Black History Month - People

U.S. Baptist minister and civil rights leader. He opposed discrimination against people of color by organizing nonviolent resistance and peaceful mass demonstrations. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Won the Nobel Peace Prize (1964)

• W.E.B. DuBois

• Barack Obama

• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

• Thurgood Marshall

American civil rights lawyer. First black justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. A tireless advocate for the rights of minorities and the poor.

• Barack Obama

• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

• Langston Hughes

• Thurgood Marshall

A former slave who helped other slaves escape on the Underground Railroad. (A network of people and safe houses that helped slaves escape to freedom)

• Michelle Obama

• Harriet Tubman

• Mae Jemison

• Maya Angelou

United States abolitionist and feminist who was freed from slavery and became a leading advocate of the abolition of slavery and for the rights of women (1797-1883)

• Harriet Tubman

• Mae Jemison

• Michelle Obama

• Sojourner Truth

Attorney and politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He was the first African American to be elected to the presidency. He previously served as a Senator from Illinois.

• Thurgood Marshall

• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

• Langston Hughes

• Barack Obama

Prominent black American, born into slavery. Founded the Tuskegee Institute, a black school in Alabama devoted to training teachers. He served as an adviser to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.

• Thurgood Marshall

• Langston Hughes

• Booker T. Washington

• Barack Obama

A poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist. Published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years

• Maya Angelou

• Michelle Obama

• Sojourner Truth

• Harriet Tubman

United States choreographer noted for his use of African elements (born in 1931) Founded a Dance Theater and received Kennedy Center Honors in 1988. His most famous work is Revelations.

• Alvin Ailey

• Fredrick Douglass

• W.E.B. DuBois

• Thurgood Marshall

Engineer, physician and NASA astronaut. Became the first African American woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992.

• Rosa Park

• Mae Jemison

• Maya Angelou

• Ruby Bridges

United States civil rights leader who refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery (Alabama) and so triggered the national civil rights movement (born in 1913)

• Mae Jemison

• Maya Angelou

• Rosa Parks

• Ruby Bridges