athlete at the 1936 Summer Olympics. The Jesse Owens Award, USA Track and Field's highest accolade for the year's best track and field athlete, is named after him, in honor of his significant career. | Brian Williams | |
| Hank Aaron | 2/1/2014 | Baseball was my FAVORITE sport until I turned about 12 years old. I never got to see this guy play but he was the all-time homerun champ and a man of great character! PS. He still resides in Georgia to this day. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hank Aaron is a retired American professional baseball player and was formerly the all time home run champion of Major League Baseball. He spent 21 seasons with the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves in the National League before completing his career in the AL for the Milwaukee Brewers. He still hold several offensive records - amongst them being the only player to hit 30 or more home runs in a season at least 15 times. He faced great scrutiny in his career due to his skin color and his pursuit of Babe Ruth's home run records but he handled everything with style and grace. | Brian Williams | |
| Tiger Woods | 2/2/2014 | It's weird to think he's been around since the late 90's and he could still potentially golf at a high level for another 10 to 15 years. ---------------------------------------------- Tiger Woods is a professional golfer who is among the most successful golfers of all time. He previously had has been one of the highest-paid athletes in the world for several years. Woods turned professional in 1996, and by April 1997 he had already won his first major, the 1997 Masters in a record-breaking performance, winning the tournament by 12 strokes. He first reached the number one position in the world rankings in June 1997. Through the 2000s, Woods was the dominant force in golf, spending 264 weeks from August 1999 to September 2004 and 281 weeks from June 2005 to October 2010 as world number one. Woods has broken numerous golf records. He has been world number one for the most consecutive weeks and for the greatest total number of weeks of any other golfer. He has been awarded PGA Player of the Year a record eleven times. He is the youngest player to achieve the career Grand Slam, and the youngest and fastest to win 50 tournaments on tour. Additionally, Woods is only the second golfer, after Jack Nicklaus, to have achieved a career Grand Slam three times. Woods is the only golfer to win both The Silver Medal and The Gold Medal at The Open Championship. | Brian Williams | |
| Tony Dungy | 2/3/2014 | In honor of yesterday's "game", I present today's person of interest. He's the only guy who has been able to get Peyton Manning a Super Bowl ring. ---------------------------------------------- Tony Dungy is a former professional American football player and coach in the National Football League. Dungy was head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 1996 to 2001, and head coach of the Indianapolis Colts from 2002 to 2008. Dungy became the first African American head coach to win the Super Bowl when his Colts defeated the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XLI. Dungy set a new NFL record for consecutive playoff appearances by a head coach in 2008 after securing his tenth straight playoff appearance with a win against the Jacksonville Jaguars. | Brian Williams | |
| Walter Mosley | 2/4/2014 | I haven't read any of his books but I'm sure we have all seen a few of the movies based on his books. Denzel Washington has been in at least one (Devil in a Blue Dress). ------------------------------------------------------------- Walter Ellis Mosley is a novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles; they are perhaps his most popular works. | Brian Williams | |
| Stokely Carmichael | 2/5/2014 | Stokely Carmichael was an activist active in the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement. Growing up in the United States from the age of eleven, he graduated from Howard University and rose to prominence in the civil rights and Black Power movements, first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "snick") and later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party. | Brian Williams | |
| W.E.B DuBois | 2/6/2014 | W.E.B Du Bois was an sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author and editor. Du Bois graduated from Harvard where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate. Du Bois was one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Du Bois rose to national prominence as the leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of African American activists who wanted equal rights for blacks. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta Compromise, an agreement crafted by Booker T. Washington which provided that Southern blacks would work and submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic educational and economic opportunities. Instead, Du Bois insisted on full civil rights and increased political representation, which he believed would be brought about by the African American intellectual elite. He referred to this group as the talented tenth and believed that African Americans needed the chances for advanced education to develop its leadership. Racism was the main target of Du Bois's polemics, and he strongly protested against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination in education and employment. His cause included colored persons everywhere, particularly Africans and Asians in their struggles against colonialism and imperialism. He was a proponent of Pan-Africanism and helped organize several Pan-African Congresses to free African colonies from European powers. Du Bois made several trips to Europe, Africa and Asia. After World War I, he surveyed the experiences of American black soldiers in France and documented widespread bigotry in the United States military. Du Bois was a prolific author. His collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, was a seminal work in African American literature; and his 1935 magnum opus Black Reconstruction in America challenged the prevailing orthodoxy that blacks were responsible for the failures of the Reconstruction era. He wrote the first scientific treatise in the field of sociology. Du Bois also believed that capitalism was a primary cause of racism, and he was generally sympathetic to socialist causes throughout his life. He was an ardent peace activist and advocated nuclear disarmament. The United States' Civil Rights Act, embodying many of the reforms for which Du Bois had campaigned his entire life, was enacted a year after his death. | Brian Williams | |
| Elijah Muhammad | 2/7/2014 | Elijah Muhammad was an African American religious leader, who led the Nation of Islam from 1934 until his death in 1975. He was a mentor to Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, Muhammad Ali; and his son Warith Deen Mohammed. In his time as leader of The Nation of Islam, Muhammad had developed the Nation of Islam from a small movement in Detroit to an empire consisting of banks, schools, restaurants and stores across 46 cities in America. The Nation also owned over 15,000 acres of farmland, their own truck- and air- transport systems, as well as a publishing company that printed the country’s largest Black newspaper. | Brian Williams | |
| Emmett Till | 2/8/2014 | Emmett Till was an African American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till was from Chicago, Illinois, visiting his relatives in Money, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region, when he spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married proprietor of a small grocery store there. Several nights later, Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam arrived at Till's great-uncle's house where they took Till, transported him to a barn, beat him and gouged out one of his eyes, before shooting him through the head and disposing of his body in the Tallahatchie River, weighting it with a 70-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. His body was discovered and retrieved from the river three days later. Till's mother insisted on a public funeral services with an open casket so that people could see how her son was treated. Tens of thousands attended his funeral and images were published in magazines and newspapers throughout the African American community. Intense scrutiny was brought to bear on the condition of black civil rights in Mississippi, with newspapers around the country critical of the state. The trial attracted a vast amount of press attention. Bryant and Milam were acquitted of Till's kidnapping and murder, but only months later, in a magazine interview, protected against double jeopardy, they admitted to killing him. Till's murder is noted as a pivotal event motivating the African American Civil Rights Movement. Events surrounding Emmett Till's life and death, according to historians, continue to resonate, and almost every story about Mississippi returns to Till, or the region in which he died, in "some spiritual, homing way". | Brian Williams | |
| Lena Horne | 2/9/2014 | Lena Horne was an African American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer. Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Due to the Red Scare and her left-leaning political views, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood. Returning to her roots as a nightclub performer, Horne took part in the March on Washington in August 1963, and continued to work as a performer, both in nightclubs and on television, while releasing well-received record albums. Her one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than three hundred performances on Broadway and earned her numerous awards and accolades. | Brian Williams | |
| Richard Pryor | 2/10/2014 | Richard Pryor was an stand-up comedian, actor, film director, social critic, satirist, writer, and master of ceremonies. Pryor was known for uncompromising examinations of racism and topical contemporary issues, which employed colorful vulgarities, and profanity, as well as racial epithets. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of all time. This legacy can be attributed, in part, to the unusual degree of intimacy Pryor brought to bear on his comedy. As Bill Cosby reportedly once said, "Richard Pryor drew the line between comedy and tragedy as thin as one could possibly paint it." Pryor performed in countless concert movies and recordings. He also starred in numerous films as an actor, such as Superman III but was usually in comedies such as Silver Streak. He is well-known for his collaborations with Gene Wilder. Pryor won an Emmy Award and five Grammys as well as awards from the Writers Guild of America and the American Academy of Humor. The first ever Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor was presented to him in 1998. Pryor is listed at Number 1 on Comedy Central's list of all-time greatest stand-up comedians. | Brian Williams | |
| Dorothy Dandridge | 2/11/2014 | Halle Berry did her life justice in her portrayal in the HBO movie from a few years back. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dorothy Jean Dandridge was an actress and singer. Dandridge was the first black actress to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. She performed as a vocalist in venues such as the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater. In 1954 she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Carmen Jones. In 1959 she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for Porgy and Bess. In 1999 she was the subject of the HBO biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, starring Halle Berry as Dandridge. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. | Brian Williams | |
| Josephine Baker | 2/12/2014 | Isn't February just flying by already? Winter sure is making its presence felt this year! Anyway, today's person is Josephine Baker --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Josephine Baker was an-born French dancer, singer, and actress who came to be known in various circles as the "Black Pearl," "Bronze Venus" and even the "Creole Goddess". Baker was the first African American woman to star in a major motion picture, Zouzou (1934) or to become a world-famous entertainer. Baker, who refused to perform for segregated audiences in America, is also noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. She was also known for assisting the French Resistance during World War II, and received the French military honor, the Croix de guerre. | Brian Williams | |
| Kwesi Mfume | 2/13/2014 | Kwesi Mfume was the former President/CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as a five-term Democratic Congressman from Maryland's 7th congressional district, serving in the 100th through 104th Congress. On September 12, 2006, he lost a primary campaign for the United States Senate seat that was being vacated by Maryland U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes. | Brian Williams | |
| Nelson Mandela | 2/14/2014 | Nelson Mandela - MADIBA! Idris Elba did an EXCELLENT job portraying him in his autobiography. ------------------------------------ Nelson Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was South Africa's first black chief executive, and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalized racism, poverty and inequality, and fostering racial reconciliation. Politically an African nationalist and democratic socialist, he served as President of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1991 to 1997. Living in Johannesburg, he became involved in anti-colonial politics, joining the ANC and becoming a founding member of its Youth League. After the South African National Party came to power in 1948, he rose to prominence in the ANC's 1952 Defiance Campaign. He was appointed superintendent of the organization's Transvaal chapter and presided over the 1955 Congress of the People. Working as a lawyer, he was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and, with the ANC leadership, was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the Treason Trial from 1956 to 1961. Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the South African Communist Party (SACP) and sat on its Central Committee. Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in 1961, leading a sabotage campaign against the apartheid government. In 1962, he was arrested, convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the state, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial. Mandela served over 27 years in prison. An international campaign lobbied for his release. This finally occurred in 1990, during a time of escalating civil strife. Mandela joined negotiations with President F. W. de Klerk to abolish apartheid and establish multiracial elections in 1994, in which he led the ANC to victory and became South Africa's first black president. He published his autobiography in 1995. During his tenure in the Government of National Unity he invited several other political parties to join the cabinet. As agreed to during the negotiations to end apartheid in South Africa, he promulgated a new constitution. He also created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses. While continuing the former government's liberal economic policy, his administration also introduced measures to encourage land reform, combat poverty, and expand healthcare services. He declined to run for a second term, and was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela became an elder statesman, focusing on charitable work in combating poverty and HIV/AIDS through the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Mandela was a controversial figure for much of his life. Denounced as a communist terrorist by critics, he nevertheless gained international acclaim for his activism, having received more than 250 honours, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Soviet Order of Lenin and the Bharat Ratna. He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to by his Xhosa clan name, Madiba, or as Tata ("Father"); he is often described as "the father of the nation". | Brian Williams | |
| Miles Davis | 2/15/2014 | Miles Davis was an jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, and jazz fusion. Miles Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. Davis was noted as "one of the key figures in the history of jazz". His 1959 album, Kind of Blue, has received its fourth platinum certification and has been commemorated as a masterpiece of the jazz genre and a national treasure. | Brian Williams | |
| Harry Belafonte | 2/16/2014 | Harry Belafonte is a singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. One of the most successful African American pop stars in history, he was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million selling album by a single artist. Belafonte is perhaps best known for singing "The Banana Boat Song", with its signature lyric "Day-O". He has recorded in many genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. He has also starred in several films, most notably in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), 1957's Island in the Sun, and Robert Wise's Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). Throughout his career he has been an advocate for humanitarian causes, such as the anti-apartheid movement and USA for Africa. Since 1987 he has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Belafonte has won three Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, an Emmy Award, and a Tony Award. In 1989 he received the Kennedy Center Honors. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994. | Brian Williams | |
| Louis Armstrong | 2/17/2014 | Satchmo...I am not as well informed about him as I should be. The education begins now! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Louis Armstrong was an jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana. His nicknames were Satchmo or Pops Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. With his instantly recognizable gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also skilled at scat singing (vocalizing using sounds and syllables instead of actual lyrics). Renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice almost as much as for his trumpet-playing, Armstrong's influence extends well beyond jazz music, and by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was widely regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African American entertainers to "cross over", whose skin color was secondary to his music in an America that was severely racially divided. His artistry and personality allowed him socially acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society that were highly restricted for a black man. | Brian Williams | |
| Mae Jemison | 2/18/2014 | Mae Carol Jemison is a physician and NASA astronaut. She became the first African American woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992. After her medical education and a brief general practice, Jemison served in the Peace Corps from 1985 to 1987, when she was selected by NASA to join the astronaut corps. She has a huge interesting researching the application of technology to daily life. She has appeared on television several times, including as an actress in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She is a dancer, and holds nine honorary doctorates in science, engineering, letters, and the humanities. Jemison says she was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.; to her King's dream was not an elusive fantasy but a call to action. "Too often people paint him like Santa -- smiley and inoffensive," says Jemison. "But when I think of Martin Luther King, I think of attitude, audacity, and bravery." Jemison thinks the civil rights movement was all about breaking down the barriers to human potential. "The best way to make dreams come true is to wake up." | Brian Williams | |
| Stevie Wonder | 2/19/2014 | Stevie Wonder is a musician, singer-songwriter, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist. A child prodigy, he has become one of the most creative and loved musical performers of the late 20th century. He signed with his first label at the age of 11 and continues to perform and record for Motown. All this is made more amazing by the fact that Stevie Wonder has been blind since shortly after birth. Among Wonder's works are singles such as "Superstition", "Sir Duke", "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" and "I Just Called to Say I Love You"; and albums such as Talking Book, Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life. He has recorded more than thirty U.S. top ten hits and received twenty-two Grammy Awards, the most ever awarded to a male solo artist, and has sold over 100 million albums and singles, making him one of the top 60 best-selling music artists. Wonder is also noted for his work as an activist for political causes, including his 1980 campaign to make Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a holiday in the United States. In 2009, Wonder was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists to celebrate the US singles chart's fiftieth anniversary, with Wonder at number five. | Brian Williams | |
| Cicely Tyson | 2/20/2014 | I remember watching The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman every year throughout grade school. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cicely Tyson is an actress. Tyson was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the Golden Globe Award for her performance as Rebecca Morgan in Sounder (1972). She starred in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974), for which she won two Emmy Awards and was nominated for a BAFTA Award. Throughout her career she has been nominated for nine Primetime Emmy Awards, winning three. In 2011 she appeared in the feature film version of The Help, for which she received even more accolades. Tyson has also performed on Broadway and has won Tony, Outer Critic and Drama Desk awards. | Brian Williams | |
| Willie Mays | 2/21/2014 | Willie Mays is a retired American professional baseball player who spent the majority of his Major League Baseball career as a center fielder with the New York and San Francisco Giants before finishing with the New York Mets. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility. He was nicknamed "The Say Hey Kid". Mays won two MVP awards and shares the All-Star record of most All-Star Games played (24) with Hank Aaron & Stan Musial. Ted Williams said, "They invented the All-Star Game for Willie Mays." Mays ended his career with 660 home runs, third at the time of his retirement, and currently fourth all-time. He was a center fielder and won a record-tying 12 Gold Gloves starting the year the award was introduced six seasons into his career. In some people's opinion, Mays is the greatest all-around player of all-time and has been named to numerous "Best of" and "Top 10" lists for baseball players during the last century. | Brian Williams | |
| Crispus Attucks | 2/22/2014 | Crispus Attucks was an slave, merchant seaman and dockworker of Wampanoag and African descent. He was the first casualty of the Boston Massacre, in Boston, Massachusetts, and is widely considered to be the first American casualty in the American Revolutionary War. Little is known for certain about Crispus Attucks beyond that he, along with Samuel Gray and James Caldwell, died "on the spot" during the incident. While the extent of his participation in events leading to the massacre is unclear, Attucks in the 18th century became an icon of the anti-slavery movement. He was held up as the first martyr of the American Revolution along with the others killed. In the early 19th century, as the abolitionist movement gained momentum in Boston, supporters lauded Attucks as a black American who played a heroic role in the history of the United States | Brian Williams | |
| Gordon Parks | 2/23/2014 | Wow, it's the last weekend of February. How fast this month has gone by! This one is a short one...kinda like this month. Oh, and if you haven't seen Shaft, shame on you! I can't dig that! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gordon Parks was an photographer, musician, writer and film director. He is best remembered for his photographic essays for Life magazine and as the director of the 1971 film, Shaft. | Brian Williams | |
| Sojourner Truth | 2/24/2014 | Sojourner Truth was an African American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son, she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man. Her best-known extemporaneous speech on gender inequalities, "Ain't I a Woman?", was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army; after the war, she tried unsuccessfully to secure land grants from the federal government for former slaves. | Brian Williams | |
| Dred Scott | 2/25/2014 | Dred Scott was a slave in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as "the Dred Scott Decision." The case was based on the fact that although he and his wife Harriet Scott were slaves, they had lived with his master Dr. John Emerson in states and territories where slavery was illegal according to both state laws and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, including Illinois and Minnesota (which was then part of the Wisconsin Territory). The United States Supreme Court decided 7–2 against Scott, finding that neither he nor any other person of African ancestry could claim citizenship in the United States, and therefore Scott could not bring suit in federal court under diversity of citizenship rules. Moreover, Scott's temporary residence outside Missouri did not bring about his emancipation under the Missouri Compromise, which the court ruled unconstitutional as it would improperly deprive Scott's owner of his legal property. While Chief Justice Roger B. Taney had hoped to settle issues related to slavery and Congressional authority by this decision, it aroused public outrage and deepened sectional tensions between the northern and southern U.S. states. President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and the post-Civil War Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments nullified the decision. | Brian Williams | |
| Duke Ellington | 2/26/2014 | Duke Ellington - The DUKE! I need to get more educated on his music. Jazz has never really vibed with me. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Duke Ellington was an composer, pianist and bandleader of jazz orchestras. His career spanned over half a century. Ellington himself embraced the phrase "beyond category" as a "liberating principle," and referred his music to the more general category of "American Music," rather than to a musical genre such as "jazz." He gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club. They would later tour Europe. Ellington's orchestra was composed of musicians who were brilliant in their own rights but The Duke was the one who brought the unit and all of their talents together. He was a master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm record format but he also composed music specifically for the style and skills of his individual musicians, such as "Jeep's Blues" for Hodges, and "Concerto for Cootie" for trumpeter Cootie Williams, which later became "Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me" with Bob Russell's lyrics. Ellington originated over a thousand compositions over his career. He won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1999 and was thought to have brought the perception of jazz up to a level on par with other genres. Gunther Schuller wrote in 1989: "Ellington composed incessantly to the very last days of his life. Music was indeed his mistress; it was his total life and his commitment to it was incomparable and unalterable. In jazz he was a giant among giants. And in twentieth century music, he may yet one day be recognized as one of the half-dozen greatest masters of our time." | Brian Williams | |
| Clarence Thomas | 2/27/2014 | Clarence Thomas is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Succeeding Thurgood Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Court. Thomas was educated at the College of the Holy Cross and at Yale Law School. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed Thomas Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). In 1990, President George H. W. Bush nominated Thomas for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He served in that role for 16 months and on July 1, 1991, was nominated by Bush to fill Marshall's seat on the United States Supreme Court. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate after a lengthy process. Since joining the Court, Thomas has taken a textualist approach, seeking to uphold what he sees as the original meaning of the United States Constitution and statutes. He is generally viewed as the most conservative member of the Court. Thomas has often approached federalism issues in a way that limits the power of the federal government and expands power of state and local governments. At the same time, Thomas's opinions have generally supported a strong executive branch within the federal government. | Brian Williams | |
| Ralph Waldo Ellison | 2/28/2014 | Ralph Waldo Ellison was an novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964), a collection of political, social and critical essays, and Going to the Territory (1986). | Brian Williams | |
| Aaliyah | 2/1/2015 | Aaliyah was an singer, dancer, actress, and model. At the age of 10, she appeared on the television show Star Search and performed in concert alongside Gladys Knight. She signed with Jive Records when she was 12. R.Kelly became her mentor when she signed with her uncle's label. Her debut album, Age Ain't Nothing but a Number sold three million copies and was certified double platinum. Aaliyah also appeared in films like Romeo Must Die. She continued to top the charts with hits like "Try Again" and "Queen of the Damned". She earned Grammy nominations and topped the Billboard Hot 100. She was taken from us way too soon following a place crash in the Bahamas. Aaliyah has been credited for helping redefine contemporary R&B and hip hop, earning her the nicknames "Princess of R&B" and "Queen of Urban Pop". She is listed by Billboard as the tenth most successful female R&B artist of the past 25 years and 27th most successful R&B artist in history. | Brian Williams | |
| Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | 2/2/2015 | Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played 20 seasons in the NBA for the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers. During his career as a center, Abdul-Jabbar was a record six-time NBA Most Valuable Player, a record 19-time NBA All-Star, a 15-time All-NBA selection, and an 11-time NBA All-Defensive Team member. He was a member of six NBA championship teams and was twice voted the Finals MVP. He was honored as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History. He is sometimes regarded as the greatest basketball player of all time. He attended college at UCLA under the famed John Wooden. While he was there, he played on back to back to back championship teams. His trademark "skyhook" shot was unstoppable and made him one of the league's top scores. He played a big part in the "Showtime" era of the Lakers. | Brian Williams | |
| Sheryl Swoopes | 2/3/2015 | Sheryl Swoopes is a former American professional basketball player and was the first player to be signed in the WNBA when it was created. She has won three Olympic Gold Medals and is a three-time WNBA MVP. Swoopes is famous for both her offensive and defensive skills and put up huge numbers in both her WNBA and college basketball career. She was recently voted by fans as one of the Top 15 players in WNBA history. | Brian Williams | |
| Jerry Rice | 2/4/2015 | Jerry Rice is often regarded as the greatest wide receiver the NFL has ever seen. He played 20 seasons and is mostly known for his time with the San Francisco 49ers. He is the all-time leader in most major statistical categories for wide receivers, including receptions, touchdown receptions, and yards. Rice was selected to the Pro Bowl 13 times and named All-Pro 12 times. He won three Super Bowl rings playing for the San Francisco 49ers and an AFC Championship with the Oakland Raiders. Rice currently holds over 100 NFL records, the most of any player by a wide margin. | Brian Williams | |
| Howlin' Wolf | 2/5/2015 | Howlin' Wolf was an blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player. With a booming voice and looming physical presence, he is one of the best-known Chicago blues artists. Musician and critic Cub Koda noted, "no one could match Howlin' Wolf for the singular ability to rock the house down to the foundation while simultaneously scaring its patrons out of its wits". Several of his songs, such as "Smokestack Lightnin'", "Back Door Man", "Killing Floor" and "Spoonful" have become blues and blues rock standards. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 51 on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". | Brian Williams | |
| Tupac Shakur | 2/6/2015 | Tupac Shakur was an rapper and actor. Shakur has sold over 75 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. His double disc albums All Eyez on Me and his Greatest Hits are among the best selling albums in the United States. He has been listed and ranked as one of the greatest artists and rappers of all time by many magazines. Shakur began his career in the background for the group Digital Underground before taking off on his own. The themes of most of Shakur's songs revolved around the violence and hardship in inner cities, racism and other social problems. His parents and other family members were part of the Black Panther Party which influenced his style. Tupac became involved in the East Coast - West Coast hip hop rivalry during the 1990's which brought him into conflict with a few other rappers. He was shot and died in 1996 in a drive-by shooting. | Brian Williams | |
| Ella Baker | 2/7/2015 | Ella Baker was an African American civil rights and human rights activist. She was largely a behind-the-scenes organizer whose career spanned over five decades. She worked alongside some of the most famous civil rights leaders of the 20th century, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King, Jr. She also mentored many emerging activists such as Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, Rosa Parks, and Bob Moses. She was a critic of professionalized, charismatic leadership and a promoter of grassroots organizing and radical democracy. She has been called "One of the most important African American leaders of the twentieth century and perhaps the most influential woman in the civil rights movement." | Brian Williams | |
| Marie Maynard Daly | 2/8/2015 | Marie Maynard Daly was an biochemist. She was the first African American woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1947. | Brian Williams | |
| Leon Spinks | 2/9/2015 | Leon Spinks is a former boxer and won the undisputed world heavyweight championship when he beat Muhammad Ali in 1978 in one of the biggest upsets in boxing history. Spinks won a bronze medal at the inaugural World Amateur Boxing Championships. He also won a gold medal during the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. | Brian Williams | |
| James "Buster" Douglas | 2/10/2015 | Buster Douglas is a former undisputed world heavyweight boxing champion who scored a stunning upset when he knocked out previously undefeated champion Mike Tyson in 1990. While this would be the highlight of his career, it has come to be thought of as the biggest upset in boxing history with odds at 42 to 1 in favor of Tyson. | Brian Williams | |
| Teddy Pendergrass | 2/11/2015 | Teddy Pendergrass was an R&B/soul singer and songwriter. Pendergrass first rose to fame as lead singer of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes in the 1970s before beginning his solo career. In 1982, he was severely injured in an auto accident in Philadelphia, resulting in his being paralyzed from the chest down. He subsequently founded the Teddy Pendergrass Alliance, a foundation that helps those with spinal cord injuries. | Brian Williams | |
| Jimi Hendrix | 2/12/2015 | Jimi Hendrix was an musician, guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music". Hendrix began playing guitar at the age of 15. In 1961. He was in the Isley Brother's backing band and he later worked with Little Richard. His big discovery came from bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals. Within months, Hendrix had earned three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", and "The Wind Cries Mary". He achieved fame in the US after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and in 1968 his third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, reached number one in the US. The double LP was Hendrix's most commercially successful release and his first and only number one album. The world's highest-paid performer, he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 before his accidental death from barbiturate-related asphyxia on September 18, 1970, at the age of 27. Hendrix was inspired musically by American rock and roll and electric blues. He favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, and was instrumental in developing the previously undesirable technique of guitar amplifier feedback. He helped to popularize the use of a wah-wah pedal in mainstream rock, and was the first artist to use stereophonic phasing effects in music recordings. Hendrix was the recipient of several music awards during his lifetime and posthumously. In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted him the Pop Musician of the Year, and in 1968, Billboard named him the Artist of the Year and Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year. Disc and Music Echo honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969 and in 1970, Guitar Player named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Rolling Stone ranked the band's three studio albums, Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland, among the 100 greatest albums of all time, and they ranked Hendrix as the greatest guitarist and the sixth greatest artist of all time. | Brian Williams | |
| Charles Henry Turner | 2/13/2015 | Charles Henry Turner was a prominent research biologist, educator, zoologist, and comparative psychologist. In 1892, Turner became the first African American to receive a graduate degree at the University of Cincinnati. In 1907, he became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Turner published 49 papers on invertebrates, including Habits of Mound-Building Ants, Experiments on the Color Vision of the Honeybee, Hunting Habits of an American Sand Wasp, and Psychological Notes on the Gallery Spider. In his research, Turner became the first person to prove that insects can hear and can distinguish pitch. In addition, he first discovered that cockroaches can learn by trial and error and that honeybees can see color. Besides his scientific work, Turner was active in the struggle to obtain social and educational services for African Americans in St. Louis, Missouri. After his death, a school for disabled African American children was named in his honor. | Brian Williams | |
| Edwin Moses | 2/14/2015 | Edwin Moses is a former track and field athlete, who won gold medals in the 400 m hurdles at the 1976 and 1984 Olympics. Between 1977 and 1987, Moses won 107 consecutive finals (122 consecutive races) and set the world record in his event four times. In addition to his running, Moses was also an innovative reformer in the areas of Olympic eligibility and drug testing. In 2000, he was elected the first Chairman of the Laureus World Sports Academy, an international service organization of world-class athletes. | Brian Williams | |
| Coretta Scott King | 2/15/2015 | Coretta Scott King was an author, activist, and civil rights leader. The widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King helped lead the African American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. King often participated in many of her husband's exploits and goals during the battle for African American equality. King met the future civil rights leader while in college and the two quickly escalated to the center of the movement. Mrs. King played a prominent role in the years after her husband's 1968 assassination when she took on the leadership of the struggle for racial equality herself and became active in the Women's Movement and the LGBT rights movement. King founded the King Center and sought to make his birthday a national holiday. King finally succeeded with Ronald Reagan's signing of the legislation establishing Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. She expanded her views to include opposition to apartheid and tried to establish LGBT rights as being part of her husband's wishes. King became friends with many politicians before and after her husband's death, most notably John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Robert F. Kennedy. John F. Kennedy's phone call to her during the 1960 election was what she liked to believe was behind his victory. In August 2005, King suffered a stroke and was left paralyzed on her right side and unable to speak. Five months later, King died of respiratory failure due to complications from ovarian cancer. King's funeral was attended by four of five living U.S. Presidents and by over 10,000 people. She was temporarily buried on the grounds of the King Center, until she was interred next to her husband. Coretta received awards both for her and her husband during her lifetime and was awarded posthumously for her charismatic behavior towards human rights. King was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 2009. She was the first African American to lie in Georgia State Capitol upon her death. King has been referred to as "First Lady of the Civil Rights Movement". | Brian Williams | |
| Fred Shuttlesworth | 2/16/2015 | Fred Shuttlesworth was a U.S. civil rights activist who led the fight against segregation and other forms of racism as a minister in Birmingham, Alabama. He was a co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He initiated and and was instrumental in the 1963 Birmingham Campaign, and continued to work against racism and for alleviation of the problems of the homeless. The Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport was named in his honor in 2008. | Brian Williams | |
| Paul Winfield | 2/17/2015 | Paul Winfield was an television, film and stage actor. He was known for his portrayal of a Louisiana sharecropper who struggles to support his family during the Great Depression in the landmark film Sounder, which earned him an Academy Award nomination. He portrayed Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1978 television miniseries King, for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award. Winfield was also known to science fiction fans for his roles in The Terminator, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. | Brian Williams | |
| Bessie Coleman | 2/18/2015 | Bessie Coleman was an civil aviator. She was the first female pilot of African American descent and the first person of African American descent to hold an international pilot license. | Brian Williams | |
| Walter White | 2/19/2015 | Walter White (no, not THAT one) was an civil rights activist who led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for almost a quarter of a century and directed a broad program of legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement. He was also a journalist, novelist, and essayist. He graduated in 1916 from Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University), a historically black college. In 1918 he joined the small national staff of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in New York. He acted as James Weldon Johnson's assistant national secretary and traveled to the South to investigate. White later succeeded Johnson as the head of the NAACP, leading the organization from 1931 to 1955. White oversaw the plans and organizational structure of the fight against public segregation. He worked with President Truman on desegregating the armed forces after the Second World War and gave him a draft for the Executive Order to implement this. Under White's leadership, the NAACP set up the Legal Defense Fund, which raised numerous legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement, and achieved many successes. Among these was the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which determined that segregated education was inherently unequal. White also quintupled NAACP membership to nearly 500,000. | Brian Williams | |
| Will Smith | 2/20/2015 | Will Smith is an actor, producer, and rapper. He has enjoyed success in television, film, and music. He is often thought of as the most powerful actor in Hollywood. Smith has been nominated for four Golden Globe Awards, two Academy Awards, and has won four Grammy Awards. His career started as a rapper under the name of the Fresh Prince. He then starred in the popular television series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The show ran for nearly six years on NBC and has been syndicated consistently ever since. In mid-90's, Smith moved on to films and has started in blockbusters for most of the last 20 years. He is the only actor to have eight consecutive films gross over $100 million in the domestic box office, and 11 consecutive films gross over $150 million internationally and the only one to have eight consecutive films in which he starred open at the number one spot in the domestic box office tally. He has received Best Actor Oscar nominations for Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness. | Brian Williams | |
| Sugar Ray Leonard | 2/21/2015 | Sugar Ray Leonard is a retired professional boxer, motivational speaker, and occasional actor. He was the first boxer to earn more than $100 million in purses, won world titles in five weight divisions, and defeated future fellow International Boxing Hall of Fame inductees Wilfred Benítez, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Durán, and Marvin Hagler. Leonard was named "Boxer of the Decade" for the 1980s. | Brian Williams | |
| Bo Diddley | 2/22/2015 | Bo Diddley was an R&B vocalist, guitarist and songwriter (usually as Ellas McDaniel). He was also known as The Originator because of his key role in the transition from the blues to rock and roll, and rock, influencing a host of acts, including The Animals, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Parliament Funkadelic, The Velvet Underground, The Who, The Yardbirds, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Eric Clapton, Elvis Presley, and The Beatles, among others. He introduced more insistent, driving rhythms and a hard-edged electric guitar sound on a wide-ranging catalog of songs, along with African rhythms and a signature beat (a simple five-accent clave rhythm) that remains a cornerstone of hip hop, rock and pop. Accordingly, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation and a Grammy Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He was known in particular for his technical innovations, including his trademark rectangular guitar. | Brian Williams | |
| James Meredith | 2/23/2015 | James Meredith is a civil rights movement figure, writer, and political adviser. In 1962, he was an Air Force veteran and the first African American student admitted to the segregated University of Mississippi, an event that was a flashpoint in the African American civil rights movement. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, Meredith decided to exercise his constitutional rights and apply to the University of Mississippi. His goal was to put pressure on the Kennedy administration to enforce civil rights for African Americans. In 1966 Meredith planned a solo 220-mile March Against Fear from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi; he wanted to highlight continuing racism in the South and encourage voter registration. He did not want major civil rights organizations involved. The second day, he was shot by a white gunman and suffered numerous wounds. Leaders of major organizations vowed to complete the march in his name after he was taken to the hospital. While he was recovering, more people became involved as marchers. When Meredith and other leaders entered Jackson on June 26, marchers were an estimated 15,000 strong, in what was the largest civil rights march in Mississippi. During the course of it, more than 4,000 African Americans had registered to vote, and the march was a catalyst to continued community organizing and additional registration. In 2002 and again in 2012, the University of Mississippi led year-long series of events to celebrate the 40th and 50th anniversaries of Meredith's integration of the institution. He was among numerous speakers invited to the campus, where a statue of him commemorates his role. The Lyceum-The Circle Historic District at the center of the campus has been designated as a National Historic Landmark for these events. | Brian Williams | |
| Ralph Bunche | 2/24/2015 | Ralph Bunche was an political scientist, academic, and diplomat who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Palestine. He was the first African American and person of color to be so honored in the history of the prize. He was involved in the formation and administration of the United Nations. In 1963, he was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President John F. Kennedy. For more than two decades, Bunche served as chair of the Department of Political Science at Howard University. He served as a member of the Board of Overseers of his alma mater, Harvard University, as a member of the board of the Institute of International Education, and as a trustee of Oberlin College, Lincoln University, and New Lincoln School. | Brian Williams | |
| Michael Sam | 2/25/2015 | Michael Sam is a football defensive end who is currently a free agent. He played college football at Missouri and was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in the seventh round of the 2014 NFL Draft. He became the first publicly gay player to be drafted in the NFL. Sam was a consensus All-American and the Southeastern Conference Defensive Player of the Year as a senior at Missouri. After completing his college football career, Sam publicly came out as gay. He has yet to play in an official NFL game though he has spent time on the practice squad and/or training camp with the Dallas Cowboys and St. Louis Rams. | Brian Williams | |
| Henry Blair | 2/26/2015 | Henry Blair was the second African American inventor to receive a patent. His first invention was the Seed-Planter, patented in 1834, which allowed farmers to plant more corn using less labor in a smaller amount of time. In 1936, he obtained a second patent for a cotton planter. This invention worked by splitting the ground with two shovel-like blades which were pulled along by a horse. A wheel-driven cylinder followed behind which dropped the seed into the newly plowed ground. Blair had been a successful farmer for years and developed the inventions as a means of increasing efficiency in farming. In the patent records, Blair is listed as a "colored man"; making this identification the only one of its kind in early patent records. Blair was illiterate, therefore he signed his patents with an "x". | Brian Williams | |
| Eddie Murphy | 2/27/2015 | Eddie Murphy is a comedian, actor, writer, singer, and director. Box-office takes from Murphy's films make him the 4th-highest grossing actor in the United States. He was a regular cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1980 to 1984 and has worked as a stand-up comedian. He has received Golden Globe Award nominations for his performances in 48 Hrs., Beverly Hills Cop series, Trading Places, and The Nutty Professor. In 2007, he won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of soul singer James "Thunder" Early in Dreamgirls. Eddie Murphy's work as a voice actor includes Thurgood Stubbs in The PJs, Donkey in the Shrek series and the Chinese dragon Mushu in Disney's Mulan. In some of his films, he plays multiple roles in addition to his main character, intended as a tribute to one of his idols Peter Sellers, who played multiple roles in Dr. Strangelove and elsewhere. Murphy has played multiple roles in Coming to America, Wes Craven's Vampire in Brooklyn, the Nutty Professor films (where he played the title role in two incarnations, plus his father, brother, mother, and grandmother), Bowfinger, Norbit, and Meet Dave. As of 2014, films featuring Murphy have grossed over 3.8 billion in the United States and Canada box office, and 6.6 billion worldwide. | Brian Williams | |
| Prince | 2/28/2015 | Prince is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and actor. He has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. He has written several hundred songs and produces and records his own music for his own music label. In addition, he has promoted the careers of Sheila E., Carmen Electra, the Time and Vanity 6. Prince wrote his first song at the age of seven and continued to work with family bands. As a 17 year old, he created demo tapes before his debut album in 1978. His 1979 album, Prince, went platinum due to the success of the singles "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?" and "I Wanna Be Your Lover". His next three records, Dirty Mind (1980), Controversy (1981) and 1999 (1982), continued his success, showcasing Prince's trademark of prominently sexual lyrics and incorporation of elements of funk, dance and rock music. In 1984, he began referring to his backup band as the Revolution and released the album Purple Rain, which served as the soundtrack to his film debut of the same name. After releasing the albums Around the World in a Day (1985) and Parade (1986), The Revolution disbanded and Prince released the critically acclaimed double album Sign "O" the Times (1987) as a solo artist. He released three more solo albums before debuting The New Power Generation band in 1991. Prince has a wide vocal range and is known for his flamboyant stage presence and costumes. He has sold over 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. He has won seven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe, and an Academy Award. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, the first year he was eligible. Prince's music has been influenced by rock, R&B, soul, funk, hip hop, blues, new wave, electronica, disco, psychedelia, folk, jazz, and pop. Prince pioneered the "Minneapolis sound", a hybrid mixture of funk, rock, pop, R&B and new wave that has influenced many other musicians. | Brian Williams | |