Maya Angelou speaks during the AARP Magazine's 2011 Inspire Awards — Kris Connor/Getty Images

30 Black Americans To Celebrate During Black History Month and Beyond

Incredible, influential pioneers in African American history.

Author:
Shameika Rhymes
Feb 1, 2024

Every Black History Month and Juneteenth, pioneers in African American history are often mentioned like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Muhammad Ali and Harriet Tubman. They are revered and in the spotlight because they are on stamps, calendars and even quoted in political speeches. But what about the other unsung Black history heroes that have opened doors, fought for freedoms, and even invented techniques used in healthcare today?

All of the pioneers should be celebrated and mentioned, so we’re shining a light on 30 Black Americans that have flown under the radar and deserve to be celebrated for their bravery, accomplishments, and contributions to the civil rights movement, the arts, politics, technology, and much more.

Heroes like Ella Baker, Claudette Colvin, Gordon Parks and Bayard Rustin are celebrated in this list as they’ve made way for many of today’s innovators to shine in the present.

30 Black Americans To Celebrate During Black History Month, Juneteenth and Beyond

Claudette Colvin

Julie Bennett/Getty Images

Nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to move to the back of a bus to give up her seat to a white person. When the bus driver ordered her to get up, she refused to say she had paid her fare and it was her constitutional right. She was arrested. Colvin said to NPR, "All I remember is that I was not going to walk off the bus voluntarily," Colvin says. Colvin later became the main witness in the federal lawsuit Browder v. Gayle, which ended segregation on public transportation in Alabama.

Related: Black History Facts

Robert Sengstacke Abbott

Abbott laid the foundation for what would eventually birth many Black publications including Ebony, Jet, Essence, Black Enterprise, Right On!, Sheen Magazine, and more. In 1905, Abbott founded the Chicago Defender, a weekly newspaper. The paper started out with a 25-cent investment and a four-page pamphlet, increasing circulation with every edition. The Defender played an important role in encouraging African Americans to migrate from the south for better economic opportunities. The success of the paper made Abbott one of the first African American self-made millionaires.

Shirley Chisholm

Chisholm kicked the door in for African American women holding major roles in government. She first served as an educational consultant for New York City’s Bureau of Child Welfare and ran for New York State Assembly in 1964. Chisholm was elected in 1968 as the first African American Congresswoman. She served from 1969 to 1983 representing New York’s 12th District. She later became one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Chisholm made more history in 1972 by becoming the first African American woman of a major political party to run for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination. Her campaign slogan: "Unbought and Unbossed." Vice President Kamala Harris even paid tribute to Chisholm in her presidential campaign announcement by using a similar logo to Chisholm's.

Johnson H. Johnson

Hailed as one of the most influential Black media publishers, Johnson got his start working for Supreme Life Insurance Company collecting weekly news clippings for his manager, which sparked his idea for his first publication, Negro Digest. In 1942, with a $500 loan and $6,000 raised through subscriptions, Johnson launched his dream project which later became Black World. Three years later, he launched Ebony. In 1951, he created Jet, a weekly news magazine featuring the Jet Beauty of the Week. Johnson also expanded from magazines into book publishing and owned Fashion Fair Cosmetics, the premier cosmetics company that catered to darker skin tones before there was Fenty.

Dorothy Height

Height has been called the matriarch of the civil rights movement and often worked behind the scenes. After receiving two degrees from New York University in the 1930s, Height worked for the New York City Welfare Department and then became the assistant executive director of the Harlem Y.M.C.A. She was involved in anti-lynching protests, brought public attention to the exploitation of African-American women working in "slave markets," and escorted First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to the National Council of Negro Women, a council she served on for more than 40 years. In the 1950s, she lobbied President Dwight D. Eisenhower to take an aggressive stance on school desegregation issues. Height also worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and she stood on the platform with him when he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech in August 1963.

Don Cornelius

With a distinctive baritone and demanding stature, Don Cornelius helped to shift Black culture into the spotlight with the creation of the show Soul Train. The “Hippest Trip in America” was picked up for national syndication in 1971 with its first episode featuring performers Gladys Knight & The Pips, Eddie Kendricks, Bobby Hutton, and Honey Cone. The dance show exposed Black acts to a larger national audience, featuring Soul Train dancers, the Scramble Board, the Soul Train Line, and Cornelius’ famous catchphrase “Love, Peace, and Soul.” The combination of performances and interviews proved to be a formula that worked. The show is one of the longest-running syndicated shows that ran until 2006.

Alice Coachman

Alice Coachman became the first African American woman from any country to win an Olympic Gold Medal at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. She set the record for the high jump at the Olympics, leaping to 5 feet and 6 ⅛ inches. Four years later, she became the first Black female athlete to endorse an international consumer product when she signed on as a Coca-Cola spokesperson. Over the course of her career, she won 34 national titles. She was officially inducted into the National Track-and-Field Hall of Fame in 1975 and the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 2004.

Maria P. Williams

The landscape of Hollywood has the work of many Black women from Ava DuVernay, Issa Rae, and Shonda Rhimes to name a few. Maria P. Williams paved the way as the first Black woman to produce, write, and act in her own silent crime movie in 1923, The Flames of Wrath. To distribute the film, she formed the Western Film Producing Company and Booking Exchange with her husband. The former Kansas City teacher was also an activist, and detailed her leadership skills in her 1916 book, My Work and Public Sentiment.

Ethel Waters

Ethel Waters first entered the entertainment business in the 1920s as a blues singer, before making history. Waters was the first to integrate Broadway appearing in Irving Berlin’s As Thousands Cheer and eventually became the highest-paid performer on Broadway. In addition to becoming the first African American to star in her own television variety show in 1939, The Ethel Waters Show. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the film Pinky in 1950. Also in 1950, Waters was the first Black actress to star in a television series, Beulah, which aired on ABC. In 1962, she became the first African American woman to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by a Leading Lady for the show Route 66.

Bayard Rustin

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is usually credited for the iconic March on Washington in August 1963, but it was actually Rustin who organized the historical event. The march brought more than 200,000 peaceful protestors of varying races and religions together to hear King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. As a gay man who had controversial ties to communism, he was considered too much of a liability to be on the front lines of the movement so he worked in the background. Rustin also helped King found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Ruby Bridges

Black historical figure, Ruby Nell Bridges at age 6, was the first African American child to attend William Franz Elementary School in New Orleans after Federal courts ordered the desegregation of public schools — Getty Images

Ruby Bridges was the first African American child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis on November 14, 1960. She was six years old at the time. Despite intimidation and discrimination, Bridges never missed a day of school. Bridges has written two books on her experience and has been honored with the Carter G. Woodson Book Award. In 1999, she also set up The Ruby Bridges Foundation to promote equality in education. Bridges is also a lifelong activist for racial equality. In 1999, Ruby established The Ruby Bridges Foundation to promote tolerance and create change through education. In 2000, she was made an honorary deputy marshal in a ceremony in Washington, DC.

Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks was one of the most prolific figures behind a camera in the 20th century. His photojournalism from the 1940s through the 1970s captured aspects of American life including issues like civil rights, poverty, and race relations. Parks was the first African American on the staff of LIFE magazine, and he was also responsible for some of the most beautiful imagery in the pages of Ebony, Glamour, and Vogue. He later went on to co-found Essence magazine. In 1969, Parks became the first African American to write and direct a major Hollywood studio feature film, The Learning Tree, based on his bestselling semi-autobiographical novel. His next film, Shaft, helped to shape the blaxploitation era in the '70s. Parks once said: "I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera."

Madam C.J. Walker

Madam C.J. Walker was the first Black female millionaire in America. She made her fortune by creating a homemade line of hair care products for Black women. Born Sarah Breedlove, she was inspired to create hair products after experiencing a scalp disorder and hair loss. It led to the creation of the Walker system of hair care. She built an empire selling products directly to Black women, then employing others to sell them. She used her fortune to fund scholarships for women at the Tuskegee Institute and donated to the NAACP, the Black YMCA, and other charities. In fact, Netflix's historical drama Self-Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker gives insight into her story.

Annie Turnbo Malone

While Madam C.J. Walker may be known as the first Black female millionaire, she didn’t get there without the likes of her employer Annie Turnbo Malone, who was also a millionaire. Her contributions to the hair care industry have been overshadowed by Walker’s success. Malone was a chemist and entrepreneur. She developed a hair product to straighten African American women’s hair without damaging it, and eventually created a line of hair care and beauty products. She and her assistants sold the products door to door giving demonstrations before business took off after the World Fair in 1904. Malone established Poro College, a cosmetology school and training center in St. Louis in 1918. She had thirty-two branches of the school throughout the country in the mid-50s.