People

Figures in arts, literature, science, civil rights, music, and politics across the United States and the African diaspora.

• Augusta Savage

  American sculptor (1892–1962)

• Bayard Rustin

  American civil rights activist (1912–1987)

• Benjamin Banneker

  free African American scientist, surveyor, almanac author and farmer (1731–1806)

• Bessie Smith

  American blues singer (1892–1937)

• Blanche K. Bruce

  American politician (1841-1898)

• Countee Cullen

  American author (1903–1946)

• Duke Ellington

  American jazz pianist and composer (1899–1974)

• Fannie Lou Hamer

  American civil rights activist (1917–1977)

• Frederick Douglass

  African-American social reformer, writer, and abolitionist (c. 1818–1895)

• George Washington Carver

  African American botanist and inventor (1864-1943)

• Hiram Rhodes Revels

  American politician (1827-1901)

• Ida B. Wells

  American journalist and civil rights activist (1862–1931)

• Josephine Baker

  American-born French dancer, singer and actress (1906–1975)

• Langston Hughes

  American writer and social activist (1901–1967)

• Mae Jemison

  American doctor and NASA astronaut

• Martin Luther King Jr.

  American Baptist minister and civil rights leader (1929–1968)

• Paul Robeson

  American singer, actor, and political activist (1898–1976)

• Robert Smalls

  American politician and former slave (1839-1915)

• Rosa Parks

  civil rights activist

• Thurgood Marshall

  Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 to 1991 (1908–1993)

• W. E. B. Du Bois

  American sociologist and activist (1868–1963)

• Zora Neale Hurston

  African American folklorist, novelist, short story writer, and Civic Rights advocate (1891–1960)