In this “Ordinary People Can do Extraordinary Things” profile, we look at a man who at age 94 is still doing the extraordinary work that...

“Without black writers, the world would perhaps never have known of the chicanery, shenanigans, and buffoonery employed by those in high...

“Make the country better for those yet unborn who will never know the seat you took, the ride you rode, the risk you accepted, the fare...

When we consider the broad and multi-faceted Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s, a considerable number of figures are...

“Each person in our society is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done.” This is one of Bryan Stevenson’s core beliefs. Stevenson is...

On Christmas Eve in 1951, the Ku Klux Klan in Mims, Florida took a torch to the home of NAACP activists Harry and Harriette Moore. The...

Emmanuel Acho’s parents emigrated from Nigeria and raised their four children in Dallas, Texas. From a young age, they instilled in him a...

At the ripe old age of thirty-four, Dr. Kizzmekia S. Corbett used her skills as a viral immunologist to alter the course of a world-wide...

At the age of twenty-four, Amanda Gorman has the awareness and wisdom of a woman three times her age. Born in the Watts neighborhood of...

Marva Collins became a teacher out of necessity. Growing up in segregated Alabama in the wake of the Depression, she attended a one-room...

In 1949, thirty-one year old Steve Henson and his wife, Gayle, decided to leave their home in Nebraska and head off for the unknown in...

The 1950s and 1960s saw hard earned gains in civil rights legislation. Despite enormous opposition from Deep South states, civil rights...

Many of the women profiled so far faced both racism and the added burden of sexism. Given the opportunity, women proved they could be...

Edward W. Brooke was born in 1919 to a middle-class family in Washington, D.C. His father was a lawyer, so the family’s income and...

When The U.S. Supreme Court struck down school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the impact was initially both...

If you grew up Black in the South during the Jim Crow era, it was virtually guaranteed that in addition to experiencing discrimination...

In 1955, a thirty-six year old single mother of six boarded a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. After she dropped her coins into the...

Fannie Lou Hamer was the youngest of twenty children, born to Mississippi sharecroppers in 1917. Even though Polio left her with a limp,...

An entire year could be spent profiling the hundreds of civil rights leaders who worked tirelessly for abolition, desegregation, and...

As a child born to a middle-class family in 1895, Charles Hamilton Houston already had advantages that most Black children could only...

We’d love to have a full month profiling courageous people who broke down barriers and succeeded against all odds. But what makes stories...

If you’ve ever used the phrase “Kicking ass and taking names,” you have John Oliver Killens to thank for putting your feelings into...

When Charles Drew was born in Washington, D.C. in 1904, school attendance wasn’t required. It wouldn’t become compulsory for another...

In 1896, the Supreme Court’s Plessy vs. Ferguson decision upheld Jim Crow laws, creating the “separate but equal” doctrine that would be...

What do the homes of Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, Barbara Stanwyck and the public housing project of Langston Terrace in Washington, D.C....

In 1875, Mary McLeod was the fifteenth of seventeen children born to parents Samuel and Patsy, who’d been enslaved in South Carolina....

Referred to as the “Black Thomas Edison,” Granville Woods held over sixty patents in his lifetime. Thanks to the Northwest Ordinance of...

When the letters M.D. were added to Rebecca Lee’s name in 1864, some people snarkily mused that it stood for “mule driver.” In reality,...

Mary Walker was born enslaved in Alabama in 1848. Freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, Mary married, had children, and earned a living...

If you’ve ever driven through Richmond, Virginia along I-95, you’ve no doubt noticed one of the city’s most visible landmarks: the...