Mathieu da Costa
Mathieu da Costa (sometimes d’Acosta) was a member of the exploring party of Pierre Dugua, the Sieur de Monts, and Samuel de Champlain that travelled from France to the New…
Maria P. Williams
Maria Priscilla Thurston Williams (1866–1932) is credited as the first Black woman film producer for the silent crime drama The Flames of Wrath in 1923.
Elizabeth Carter Brooks
Elizabeth Carter Brooks (1867-1951) was an American educator, social activist and architect. She was passionate about helping other African Americans achieve personal success and was one of the first to…
George Jewett
George Henry Jewett II (April 1870 – August 12, 1908) was an American athlete who became the first African-American football player at both the University of Michigan and Northwestern University,…
Prince Monolulu
Ras Prince Monolulu (26 October 1881 – 14 February 1965), whose real name was Peter Carl Mackay (or McKay), was a horse-racing tipster, and something of an institution on the…
Dido Belle
Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761 – July 1804) was a British heiress and a member of the Lindsay family of Evelix. She was born into slavery and illegitimate; her mother, Maria…
Henry “Box” Brown
Henry Box Brown (c. 1815 – June 15, 1897) was a 19th-century Virginia slave who escaped to freedom at the age of 33 by arranging to have himself mailed in…
Sherman H. Dudley
Sherman Houston Dudley (1872 – March 1, 1940) was an African-American vaudeville performer and theater entrepreneur. He gained notability in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as an individual…
Caroline Hunter
Caroline Hunter (born September 5, 1946, in New Orleans, Louisiana) is an anti-apartheid activist, chemist and educator. She co-founded the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement which petitioned the Polaroid corporation to…
Ophelia DeVore
Ophelia DeVore (August 12, 1922 – February 28, 2014) was an American businesswoman, publisher, and model. She was the first model of African-American descent in the United States.