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Historic African American Figures |
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Hank Aaron
1934-Present: Baseball player and executive, born in Mobile, Alabama, USA. Baseball's all-time homerun king, he played 23 years as an outfielder for the Milwaukee (later Atlanta) Braves and Milwaukee Brewers (1954--76). He holds many of baseball's most distinguished records, including most lifetime runs batted in (2,297), most years with 30 or more homeruns (15), and most career homeruns (755). Breaking the latter record, baseball's most venerable since Babe Ruth retired with 714 homeruns in 1935, was both a triumph and a trial for Aaron. He was besieged by the media and badgered by racist letter-writers who resented Aaron breaking Ruth's record. A complete player whose skills were never fully appreciated until he broke the record in 1974, Aaron was voted the National League Most Valuable Player only once (1957). After retiring as a player, he moved into the Atlanta Braves front office as executive vice-president, where he has been a leading spokesperson for minority hiring in baseball. Nicknamed, "Hammerin' Henry,' he was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame in 1982. His autobiography, I Had a Hammer, was published in 1990. He was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedomin 2002 by President Bill Clinton.
Ralph Abernathy
1926-90: Baptist clergyman, civil rights activist; born in Linden, Ala. An early civil rights organizer and leading confidante of Martin Luther King Jr., he was pastor of the West Hunter Street Baptist Church in Atlanta, Ga. throughout his civil rights career (1961--90). He was King's chosen successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) (1968--77). Although he was a competent leader, the SCLC never regained the influence it had under King. He resigned the SCLC leadership to run unsuccessfully for Andrew Young's congressional seat (1977). Turning away from the civil rights movement, he devoted his attention to the West Hunter Street Baptist Church and the issues of worldwide peace.
Nat "King" Cole
1917-65: Musician; born in Birmingham, Ala. He was raised in Chicago, where he made his recording debut in 1936 with Eddie Cole's Solid Swingers, a sextet led by his brother. He toured with a Shuffle Along revue in 1937, then settled in Los Angeles where he played solo piano for a year. In 1939, he began recording for Decca with his original King Cole Trio, whose piano-bass-guitar instrumentation was widely copied by combos in the 1940s and 1950s. The group played in Hollywood and New York nightclubs until 1943, when it had its first national hit, "Straighten Up and Fly Right," featuring solo singing by Cole. Starting with "The Christmas Song" in 1946, he augmented his trio with a studio orchestra and gradually reduced the prominence of his piano playing, which had been highly influential among jazz musicians. By 1950, he had become the first black male to attain mainstream acceptance as a popular singer, and he released a continual series of hit records over the remainder of his career. In 1956--57, he was the first African-American to host his own network television show, but it failed to attract a national sponsor and was not renewed. In 1958 he portrayed W. C. Handyin the film biography St. Louis Blues, one of several motion pictures in which he appeared. A biography, Unforgettable, by Leslie Course, was published in 1991.
Rosa Parks
1913Present: Civil rights activist; born in Tuskegee, Ala. After briefly attending Alabama State University, she married and settled in Montgomery, Ala., where by 1955 she was working as a tailor's assistant in a department store. Contrary to most early portrayals of her as merely a poor, tired seamstress, who on the spur of the moment refused to surrender her seat in a bus to a white passenger, she had long been a community activist - she had served as secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and she had worked for the Union of Sleeping Car Porters. She had also been involved in previous incidents when refusing to leave a bus seat. By forcing the police to remove, arrest, and imprison her on this occasion, and then agreeing to become a test case of segregation ordinances, she played a deliberate role in instigating the Montgomery bus boycott(1955--56). She was fired from her job at the department store and in 1957 she became a youth worker in Detroit, Mich. As she eventually earned recognition as the "midwife" or "mother" of the civil rights revolution, she became a sought-after speaker nationally. In 1999, Parks received the Congressional Gold Medalfrom President Clinton and the Presidential Medal of Freedomin 1994.
Jesse Owens
1913-80: Track and field athlete; born in Danville, Ala. After setting records as a schoolboy athlete in Cleveland, he attended Ohio State University; on one day (May 25, 1935), he set three world records and tied another in the span of about an hour. (His 26 feet 81/4 inch running broad jump was not broken until 1960.) At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany, he disproved for the world Adolf Hitler's proclamation of "Aryan supremacy" by achieving the finest one-day performance in track history with four gold medals (100 meters, 200 meters, 4100 meters, running broad jump); Hitler left the stadium to avoid having to congratulate an African American. Although he gained worldwide publicity for his feat, back in the U.S.A. he gained few financial or social benefits and was reduced to running "freak" races against horses and dogs. After graduating from Ohio State (1937) he went into private business before becoming secretary of the Illinois Athletic Commission (until 1955). He made a goodwill tour of India for the U.S. State Department and attended the 1956 Olympics as President Eisenhower's personal representative. He returned to Illinois to direct youth sports activities for the Illinois Youth Commission. In a belated gesture of national recognition, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedomin 1976 and the highest award from the United States Congress, the Congressional Gold Medal.
More Biographies
Famous African American Contributors
Prominent African American Achievers
Celebrities
Notable African Americans
Notable African American Government Officials - Minorities and Women in the 108th Congress
- James Armistead, American Revolution patriot
- Daisy Bates, One of the Little Rock Nine
- Tom Bradley, American politician
- Carol Mosely Braun, U.S. senator
- Edward Brooke, American politician
- Ralph Bunche, U.S. government official and United Nations diplomat
- Julia Carson, American politician
- Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm, American politician
- John Conyers, politician
- Paul Cuffe, U.S. merchant, seaman, and philanthropist
- Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., American air force general
- Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., American general
- David Dinkins, political leader
- Joycelyn Elders, U.S. Surgeon General
- William H. Hastie, U.S. jurist
- Richard Gordon Hatcher, politician, law professor
- A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., prominent black federal judge and historian
- Benjamin Hooks, American black leader
- Gen. Oliver Otis Howard, Union general in the Civil War
- Jesse Jackson, political leader, clergyman, and civil-rights activist
- Maynard Jackson, mayor of Atlanta
- Daniel "Chappie" James, first black U.S. Air Force general
- Barbara Jordan, lawyer, public official, and educator
- John Mercer Langston, public official, diplomat, educator
- Greenbury Logan, Texan soldier
- Thurgood Marshall, U.S. lawyer and Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
- Floyd McKissick, U.S. lawyer and civil-rights leader
- Kweisi Mfume, politician, NAACP leader
- Eleanor Holmes Norton, lawyer and government official
- P. B. S. Pinchback, U.S. politician
- Colin Powell, U.S. army general and public official
- Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., American politician and clergyman
- Joseph Rainey, U.S. politician
- A. Philip Randolph,U.S. labor leader
- Charles Rangel, U.S. politician
- Hiram R. Revels, U.S. clergyman, educator, and politician
- Condoleeza Rice, diplomat, professor
- Myra C. Selby, attorney, Indiana jurist
- Robert Smalls, U.S. captain in the Union navy and politician
- Carl B. Stokes, American political leader
- Clarence Thomas, associate justice of the U.S.. Supreme Court
- Harold Washington, American politician
- J. C. Watts, politician
- Robert C. Weaver, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
- Andrew Young, African American leader, clergyman, and public official
African American History Month Biographies
Hank Aaron
Ralph Abernathy
Jane Addams
Alvin Ailey
Richard Allen
Amos 'n' Andy
Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson
Marian Anderson
Muhammad Ali
Maya Angelou
James Armistead
Louis Armstrong
Matthew Ashby
Arthur Ashe
Crispus Attucks
Pearl Bailey
Josephine Baker
James Baldwin
Ernie Banks
Benjamin Banneker
Count Basie
Daisy Bates
Stymie Beard
Romare Beardon
Louise Beavers
James Beckwourth
Harry Belafonte
Chuck Berry
Halle Berry
Willie Best
Mary McCloud Bethune
Beulah
Julian Bond
Barry Bonds
Mary Elizabeth Bowser
Andrew Felton Brimmer
Edward Brooke
Gwendolyn Brooks
H. Rap Brown
James Brown
Jim Brown
Willa Beatrice Brown
Blanche Bruce
Ralph Bunche
Cab Calloway
Roy Campanella
William A. Campbell
Diahann Carroll
Stokely Carmichael
William Carney
Hurricane Carter
George Washington Carver
Wilt Chamberlain
Cassandra M. Chandler
Ray Charles
Chubby Checker
Shirley Chisholm
Joseph Cinque
Kathleen Neil Cleaver
Roberto Clemente
Nat King Cole
Bessie Coleman
William T. Coleman Jr.
John Coltrane
Ward Connerly
Sam Cooke
Anna Julia Cooper
John Conyers Jr.
Bill Cosby
Alexander Crummell
Dorothy Dandridge
Angela Davis
Benjamin O. Davis
Ernie Davis
Miles Davis
Ossie Davis
Sammy Davis Jr.
Martin Robinson Delaney
Fats Domino
Frederick Douglass
Charles Drew
W. E. B. Du Bois
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Elizabeth Eckford
Duke Ellington
Medgar Evers
Myrlie Evers-Williams
Louis Farrakhan
Walter Fauntroy
Stepin Fetchit
Stagecoach Mary Fields
Henry O. Flipper
James Forten
Grant Fuhr
E. Franklin Frazier
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Marcus Garvey
Dizzy Gillespie
Whoopi Goldberg
Berry Gordy
Greensboro 4
Dick Gregory
Olaudah Equiano
James Farmer
Jessie Fauset
Stepin Fetchit
Ella Fitzgerald
Redd Foxx
Aretha Franklin
Marcus Garvey
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Marvin GayeLou Gossett Jr.Logan Greenbury
Dick Gregory
Frederick D. GregoryAlex Haley Charles B. Hall
Prince Hall
Fannie Lou Hamer
W. C. Handy
Lorraine Hansberry
Harlem Globetrotters
Patricia Harris
William Hastie
Matthew Henson
Dorothy Height
Barbara Hendricks
Jimi Hendrix
A. Leon Higginbotham
Oliver Otis Howard
Charles Hamilton Houston
Billie Holiday
Benjamin L. Hooks
Lena Horne
Charles Hamilton Houston
Langston Hughes
Charlayne Hunter-Gault
Zora Neale Hurston
Jesse Jackson
Mahalia Jackson
Reggie Jackson
Harriet Jacobs
Chappie James
Judith Jamison
Herb Jeffries
Mae C. Jemison
Jack Johnson
James Weldon Johnson
John H. Johnson
Rafer Johnson
James Earl Jones
Quincy Jones
Scott Joplin
Barbara Jordan
Michael Jordan
Vernon Jordan Jr.Maulana Ron KarengaJackie Joyner-KerseeB B King
Coretta Scott KingMartin Luther King, Jr.Eartha KittJohn Mercer LangstonQueen LatifahJacob Lawrence Robert H. Lawrence, Jr.Spike LeeSugar Ray LeonardJohn LewisAlain Leroy LockeJoe LouisMoms MableyMalcolm X
Annie Malone
Wynton Marsalis
Thurgood Marshall
Nelson Mandela
Winnie Mandela
Bob Marley
Jan E. Matzeliger
Victoria Matthews
Willie Mays
Elijah McCoy
Hattie McDaniel
Nina Mae McKinney
Butterfly McQueen
James Meredith
Oscar Micheau
Dorie Miller
Harry Tyson Moore
Garrett Morgan
Mantan Moreland
Toni Morrison
Constance Baker MotleyElijah MuhammadMary White OvingtonEleanor Holmes NortonBarack ObamaJesse OwensAlan PageSatchel PaigeGordon ParksRosa Parks Walter Payton
Pele
Bill Pickett
PBS Pinchback
Jean Baptiste Point du Sable
Sidney Poitier
Salem Poor
Adam Clayton Powell Jr.Colin L. Powell
Gabriel ProsserRichard PryorA. Philip RandolphCharles RangelDella ReeseBass ReevesHiram RevelsCondoleezza RiceNorbert Rillieux
Paul Robeson
Bill 'Bojangles' RobinsonJackie RobinsonSmokey RobinsonSugar Ray Robinson Diana RossBelinda RoyallWilma RudolphBill RussellBayard RustinArthur A. SchomburgGeorge S. SchuylerDred ScottBobby SealeBetty Shabazz Fred L. ShuttlesworthRussell SimmonsBessie SmithTavis SmileyCharles Kenzie SteeleCaroline StillLeon SullivanMary Burnett Talbert Henry O. TannerKoko Taylor
Helen Brooke Taussig
Mary Church Terrell
Clarence Thomas
Howard Thurman
Emmett TillSojourner TruthHarriet Ross TubmanDesmond Tutu
Nat Turner
Cicely TysonDenmark VeseyFats WallerAlice Walker
Sarah Madam C. J. Walker
Josiah Walls
Frances Ellen WatkinsBooker T. WashingtonDenzel Washington Harold WashingtonEthel WatersMuddy WatersRobert C. Weaver
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett
Phillis Wheatley
Roy Wilkins
Armstrong Williams
Cathay Williams
Daniel Hale Williams
Fannie Barrier WilliamsSerena WilliamsSpencer WilliamsNancy WilsonAugust WilsonOprah WinfreyGranville T. WoodsTiger Woods
Carter G. Woodson
Stevie Wonder
Andrew Young
Col. Charles Young
Whitney Young Jr.
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