Black Americans across the nation live with a heavy sense of history affecting their everyday existence. Americans of an Afro-Caribbean heritage have endured tumultuous historical events en route to the freedoms they celebrate today, but which events in the African American timeline have been most influential?
1. Slavery and the Middle Passage
As the North American colonies grew in the early 17th century, so did their desire for cheap labor. In 1619, the first merchant ship arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. According to John Rolfe, a Virginia colonist, the ship carried “20 and odd” Africans. This plentiful, unethical cargo came at the cost of many lives. Enslaved Africans, captured in their homeland and sold to traders, endured months of hellish conditions in the Middle Passage, the stretch of the Atlantic Ocean between the Horn of Africa and the New World.
Of the 3.5 million African prisoners transported on British ships, 450,000 died before reaching American soil, says Greenwich History Museum.
2. Prohibition of Interracial Marriage
In 1664, interracial marriages were fairly common between white indentured servants and black plantation workers. Maryland felt the need to restrict white English women from marrying African men, so Governor Sir William Berkeley ratified a ban on mixed-race marriages to prevent the intersectionality between color, class, and religious identity. This law remained in place until the Virginia v. Loving court case of 1958, after which Maryland and several other states reversed their respective laws.
3. The Declaration of Independence
We all know that famous line from Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that their Creator endows with certain unalienable Rights…” Contrary to much popular belief, Jefferson was against slavery. His original final draft of the Declaration contained a passage damning King George for “paying off former crimes committed against the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”
The passage was removed after pressure from delegates in South Carolina and Georgia and even Northern states with a concealed interest in Middle Passage commodities.
4. Massachusetts Awards Black Americans Voting Rights
Capt. Paul Cuffe, a successful black American trader who amassed a $20,000 fortune through whaling and farming, then used his fortune to help his people, building schools and community projects before leading a group of freed black workers to start a colony in Sierra Leone. During the American Revolution in 1780, Cuffe and a group of free blacks petitioned the Massachusetts government to either award African and Native Americans voting rights or stop taxing them. Black Past details how his ingenious method worked.
Citing the rebel 13 Colonies’ “taxation without representation” message as the basis for the demand, all the state’s (male) citizens had suffrage three years later.
5. The Cotton Industry Boom
After the Revolutionary War, the rural South faced an agricultural crisis when tobacco crops failed because of exhausted soil. Being the region where enslaved Africans were most frequent, their price started to fall. However, as one cash crop ended, another began when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, pushing the demand for free labor even higher. Fearing an uprising, Congress ratified a 1793 law making it illegal to assist an enslaved person’s escape.
6. Nat Turner’s Revolt
In 1831, the most famous rebellion was started by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner, born on a plantation to an African-born mother, led a small band to murder their owners before embarking on a further killing spree, taking out 60 white locals in two days. State militia and locals hunted the band down, leading to the death of 100 black people, including innocents. Turner escaped and was captured six weeks later when authorities tried and hanged him.
7. The Amistad Mutiny
Steven Spielberg’s 1987 movie Amistad documents the 1839 story about enslaved Africans who took over the ship carrying them. The Amistad was a Spanish-owned ship transporting a cargo of 53 captives from Havana to Camagüey, Cuba. However, after a flippant joke from the schooner’s chef about “cooking” the captives, the enslaved men launched an attack a few days into the voyage, killing the Amistad’s captain — and the cook.
The ship’s crew pretended to sail back to Africa but sailed up the East Coast of America before being seized by naval police. The mutineers’ leader, Sengbe Pieh, was incarcerated along with the other rebels. However, trading human cargo was illegal by this time, so boat owners Don José Ruiz and Don Pedro Montes were charged with assault, battery, and false imprisonment, respectively. At the same time, Pieh and his cohort were eventually awarded their freedom.
8. The Underground Railroad
Throughout the 1850s, former enslaved woman Harriet Tubman became an icon with her daring rescue of formerly enslaved people. Following brutal treatment at the hands of her captors, Tubman fled the plantation, married a free man, and then escaped to Philadelphia using the already established and well-organized Underground Railroad. After rescuing her brothers, she returned in 1851, guiding her first group of enslaved people to safety. She rescued over 300 captives, earning her the nickname “The Moses of Her People.”
9. Dred Scott’s Court Case
President James Monroe signed the Missouri Compromise in 1820, which outlawed enslaved servitude from the Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 36º 30′ parallel in southern Missouri. In 1857, an enslaved man named Dred Scott was transported from Missouri to the Wisconsin territory and Illinois, both regions where slavery was outlawed. Scott returned to Missouri and sued his owner for freedom, arguing that his time on free soil meant he was technically a free man, and his case made it to the Supreme Court.
Scott’s case had the opposite effect; the court ruled in the other direction, with Congress declaring the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional and reversing the law. However, this set the chain of events leading to the Civil War; Scott’s battle was lost, but his actions eventually led to his people’s freedom.
10. The John Brown Raid
After assisting rescue operations on the Underground Railroad in the 1850s, John Brown, a struggling father who opposed slavery, sought to strike a big blow for his cause. On October 16, 1859, Brown rallied a group of 50 men against the federal arsenal in Virginia; their objective was to capture arms and ammunition for an uprising against enslavers.
His group, including several black members, held the arsenal until federal troops arrived and overpowered them. Brown was hanged, becoming a martyr for a cause supported by a growing number of North Americans. Soon after, Republican President Abraham Lincoln was elected, and the Southern states seceded from the Union.
11. The Last Slaver Ship Lands in America
In 1859, the human-carrying Clotilda entered Mobile, Alabama in an illegal, clandestine voyage. Fearing arrest, Captain Foster set the vessel alight after coming ashore; however, the ship’s owner, Timothy Meaher, couldn’t find any buyers for his enslaved cargo, so he set them free. The Clotilda would be the final ship to arrive in America, with the Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation coming soon after.
12. The Civil War
America’s Civil War has generated many works of history, poetry, and fiction — along with some great — and not-so-great — movies. Many free black soldiers joined the cause in releasing their brothers and sisters from oppression, though even black Union troops faced discrimination within their ranks.
Hannah Johnson, a soldier from the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment’s mother, wrote to President Lincoln, pleading for equality. “Will you see that the colored men fighting now are fairly treated? You ought to do this, and do it at once, not let the thing run along,” wrote Johnson. “We poor oppressed ones appeal to you and ask fair play.”
13. The Emancipation Proclamation
President Abraham Lincoln issued his first preliminary Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War in 1862. His first objective was to encourage the rebellious Southern states to rejoin the Union and threatened that if the Confederacy refused to continue their practice of enslaving people, those being repressed “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” On January 1, true to his word, Lincoln declared all enslaved African Americans in those states free.
14. The First Civil Rights Act
The 1964 Civil Rights Act got the most attention, but in 1866, America signed its first Civil Rights Act. Following the 1865 Abolition of Slavery Bill — also known as the 13th Amendment, the first Civil Rights Act gave citizenship and equality of freedom to all — though curiously, not untaxed Native Americans. The act supported property rights, the ability to trade, and the application of equal law. President Andrew Johnson attempted to block Illinois senator Lyman Trumbull’s bill, though Congress overrode his veto, setting the path for the eventual 14th Amendment.
15. The Post-Civil War South
The 13th Amendment officially made slavery illegal in 1865, following President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation two years before. His insistence that all enslaved people would now be free was true in theory. In practice, African Americans struggled with continued oppression in the South, with former Confederate states enacting Black Codes, a series of laws designed to limit black Americans’ mobility.
It wasn’t until the 14th Amendment in 1868 that equal protection applied to all Americans; the 15th Amendment guaranteed citizens’ voting rights for all African American men. However, the Klu Klux Klan and relentless persecution followed well into the next century.
16. The Jim Crow Laws
The Black Codes were almost as bad as enslaved servitude, and while African Americans were now free of forced labor, they were anything but free. The Black Codes used legal loopholes in the 15th Amendment, governing where and how black citizens lived, worked, and traveled. These became loosely termed The Jim Crow laws — Jim Crow was a pejorative term for a black person — and became more severe after federal troops returned to Northern states, especially during economic downturns. The Jim Crow era lasted well into the ’60s and the civil rights movement.
17. Plessy v. Ferguson
In 1896, another indictment for African Americans’ civil rights came with the Plessy v. Ferguson case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana could keep its law requiring segregation in railroad cars. The law was later overturned in 1954 when the Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) challenged segregation in public schools, resulting in the Brown v. Board of Education court case. Most startling was the Little Rock Nine, a group of nine African American students who entered an all-white Arkansas school for the first time, ushered under federal troops’ protection.
18. The NAACP Emerges
At the turn of the 20th century, people of color across the country were facing increasing persecution, especially in the Deep South, where lynching was widespread. At Niagara Falls, Canada, a group of protestors led by an educator named W.E.B. Du Bois (who would become a prominent civil rights figure) demanded rights that matched the previous century’s abolitionism. The Niagara group allied with the NAACP and aimed to end segregation and enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.
19. Marcus Garvey Fights for an African Colony
There are many influential players in the black history timeline, not least Jamaican national Marcus Garvey, who founded an association invested in improving black people’s lives, better known as the UNIA, in 1914. Two years later, Garvey brought his ideas to America with the premise that appealing to whites was useless and that African Americans must return to Africa. He lobbied the League of Nations to form a colony for freed black citizens in Africa, but to no avail. This decision didn’t deter Garvey, who pronounced himself the provisional president of the Empire of Africa. However, his success with the “Back to Africa” movement ended after his arrest and imprisonment for mail fraud.
20. The Rise of the Klu Klux Klan
There are many dreadful stories surrounding the Klu Klux Klan, which had three movements, starting in the 1860s and aimed at disrupting politically active black citizens. The next wave of hate-fueled activism appeared in the 20th century and made the white hoods and cross burnings infamous; the next wave came later in response to the civil rights movement.
In Miguel Hernandez’s book The Ku Klux Klan and Freemasonry in 1920s America, he examines the relationship between the secret society and the Klan, many of whom held positions of high authority. The modern version of this dichotomy would be the subject of Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing in the Name” anthem about the Los Angeles Police Department’s treatment of Rodney King in the 1992 L.A. riots.
21. Mississippi Delta Blues
The Blues — and every other genre of popular music since — owes its existence to African Americans who started singing field hollers and chants to help them overcome their harsh conditions in the 19th century. After emancipation, the musical practice evolved over decades in the fertile delta between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, where alumni such as Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton played parties and juke joints across the region in the early 20th century.
22. World War One
Black Americans were part of both world wars, and the African-American National Guard, formed after 1916 New York legislation calling for African Americans to join the war effort, sent several regiments to support allies on the front line. The 369th Infantry, known as the Harlem Hellfighters, were most revered among many battalions honored by French Authorities for their bravery.
In total, a reported 380,000 African Americans served in World War One, though not all were used in combat, instead offering logistical support in the war effort. Curiously, enemy German forces dropped leaflets on black troops, who were segregated from their white counterparts, urging them to desert. “What is democracy? Personal freedom, all citizens enjoying the same rights socially and before the law!” wrote the leaflet. “Do you enjoy the same rights as white people do in America?”
23. The Tulsa Riots
Following World War One, as black Americans returned from France, black culture was evolving in urban centers across the land, including Tulsa, Oklahoma. In the Greenwood district, black businesses had become so successful that part of the business district was named “Black Wall Street.” In 1921, Greenwood saw one of the worst racialized attacks in history after a young black man, Richard Rowland, stumbled into a female elevator attendant who screamed accusations of a worse nature.
A group of armed WW1 veterans stood as armed guards to protect Rowland, detained at the Tulsa courthouse. When 1,000 armed whites showed up demanding Rowland’s release, they started shooting, followed by looting and burning. Greenwood never recovered from the horrors: hundreds of innocents died, businesses were destroyed, and private homes burned. Even worse, dozens of bodies were buried in mass graves, some of which were unearthed in 2020.
24. The Harlem Renaissance
The blues evolved even more as musicians took their sound to Northern cities such as New York, Chicago, and Detroit, where jazz and tin pan alley music was born. This era, known as the Harlem Renaissance or Black Renaissance, saw African American music influencing society more than ever: greats like Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, and Duke Ellington came of age during this rich period. Black culture is the reason music has enhanced our lives immeasurably. While spawning many successful black music genres, it paved the way for rock and roll music, Elvis Presley, and the dawn of the popular music industry we enjoy today.
25. World War Two
A testament to African American servicemen was their willingness to fight for their country in light of such racial apartheid at home. Over 3,000,000 black Americans joined the war effort, and many heroes were born, including Dorie Miller, who carried injured colleagues to safety during the Pearl Harbor attacks by Japan. Moreover, 1941 saw the arrival of America’s first black flying squadron, better known as the Tuskegee Airmen, completing more than 3,000 missions over Germany and Italy, winning awards for bravery and becoming a source of pride for African Americans everywhere.
26. The First African American Director
Oscar Micheaux was America’s first black filmmaker, who amassed an impressive body of work in the early 20th century, directing and producing 44 films. His first movie, The Homesteader, was released in 1919. A silent black-and-white film, it portrayed a black man going through marriage troubles with his black wife, all while in love with a white woman. Micheaux would depict a positive side to black culture in his movies, far from the stereotypes white audiences had experienced.
27. Jackie Robinson, Jack Johnson, and Jesse Owens
African American athletes now make up 73% of NBA professionals and 56% of NFL players, though it wasn’t always legal. At the top of their respective games in the 1930s and 1940s was Jesse Owens, who famously competed at Hitler’s 1936 Munich Olympic Games against heavy anti-black prejudice. While Jack Johnson was the first black American heavyweight world champion, his exploits allowed hundreds of black boxers to follow his lead.
However, Jackie Robinson’s impact on baseball earned him huge plaudits from fans of all colors. The first black Major League Baseball star, Robinson won Rookie of the Year in his first season, becoming renowned as an all-time great, winning the World Series in 1955.
28. Desegregation of the Armed Forces
In 1948, three years after America’s successful campaign in World War Two, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981, which established the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services. During both world wars, black servicemen were still segregated from their white compatriots, which was both illogical and demeaning. Many African American servicemen remained in Britain after the war, marrying English women.
29. Emmett Till’s Murder
The list of mid-20th century horrors continued in 1955 when a 14-year-old boy from Chicago named Emmett Till visited relatives in Money, Mississippi. Till broke Jim Crow laws for wolf-whistling at a store clerk and met a shocking end at the hands of the clerk’s husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam. Even after confessing to kidnapping, beating, and shooting Till before dumping his body in a river, an all-white judge and jury found the men innocent. This incident helped the civil rights movement gain momentum, beginning with the Montgomery bus boycott three months after his body was found in the Tallahatchie River.
30. The Montgomery Bus Boycott
Although the Brown v. Board of Education ruling didn’t alone achieve desegregation in schools, it set the course for civil rights everywhere. One event that proved a catalyst was Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her bus seat for whites, leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, further demonstrations and sit-ins, and the emergence of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who spearheaded the boycott. In 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was illegal, though the fight was far from over.
31. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Emerges
After joining the Montgomery bus boycott, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association. Taking on this leadership mantle was the first step toward his eventual martyrdom. Along the way, Dr. King Jr. established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), met with President Eisenhower and was arrested several times in peaceful protests. Dr. King Jr. was the face of the civil rights movement and led the March on Washington and 250,000 people to deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, five years after John F. Kennedy met the same fate.
32. Loving v. Virginia
The aptly named Richard Loving was famous for legally marrying his African American fiance, Mildred Jeter. The newlyweds had a grim experience when Virginia police officers raided the couple one night in bed, arresting both for breaking Virginia’s marriage laws. Given the choice of prison or exile, the couple fled the state, returning in clandestine visits to family over the next decade. Then, in 1967, ACLU lawyers Philip J. Hirschkop and Bernard S. Cohen took the Lovings’ case on, lost to the Virginia Supreme Court, but won after the Supreme Court ruled that banning interracial marriages was unconstitutional.
33. The Greensboro Sit-in Movement
The ’50s and ’60s were epic decades for the black struggle; race riots and lynchings had been commonplace for many years, and African Americans were becoming increasingly defiant in the face of state-sanctioned bigotry. In 1960, a Woolworths branch in Greensboro, North Carolina, became the next sit-in location after black students were refused coffee in a whites-only space. More students showed up the next day, and before long, protests appeared across the country’s libraries, hotels, and public beaches.
34. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Following the Greensboro protests, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed in Raleigh, North Carolina. From 1960 onward, the SNCC influenced activism across American cities, leading anti-Vietnam war marches and the famous March on Washington in 1963. Unsurprisingly, the organization faced violent retribution for its actions, forcing a more militant approach and ultimately leading to the Black Panther, whose chapters began appearing in American cities.
35. Wilma Rudolph Wins Three Olympic Golds
Wilma Rudolph grew up in Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee, as one of 22 children. As a child, Rudolph suffered from polio and scarlet fever, forcing her to wear a leg brace. Her doctor told her she would never walk again, though her mother wouldn’t accept the prognosis, assuring her she would. With a huge support group around her, Rudolph overcame the odds and became an All-American high-school basketball player. Even in high school, she won bronze in the 1956 Olympics in Australia. Then, at the 1960 Rome Olympics, determined to triumph, Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field and was celebrated as the world’s fastest woman.
36. Congress of Racial Equality
The sit-in movements of the ’60s attracted many groups to advocate for civil rights, including the already well-established Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). In 1961, CORE organized the “Freedom Rides,” bus rides through the South. Their objective was to test the Brown v. Board of Education Act and its later iteration, the Boynton v. Virginia Act: a 1960 ruling that segregated interstate facilities such as rest stops and bus terminals. The so-called “Freedom Riders” made a point to travel through the Jim Crow South to make their point.
37. The Birmingham Church Bombing
Birmingham, Alabama, had a large Ku Klux Klan presence, and Alabama Governor George Wallace was vehemently against desegregation. Birmingham became one of the civil rights movement’s key battlegrounds following Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s arrest during a nonviolent protest. Tragically, one month after Dr. King Jr.’s speech at the March on Washington, white supremacist terrorists bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls. Worse still, the attack was the third since Alabama’s school system was drafted into desegregation.
38. Letter From a Birmingham Jail
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s incarceration for a peaceful demonstration and subsequent decision to let the marches commence after an injunction was outlined in his famous letter “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” where he justified allowing the march in Birmingham to commence to a group of clergymen who had opposed it.
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed,” wrote Dr. King Jr. from his jail cell. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was ‘well timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation.”
39. I Have a Dream
The doctor’s most famous speech came in Washington, D.C., with thousands of people watching live and others watching worldwide. Thanks to television and radio technology advances, millions could now hear about the civil rights movement — before long, it had become a global talking point. “Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy,” demanded Dr. King Jr. “Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.” His use of the words “God’s children” reverberated with all humans who heard his indictment of America’s promises of freedom, equality, and justice for all.
40. The Civil Rights Act
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream finally became realized on July 2, 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. The law punished any form of discrimination against black citizens regarding employment, school integration, and public facilities. The Civil Rights Act was a first step toward healing the hitherto giant rift between America’s white and black communities, though there would be more hurdles in the way yet.
41. Malcolm X Murdered
The civil rights movement took many forms, from Dr. King Jr.’s Gandhi-inspired peaceful demonstrations to more militant wings of armed resistance such as CORE. However, somewhere in-between was Malcolm X, a Nation of Islam adherent and civil rights activist whose brazen opposition to King Jr.’s methods put the two men at odds — though no less respectful of one another’s motives. Malcolm Little changed his surname to X, espousing his enslaved person’s name. He was assassinated in February 1965, shortly after visiting Selma, Alabama, where Dr. King Jr. was imprisoned for an earlier protest.
42. The Edmund Pettus Bridge Riot
Selma, Alabama, became another key location in the civil rights timeline when a 600-strong crowd marched together with SNCC and Dr. King Jr.’s SCLC to protest violations of their voting rights. Made famous in the movie Selma, police blocked marchers from crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, resulting in a stand-off, which soon turned to violence. After Reverend Hosea Williams of the SCLC tried to talk with the cops, a scuffle ensued before tear gas rained down on the demonstrators, and dozens of protestors suffered injuries.
43. Dr. Martin Luther King Is Assassinated
On a dark day for civil rights, the great leader and figurehead for black struggles was shot outside his Memphis hotel room on April 4, 1968. Predictably, violence ensnared over 100, resulting in 46 people deaths and 20,000 arrests. James Brown arguably saved Boston from violence with a charity concert at Boston Gardens, televised nationwide to help quell the destruction. During the concert, violence threatened to break out any moment, as a young, brave Brown celebrated black culture with an emotional, groundbreaking performance.
44. Arthur Ashe Wins The U.S. Open
Fittingly, the summer after Dr. King Jr.’s assassination, Arthur Ashe became the first African American to win a grand slam tennis title when he took home the first U.S. Open ever played, adding to his previous amateur world title in the same year. Though he also won the Australian Open, Ashe is most famous for winning Wimbledon in 1975. Sadly, Ashe passed away aged only 49 years due to blood-transfusion-induced HIV.
45. Shirley Chisholm Elected to Congress
1968 proved an eventful year in black history; the year Dr. King Jr. was murdered, America saw its first African American woman to serve in Congress. Running for and winning the Bedford-Stuyvesant district of Brooklyn in 1968 propelled Chisholm to a presidential campaign, becoming the first black American woman to run for president with a major party. While she wasn’t successful, Chisholme would inspire dozens of other African American women to follow her lead in politics.
46. The First Black Astronaut
In August 1983, the Challenger space shuttle blasted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying on board the world’s first African American to enter space. As a mission specialist, Colonel Guion S. Bluford Jr. conducted electrophoresis experiments, operated the Challenger’s mechanical arm, and worked on communication satellites. Bluford Jr. would inspire all children nationwide to be more involved in science.
47. The First Miss America
After winning Miss New York in 1983, Vanessa Williams became the first black American woman crowned Miss America in 1984. Her joy at winning the honor was short-lived — the tournament stripped Williams of her title after unauthorized illicit photos of her appeared in Penthouse Magazine.
Speaking on This Table is Ours Podcast, Williams spoke about death threats and having sharpshooters watching her moves. Some people were unhappy she represented American beauty ideals. “Not only was I getting attacked from White folks saying she doesn’t represent us,” said Williams, “but some Black folks saying, oh they only picked her cause she’s light.” Eventually, the Miss America executive chair issued an apology for how she was treated.
48. Carl Lewis
America hosted the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, and from this event, many American heroes were born, not least the legendary Carl Lewis. Lewis was an incredible track and field athlete, winning 22 gold medals over his illustrious career. Lewis won gold in the Los Angeles games in 100m, 200m, 4 x 100m, and the long jump. Moreover, he remains one of the longest-serving long jump champions, with a ten-year undefeated run; Lewis won Olympic gold for four consecutive years in the long jump, putting him at a unique level in the athletics world.
49. Mae Jemison
The black astronaut moniker goes to Mae Jemison, who, on September 12, 1992, became the first African American woman in space. It had been nine years since America’s first black astronaut, but a determined Jemison was a formidable young lady. She attended Stanford, aged 16, for a bachelor’s in chemical engineering and African American studies. In 1988, Jemison left private medicine to apply for astronaut training and made the 15-strong team out of 2,000 candidates, becoming a science specialist for an eight-day Spacelab Life Sciences mission.
50. America’s First President of Color
In 2008, reeling from eight years of the Bush administration’s wars and economic deterioration, culminating in the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis and world recession, America elected its first African-American-origin president. Born to a Kenyan father and an American mother, President Barack Obama became the face of a changing America, inspiring generations of young, black Americans about the power of hope.
