BlackHistoryMonth200 names weshould knowfolks some in the present,some in thepast worthremembering

[luke1733]

1. Gabriel Prosser and Solomon *Abolitionist* (1776-1800 literate enslaved blacksmith who planned a large slave rebellion to overthrow the entire US government by taking possession of Capitol Square {another name for what was then the white house or the house that housed all of the USA representatives aka House of the Burgesses} in Richmond and Holding Governor James Monroe as a hostage, Prosser believed he could bargain with authorities to free all slaves and give them their own land to govern and to return fertile land back to the Native Americans. He was inspired by the Haitian Revolutions.)

2.Bacon's Rebellion *Military Movement*(was an armed rebellion in 1676 by Virginia settlers led by young Nathaniel Bacon against the rule of Governor William Berkeley. ) Basically before slavery in the US was racial and institutionalized slaves could be of any color. Bacon was white and got together poor whites, slaves and blacks together to overthrow the US gov't. Because of the success of his rebellion the US then instituted a legal racial system that separated Blacks from Whites and forever *or according to that time* in America stamped Blacks as slaves with no rights and Whites as citizens granted equal rights by the gov't purely and solely based on the color of their skin. The negative of Bacon was his racism toward Native Americans)

3.T'Oussant L-Ouverture *Emperor*(the man credited for defeating Napoleon Bonaparte and called The Black Napoleon for overthrowing Santo Domingo also known at that time as the Island of Hispaniola and currently now known as the Dominican Republic and Haiti. This is better known as the Haitian Revolution. For 60 years after his success the island flourished in trade b/c Napoleon was too embarrassed to inform the gov'ts of Europe what happened, eventually when the soldiers told the gov't what happened Europe banded together to no longer trade with the black owned island and due to this Haiti and the Dominican Republic crumbled economically b/c they had noone to trade with. Eventually the Spaniards returned with ships and war again and empowered the mulattoes in order to establish an institution of trade and institutionalized racism to separate the Blacks from the Mulattoes. This was done by Juan Pablo Duarte. Much later when the mulattoes were restored with Spain and received colonial status, the mulattoes with the money and backing of Spain's military then ironically turned on the imperialists and kicked the spaniards out what is now the Dominican Republic-Santiago Rodríguez, Benito Monción, and Gregorio Luperón,),

4.Yanga Gaspar *General*(1570- Black Mexican who led the African slave revolt in Mexico and basically freed Mexico from the Spanish rule and gave the Africans their own land known as San Lorenzo de los Negros (aka San Lorenzo de Cerralvo), near Córdova),

5.Shirley Franklin *Mayor*(the First Female mayor of Atlanta, Georgia. Before this she served as a board of directors for Delta Airlines. She is responsible for Atlanta having direct flights to China, the LEED, and enforcing the Clean Water Act),

6.Black Wall Street Massacre *Black Self Sufficient town*(Basically a wealthy self-sufficient owned and operated Black

society in 1920's was destroyed by the US government due to its success being seen as a threat to white interests) The Tulsa Race Riot was a large-scale, racially motivated conflict on May 31 and June 1, 1921, in which whites attacked the black community of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It resulted in the Greenwood District, also known as 'the Black Wall Street'[1] and the wealthiest black community in the United States, being burned to the ground. During the 16 hours of the assault, more than 800 Blacks were admitted to local white hospitals with injuries (the black hospital was burned down), and police arrested and detained more than 6,000 black Greenwood residents at three local facilities, in part for their protection.[2] An estimated 10,000 blacks were left homeless, and 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire. The official count of the dead by the Oklahoma Department of Vital Statistics was 39, but other estimates of black fatalities have been up to about 300.7. The African Union *Military Unit Dedicated to Uniting all of Africa under one government* (Currently is a union consisting of 54 African states dedicated to uniting all of Africa to one monetary system, one language, one government and one military. This was formed in 2001 and is currently active in fighting many military wars in Africa, helping those with Aids and creating treaties among nations that formerly were enemies) 8.Paul Robeson *Genius* (read his book Here I Stand. Definition of a man who could do anything: including stopping the war in the Spanish Civil war to sing Ol Man River with bullets flying over his head) {At Rutgers University in 1915 on an Academic scholarship was an All American football player who also won Valedictorian of the University, received his LL.B from Columbia Law School while playing in the NFL, then had an international career in singing and was integral in the Harlem Renaissance, travelled to Spain, Great Britain, India, London and China to sing and inform the world of the injustices America was practicing on Black Americans, as well as acting in theater and movies.His advocacy of anti-imperialism, affiliation with communism, and his criticism of the US government caused him to be blacklisted during McCarthyism. oh, yeah he also spoke over 20 languages, 12 of which he was declared fluent. He sang in over 50 languages too.

9.Mexican female battalions from Guerrero *Black Female Military Unit*(By the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), most Mexicans believed their heritage was strictly indigenous and Spanish. The African ancestry had been disregarded. But battalions of Afro-Mexican revolutionaries fought along side Emiliano Zapata. Zapata, a revolutionary leader in the south, made alliances with one of the few Afro-Mexican female battalions from Guerrero. Upon becoming widows in the war, these women would become revolutionary soldiers and continue the fight for their rights to the land. By the end of the 18th century 25% of Mexicans were racially mixed. Due to Mexico's denial over the years of its black heritage, Mexico finally In 1992, as part of the 500th anniversary of the encounter”with Spain, the Mexican government officially acknowledged Africa to be Mexico’s Third Root)

 

[luke1733]

10.Oscar Mischeaux *First Black Filmmaker* (1884-1951was an American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films. he is regarded as the first major African-American feature filmmaker, the most successful African-American filmmaker of the first half of the twentieth century[1] and the most prominent producer of race films.)

11.Harry Belafonte *Actor and Civil Rights Activist*(The First million selling album singer in the US in 1956 One of the most successful African-American pop stars in history, he was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. He has dedicated his life to humanitarian work in southern Africa. Belafonte's political beliefs were greatly inspired by the singer, actor and Communist activist Paul Robeson, who mentored him. President Kennedy named Belafonte cultural advisor to the Peace Corps. Belafonte supported the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and was one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s confidants. He provided for King's family, since King made only $8,000 a year as a preacher. Like many other civil rights activists, Belafonte was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. He bailed King out of Birmingham City Jail and raised thousands of dollars to release other civil rights protesters. He financed the Freedom Rides, supported voter registration drives, and helped to organize the March on Washington in 1963. During "Freedom Summer" in 1964 Belafonte bankrolled the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, flying to Mississippi that August with Sidney Poitier and $60,000 in cash and entertaining crowds in Greenwood. 1999 Belafonte met with representatives of the rap community immediately before meeting with Fidel Castro. This meeting resulted in Castro’s personal approval of, and hence the government’s involvement in, the incorporation of rap into his country’s culture. In 1985, he helped organize the Grammy Award-winning song "We Are the World", a multi-artist effort to raise funds for Africa.)

12. John Mason*Storyteller*- (folklorist)

13. Buddy Bolden*Jazz Creator*-(THE creator of JAZZ music in 1900)

14.Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre-*Dance Theatre company* (A dance company founded in 1958 by choreographer and dancer Alvin Ailey.)

15. Samuel Kountz *Surgeon* performed the first successful Kidney transplant between humans who were not identical twins. Six years later, he and a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, developed the prototype for the Belzer kidney perfusion machine, a device that can preserve kidneys for up to 50 hours from the time they are taken from a donor's body. It is now standard equipment in hospitals and research laboratories around the world.

16. Dr. Charles Drew*Medical Inventor* (Charles Drew's system for the storing of blood plasma (blood bank) revolutionized the medical profession. Dr. Drew also established the American Red Cross blood bank, of which he was the first director, and he organized the world's first blood bank drive, nicknamed "Blood for Britain".)

17. Andrew Beard*Inventor* (a farmer, carpenter, blacksmith, a railroad worker, a businessman and finally an inventor. In 1892, he patented a rotary engine. In 1897, Andrew Beard patented an improvement to railroad car couplers commonly called the Jenny Coupler.It did the dangerous job of hooking railroad cars together, Beard, himself had lost a leg in a car coupling accident. In 1881, he patented his first invention, a plow, and sold the patent rights for $4,000 in 1884)

18. Kofi Annan*United Nations President* (The first secretary general of the United Nations to be elected from the ranks of UN staff. Helped to pioneer the Global Aids fund. As the Secretary-General of the UN, he launched the “Global Compact” campaign in 1999, which is the world’s biggest initiative for promoting corporate social responsibility.) 

19. Cynthia Mc-Kinney *Congresswoman*(Exposed that the CIA sponsored Contra to disperse cocaine into the black communities of America to disrupt Black success. McKinney is an American politician and activist. As a member of the Democratic Party, she served six terms in the United States House of Representatives. In 2008, the Green Party of the United States nominated McKinney for President of the United States. She was the first African-American woman to represent Georgia in the House.[1]Out of 535 members of Congress, Congresswoman CynthiaMcKinney was the first to break the consensus of silence and point out that the Bush administration had received advance warnings of the 9/11 attack, and that this called for a full investigation, without limits on what line of questioning is acceptable. McKinney was the only member of Congress to participate in a march across the Crescent City Connection Bridge on November 7, 2005, to protest what had happened on that bridge in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.)

20. Ralph Gardner Chavis*Chemist* (a chemist that owns the distinction of being one of the scientists that worked on early experiments that would lead to the development of the atomic bomb)

21. David Blackwell *Mathematician*(perhaps greatest, African Amercan Mathematician. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics in 1938, Master of Arts in Mathematics in 1939, and his Ph.D. in 1941 (at the age of 22), all from the University of Illinois. He is the seventh African American to receive a Ph.D. in Mathematics. He is the first and only African American to be any one of: a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a President of the American Statistical Society, and a Vice President of the America Mathematics Society. Born 19119 dies 2010.

 

[luke1733]

22. John Brown-*White brother that tried very hard to abolish slavery*(When you hear people say "John Brown It" This is who they are referring to and where the racist beginning of the name derive) {was a white American abolitionist who believed armed insurrection was the only way to overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States. Brown's attempt in 1859 to start a liberation movement among enslaved African Americans in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, electrified the nation. Historians agree John Brown played a major role in the start of the Civil War. As Frederick Douglass and Brown's family testified, his strategy was essentially to deplete Virginia of its slaves, causing the institution to collapse in one county after another, until the movement spread into the South, essentially wreaking havoc on the economic viability of the pro-slavery states. From the Southern point of view, of course, any effort to arm the enslaved was perceived as a definitive threat. Initially, the raid went well, and they met no resistance entering the town. They cut the telegraph wires and easily captured the armory, which was being defended by a single watchman. They next rounded up hostages from nearby farms, including Colonel Lewis Washington, great-grandnephew of George Washington.)

23. George Carruthers-*Inventor* (built his first telescope at the age of 10. He earned his Ph.D. in aeronautical and astronautical engineering at the University of Illinois in 1964 and began working at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. His telescope and image converter was used to identify molecular hydrogen in space and his ultraviolet camera/spectograph was used by Apollo 16 during the flight to the moon. Today, Carruthers teaches at Howard University. Born in 1939 and still alive. On November 11, 1969, Carruthers was awarded a patent for his "Image Converter for Detecting Electromagnetic Radiation Especially in Short Wave Lengths." During a 1970 rocket flight, Carruthers's UV telescope, or spectograph, and image converter provided the first proof of the existence of molecular hydrogen in interstellar space. or the first time, scientists were able to examine the Earth's atmosphere for concentrations of pollutants, and see UV images of more than 550 stars, nebulae and galaxies. Carruthers was awarded NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for his work on the project.

24. Khalil Muhammad *controversial speaker*(great-grandson of Elijah Muhammad. Muhammad is at the forefront of scholarship on the enduring link between race and crime that has shaped and limited opportunities for African Americans. Muhammad is now working on his second book, Disappearing Acts: The End of White Criminality in the Age of Jim Crow, which traces the historical roots of the changing demographics of crime and punishment so evident today. Sad thing about him is he has been criticized for being an anti-semite.)

25. Jack Johnson *Boxer*(at the height of the Jim Crow era—became the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion (1908–1915). Johnson was faced with much controversy when he was charged with violating the Mann Act in 1912 even though there was an obvious lack of evidence and was largely racially based. In a documentary about his life, Ken Burns notes that "for more than thirteen years, Jack Johnson was the most famous and the most notorious African-American on Earth." After a highly publicized racially charged fight called the Fight Of THE Century the most known White Heavyweight boxer of the world declared James Jeffries "I could never have whipped Johnson at my best," Jeffries said. "I couldn't have hit him. No, I couldn't have reached him in 1,000 years." Jeffries is also the guy known as The Great White Hype. Johnson fought 114 fights, winning 80 matches, 45 by knockouts.)

26. Cudjoe Lewis *Last slave from Africa*(is considered the last person born on African soil to have been enslaved in the United States when slavery was still lawful. Lewis and his tribespeople requested repatriation to Africa, but this was not arranged. He and other Africans established a community at Magazine Point near Mobile, Alabama, which became called Africatown. They maintained their language and tribal customs for years and Lewis was very much a community leader, even meeting with prominent people such as Booker T. Washington. The neighborhood was also called Plateau and eventually became a suburb of Mobile.)

27. WEB DuBois *Philosopher*( started the NAACP. Admitted Marcus Garvey was right in his philosophies and moved to Africa. According to philosophies and influence on the Black American race, he was equal 1000% in influence to Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X and Booker T Washington and Marcus Garvey. In American civil rights activist, public intellectual, Pan-Africanist, professor of sociology, historian, poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, sociologist, historian, and journalist, he wrote 21 books, edited 15 more, and published over 100 essays and articles. Du Bois wrote also five novels. He helped establish four academic journals. In 1895, Du Bois became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Wrote the infamous Souls Of Black Folk. Du Bois organized a series of pan-African congresses around the world, in 1919, 1921, 1923, and 1927. The delegations comprised intellectuals from Africa, the West Indies, and the United States.)

28. Maynard Jackson *Mayor* (first African American mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, serving three terms (1974–82, 1990–94). He helped arrange for the rebuilding of the World's Busiest Airport Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport's huge terminal to modern standards, and this airport was renamed the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in his honor, shortly after his death.

29. Garrett Morgan*Inventor* (Invented the Traffic light used today, The Gas mask which saved hundreds of thousands of American lives in WWI, and the smoke protector in 1914.Invented a zig-zag stitching attachment for manually operated sewing machine. He also founded a company that made personal grooming products, such as hair dying ointments and the curved-tooth pressing comb)

30. Mandela *President* (Took his country of South Africa from the extremes of apartheid through to democracy. ormed the first black law partnership in South Africa and organised a non violent defiance campaign against the colonial government in 1952)

 

[luke1733]

31. Sojourner Truth *Feminist/Woman's Rights Activist and Equal Rights*(She was the first black woman to speak out against slavery and for women's rights.She escaped to Canada in 1827; after New York state abolished slavery.She became a noted speaker for both the Abolitionist movement and the women's rights movement.Gave the famous speech "Ain't I a Woman?." During the American Civil War, she organized collection of supplies for the Union, and moved to Washington, D.C., after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued to work with former slaves. Met President Abraham Lincoln and discussed slavery in 1864. Before a mob convention Sept 1853 she stated "You may hiss as much as you please, but women will get their rights anyway. You can't stop us, neither". She was also a Seventh Day Adventist known then as Millerites. She also gave a notable speech addressed to the American Equal Rights Association in 1867.

32. Crispus Attucks *1st person soldier to die for America*(First soldier to die for America {since before the Revolutionary War America was owned mainly by Britain} was the first casualty of the Boston Massacre, in Boston, Massachusetts,and is widely considered to be the first American casualty in the American Revolutionary War.

33. Colonel Guion Bluford *Astronaut*(The first Black American in space. He was on boardThe Challenger and spent six days in space, during which time Bluford and his four fellow crew members launched a communications satellite for the government of India, made contact with an errant communications satellite, conducted scientific experiments, and tested the shuttle's robotic arm. Just before dawn on September 5, the shuttle landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, bringing an end to the most flawless shuttle mission to that date. Aboard the space shuttle Discovery from April 28-May 6, 1991, Bluford was one of seven crew members testing detection devices and successfully recovering the Star Wars satellite. Bluford's fourth and final mission took place on the Discovery from December 2-9, 1992, two weeks after Bluford turned 50)

34. Seminole Indians/Black Seminoles in 1819*the Largest Slave Revolt in U.S. History*(They created the largest haven in the U.S. South for runaway slaves.They led the largest slave revolt in U.S. history.They secured the only emancipation of rebellious slaves prior to the U.S. Civil War. They formed the largest mass exodus of slaves across the United States and, ultimately, to Mexico. They are the descendants of free blacks and escaped slaves – maroons – who allied with Seminole groups in Spanish Florida. Historically the Black Seminoles lived in distinct bands; some were slaves of particular Seminole leaders, but they experienced more freedom than in white society, including the right to bear arms. General Andrew Jackson, under the Confederation Treaty ironically called the Treaty of New York, went with America's military to break up the Black Indian communities in Florida that were forming because they were prospering without the help of Whites. The goal was simply to kill them, but the fight was more than the US anticipated and after losing too many soldiers the US asked the Black Indians to come to an agreement to leave Florida or risk the US military forever fighting them. They agreed and moved to Oklahoma where they were given land; although some went to North Carolina. Shot-out to greatgrandpop- Pete Goat Tear/Goatier.

35. Tuskegee Airmen *Pilots*(Educated by a Black owned University founded by Booker T. Washington they were America's first Black military airmen. From 1941-1946, some 1,000 Black pilots were trained at Tuskegee. The Airmen's success in escorting bombers during World War II – having one of the lowest loss records of all the escort fighter groups, and being in constant demand for their services by the allied bomber units.- is a record unmatched by any other fighter group.The 332nd Fighter group was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for its' longest bomber escort mission to Berlin, Germany on March 24, 1945. During this mission, the Tuskegee Airmen (then known as the 'Red Tails') destroyed three German ME-262 jet fighters and damaged five additional jet fighters. The tenacious bomber escort cover provided by the 332nd "Red Tail" fighters often discouraged enemy fighter pilots from attacking bombers escorted by the 332nd Fighter Group.

C. Alfred "Chief" Anderson earned his pilot's license in 1929 and became the first Black American to receive a commercial pilot's certificate in 1932, and, subsequently, to make a transcontinental flight.)

36. Tuskegee University-*Establishment*(A black owned and operated University started by Booker T. Washington is the only school to be a national historic landmark university in the USA. Tuskegee University is ranked among the 2014 Best 378 Colleges & Universities by the Princeton Review & 5th among the 2014 U.S. News & World Report Best HBCU's. Tuskegee University, a black owned and operated University was awarded the U.S. Army Air Corps contract to help train America's first Black military aviators because it had already invested in the development of an airfield, had a proven civilian pilot training program and its graduates performed highest on flight aptitude exams.

37. Levi Watkins Jr *Doctor/Inventor*(1944- present Dr. Watkins performed the world’s first human implantation of the automatic implantable defibrillator.

39. George Washington Carver *Inventor* (Before him the only major crop in the south was cotton. Carver developed techniques to improve soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. Together with other agricultural experts, he urged farmers to restore nitrogen to their soils by practicing systematic crop rotation: He invented peanut butter and over 300 uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, pecans, and soybeans;rubber substitute, adhesives, foodstuffs, dyes, pigments. adhesives, axle grease, bleach, buttermilk, chili sauce, fuel briquettes (a biofuel), ink, instant coffee, linoleum, mayonnaise, meat tenderizer, metal polish, paper, plastic, pavement, shaving cream, shoe polish, synthetic rubber, talcum powder and wood stain. He did not patent his inventions because he said: "God gave them to me" he would say about his ideas, "How can I sell them to someone else?")

40. Frederick Douglass*Abolitionist* (an abolitionist largely responsible for the Emancipation of Black people in America. He also started a newspaper. He wrote and collected stories of hundreds of slaves and translated to Whites in terms they could understand the widespread horror of violence and creative forms of brutality used by whites on blacks throughout all America and taught them how blacks felt about slavery. Served as an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Fought for the adoption of constitutional amendments that guaranteed voting rights. )

41. Sidney Poitier *Actor/Activist*(Author, Director, Actor, Diplomat. In 1963 he became the first black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor .The significance of this achievement was later bolstered in 1967 when he starred in three successful films: To Sir, with Love; In the Heat of the Night; and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, making him the top box-office star of that year.)

42. Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr *Civil Rights Leader*(huh, if you don't know him then……never mind. Largely responsible for the Civil Rights afforded to all Americans in the US. Basically, anybody not white would not want to be in the USA if it were not for him and those like him being killed for trying to create Equal Human Rights for all in this country. Orchestrated countless many marches and watched many loved ones die as well as having his own life taken for the pursuit of a Dream to be treated fairly in the USA)

 

[luke1733]

43. Oprah Winfrey*Owner of TV network/Host*-(Billionaire Winfrey has her own commendable network known as the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), with shows featured specially on these - The Rosie Show, Extreme Clutter, Oprah's Lifeclass, Facing Trauma, The Ambush Cook, and Our America with Lisa Ling, to name a few. In the year 1972, Oprah Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant and started working with a local black radio station WVOL as a news presenter. Became the first black TV news anchor with WTVF-TV. 1983, Oprah moved to Chicago to host WLS-TV's low-rated half-hour morning talk-show, AM Chicago, and within months after Oprah took over, the show went on to become the highest rated talk show in Chicago, and was renamed as "The Oprah Winfrey Show".

1987 Oprah won her first Emmy award for best talk/service show host and best show. Oprah testified before the US Congress and initiated the National Child Protection Act in 1991. 1995 Oprah Online on AOL (American Online) in partnership with ABC. Oprah became the first woman and the only black on Forbes list of 400 richest Americans in the same year. In the year 2005, Oprah was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the year. She also ranked in 9th place in public poll of the greatest Americans. She was also the first black person listed by Business Week as one of America's top 50 most generous philanthropists. Oprah has invested $40 million and much of her time creating the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls near Johannesburg in South Africa, which started in January 2007. She has her own magazine titled O Magazine, where she touches upon different areas of one's life like health, interior decorating, spirituality, and the likes.)

44. Madam CJ Walker *1st Female Millionaire in the USA*- (1867-1919 First American Female millionaire. Provided well-paying jobs for thousands of African-American women at the turn of the century. She made her fortune by developing and marketing a successful line of beauty and hair products for black women under the company she founded. She

claimed the products had been revealed to her in a dream.

Walker grabbed national headlines in the black press when

she contributed $1,000 to the building fund of the

“colored” YMCA in Indianapolis.)

45. Mary McLeod Bethune *Freedom Fighter*-(July 10, 1875 – May 18, 1955.Mary McLeod Bethune founded the Literary and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in Daytona, FL.  This school was eventually renamed Bethune-Cookman University. She served as president of the Florida chapter of the National Association of Colored Women from 1917 to 1925.  Under her leadership the organization purchased a headquarters in Washington, D.C. and became the first African American organization represented there. Mary McLeod Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935. She was an integral part of the Civilian Pilot Training Program and made sure that Historically Black Colleges and Universities participated. She was such a good friend of Elanor D. Roosevelt that the first lady changed the segregation rules of the Southern Conference of Human Welfare in Birmingham, AL so that she could sit beside Mary McLeod Bethune. Mary McLeod Behtune was the only African American woman present at the founding of the United Nations in 1948.)

46. Duke Ellington *Jazz Orchestra Conductor* (1899-1974 wrote over 2,000 compositions. American composer, pianist and bandleader of jazz orchestras. His career spanned over 50 years, leading his orchestra from 1923 until death. Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big-band, and thanks to his eloquence and extraordinary charisma, he is generally considered to have elevated the perception of jazz to an art form on a par with other traditional genres of music. Ellington orchestra had a huge following overseas, exemplified by the success of his trip to England in 1933 and their 1934 visit to the European mainland. On February 24, 2009, the United States Mint launched a new coin featuring Duke Ellington, making him the first African American to appear by himself on a circulating U.S. coin.[)

47. Les McCann-*Pianist* (1935-present probably has the fastest fingers in all of piano history. He became an innovator in the soul jazz style, merging jazz with funk, soul and world rhythms; much of his early 1970s music prefigures the Stevie Wonder albums of that decade. He was among the first jazz musicians to include electric piano, clavinet, and synthesizer in his music. flew to Accra, Ghana for a historic 14-hour concert before more than 100,000 Ghanaians. The March 6 concert was recorded for the documentary film Soul To Soul.)

48. Chuck Cooper*NBA athlete* (first black NBA player. Played for Boston Celtics. He and two others, Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton and Earl Lloyd, became the first African American players in the NBA in 1950)

49. Miles Davis *Musician*(Miles Davis is regarded as one of the most innovative, influential and respected figures in the history of music. He has been described as “one of the great innovators in jazz”. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century,[3] Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, and jazz fusion. I think his element of psychedelic jazz was what was also pivotal in music. Davis was noted as "one of the key figures in the history of jazz." Also he is known for turning his back on audiences while he performed or simply walking out in middle of concerts. Birth of the Cool and the album Kind of Blue. First great quintet and sextet.

50. Dizzy Gillespie-*Musician*(1917-1973-One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time (some would say the best), Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up copying Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis's emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy's style was successfully recreated [...] Arguably Gillespie is remembered, by both critics and fans alike, as one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time." Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge[3] but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown in jazz. Gillespie was also involved in the movement called Afro-Cuban music, bringing Afro-Latin American music and elements to greater prominence in jazz and even pop music, particularly salsa. Afro-Cuban jazz is based on traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms.)

 

[luke1733]

51. Buffalo Soldiers-*Soldiers*(Were members of the U.S. 10th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army, formed on September 21, 1866 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. This nickname was given to the "Negro Cavalry" by the Native American tribes they fought; the term eventually became synonymous with all of the African-American regiments formed in 1866: Although several African-American regiments were raised during the Civil War as part of the Union Army (including the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and the many United States Colored Troops Regiments), the "Buffalo Soldiers" were established by Congress as the first peacetime all-black regiments in the regular U.S. Army. On September 6, 2005, Mark Matthews, who was the oldest living Buffalo Soldier, died at the age of 111. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. After most of the Indian Wars ended in the 1890s, the regiments continued to serve and participated in the 1898 Spanish-American War (including the Battle of San Juan Hill) in Cuba, where five more Medals of Honor were earned. The men of the Buffalo soldiers were only some of the 5,000 Black men who served in the Spanish-American war.

The regiments took part in the Philippine-American War from 1899 to 1903 and the 1916 Mexican Expedition. In 1918 the 10th Cavalry fought at the Battle of Ambos Nogales during the First World War, where they assisted in forcing the surrender of the federal Mexican and Mexican militia forces.]

52. Denzel Washington *Actor*(1954-present contemporary actor who received an Oscar. Very active in the Boys and Girls Club of America. He served as the national spokesperson for Boys & Girls Clubs of America since 1993.[Methodical actor who chose roles that were leading roles as a Black Man during a time {1990's-2000's} when very few lead roles were afforded to Black males or females. Received two Golden Globe awards and a Tony Award,[2] and two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor for Glory (1989) and Best Actor for Training Day (2001)In 2008, Washington visited Israel with a delegation of African American artists in honor of the Jewish state's 60th birthday)

53. Malik Shabazz-*Attorney* (An American attorney and National Chairman. In 1996, Shabazz founded Black Lawyers for Justice. In 1998, he was recognized by the National Bar Association with its "Young Lawyer of the Year" award.)

54. Nas *Rapper*(considered the greatest lyricist in rap. Possibly wrote the greatest rap album ever, Illmatic, according to critics and myself. Staged a protest against Fox News. Used his lyrics to express the turmoil of poverty ridden communities and social injustices as it relates to Blacks. released eight consecutive platinum and multi-platinum albums and sold over 25 million records worldwide. On July 23, 2008, Nas appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss his opinion of O'Reilly and Fox News, which he accused of bias against the African-American community and re-challenged O'Reilly to a debate.[57] During the appearance, Nas sat on boxes of more than 625,000 signatures gathered by online advocacy organization Color of Change in support of a petition accusing Fox of race-baiting and fear-mongering. As a businessman and investor, he invested an undisclosed six figure sum into Mass Appeal Magazine, where he will serve as the publication's associate publisher.)

55. Michael Jackson*Greatest Entertainer that ever lived*- (Jackson was listed in the 2000 book of Guinness World Records for his support more charities than any other entertainer or personality. Jackson supported 39 charities through cash donations and sponsorships. Michael Jackson was invited to the White House on May 14, 1984, where he received an award for his support of drug and alcohol abuse charities, presented by President Ronald Reagan. The Michael Jackson Burn Center dedicated to helping burned victims. Treated Underprivileged Children to Free Shows. Jackson donated 100 percent of the profits from him single "Man in the Mirror" to charity. From 1985 to 1990, Jackson donated $500,000 to the United Negro College Fund. His Heal The World Foundation gave millions of dollars to help children around the world who were threatened by war and illnesses. When Ryan White, a hemophiliac teen from Indiana was kicked out of school in 1985 because he contracted HIV from a contaminated blood treatment, Jackson became one of his advocates. After White's death in 1990, Jackson pleaded with the Clinton Administration at Bill Clinton's Inaugural Gala for more funding for HIV/AIDS charities and research. Worldwide, Thriller's sales total has been estimated at 110 million copies by Jackson's management; independent sources give lower estimates, but there is consensus agreement that "Thriller" is the top-selling album in history. It remained at the top on the Billboard 200 album chart for thirty-seven weeks, setting a records for the longest runs at number one by a studio album . Jackson (aged 11 years, 155 days or 11 years, 5 months, and 2 days) is the youngest vocalist ever to top the Hot 100. Jackson was the first artist to chart four Top 10 singles from one album Jackson is the only male and the first artist to chart five number one hits from one LP, Bad Jackson is the first vocalist to have # 1 in US Billboard charts in 4 decades. Jackson is the Highest-Paid Commercial Spokesperson ever; Pepsi Cola paid Jackson $12 million to do 4 TV commercials in March 1988. n 2007, the Jackson estate's assets were calculated to be $1,360,839,979, with 85% of that total being Jackson's stake in the Sony/ATV Music Publishing song catalog that includes most of the Beatles' songs. He was the first black man to have his video played on MTV. Following his death, Jackson became the first artist to sell more than 2 million downloads in a week.)

56. Prince *Musical Genius* (plays over 1,000 instruments. Played all types of musical styles rock, R&B, soul, funk, hip hop, blues, new wave, electronica, disco, psychedelia, folk, jazz, and pop. Produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Released over 54 separate albums, although some were combined in which he wrote all of his own songs, sung his own songs and played all the instruments on most of his songs. I can't think of any 5 other artist/performer that has successfully done this for this long. Made a very public stance in opposition to contracts and record labels monopoly over artists. Prince's 1984 album Purple Rain sold more than thirteen million copies in the U.S. and spent twenty-four consecutive weeks at No.1 on the Billboard 200 chart. The film of the same name won an Academy Award and grossed more than $80 million in the U.S. His music was banned by Nancy Reagan. Prince was ranked the eighth-best guitarist of the previous 30 years. Prince was also listed in TIME magazine's 2010 annual ranking of the "100 Most Influential People in the World." Sued youtube for artists rights.Prince changed his name to the unpronounceable glyph O(+> in 1993, which he used until 2000. My favorite musician of all time. He also directed 2 movies)

 

[luke1733]

57. Gamal Abdel Nasser *President/General*(made schools and modernized (rebuilt infrastructure, skyscrapers, electricity in Egypt and half of the current arab state wouldn't be freed if it wasn't for Gamal Abel Nasser). Brought or returned sovereignty to Egypt and freed them from all foreign territories claim on Egypt without doing it through peaceful means but through military might. This restored a lot of pride in the Egyptian people and military. Gamal Nationalized the Suez Canal 1956. Kind of a big deal. This alone changed Egypt's economic position. He built the Aswan High Dam in 1968 which made 20th century life and industrialization instantaneous in Egypt.

Basically kicked out through force all the occupying nations that had stripped Egypt of sovereignty for centuries: A new middle class began to occupy the political and economic positions once held in Egypt by Italians, Greeks, French, Britons, and other foreigners, whom Nasser now encouraged—sometimes not gently—to leave the country.

His greatest accomplishment in Anwar's opinion might have been the fact that he lived for 18 years as president when all his opponents wanted him dead. No other Arab leader in modern times has succeeded in winning the sometimes hysterical support of Arab masses throughout the Middle East as did Nasser during the last 15 years of his life.

1952 reached colonel status 1954 minister of interior, then the prime minister. Minister Egypt-Czech Arms Agreement: 1955 Israel French Arms Agreement

58. Anwar El-Sadat *President*(Rose from being a peasant in Egypt to President. Israel and Egypt fought since BC times, except for when Sadat brokered a peace deal that changed the way two nations dealt with each other; and even made it so the two enemy nations could do business with one another. That changed the course of history while making history. He walked into Israel unannounced with no military to the prime minister Ariel Sharon to speak with him one-on-one without speaking through anybody. Since he was an enemy of the state of Israel he could have easily been killed and this was a very bold move to do this with no appointment. He united all arabs and Egypt became the Arab Republic of Egypt. He made quite a few enemies with Arabs also, which resulted in his assassination. Domestically, he initiated the open-door policy known as infitah (Arabic for "opening"), an economic program designed to attract foreign trade and investment. He won what was known as the October (Yom Kippur) War in which Syria and Egypt took back the Sinai Peninsula. Brokered the famous Camp David Accords with Israel PM Begin and President Jimmy Carter which was agreed upon between Egypt and Israel in September 1978.)

59. George Clinton and the Parliament-*Funky* (The creator of P-Funk music)

60. James Brown *Godfather of Soul*(His career spanned 6 decades. "The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business." The Godfather of Soul, the inventor of funk, the grandfather of hip-hop. Basically, Michael Jackson before Michael Jackson and more. Created multiple dance moves used by Elvis Presley Michael Jackson, Jackie Wilson and countless others. With a song he changed brainwashing of many blacks who believed light skin and straight/curly hair was something to esteem to be by creating an anthem that rang through black streets "I'm Black and I'm proud," that restored the darker engross perception of beauty in American communities. With the help of James Brown, afros, braids, and styles formerly not worn due to people perming and relaxing their hair to assimilate were worn again in the natural state. Supported and believed in Non-violence. Brown once declared to H. Rap Brown of the Black Panthers, "I'm not going to tell anybody to pick up a gun." In an attempt to keep people from rioting one-day after MLK was assassinated Brown gave a rare televised live concert in Boston in an attempt to prevent rioting there. His effort succeeded. Brown wrote in his memoir, "Others may have followed in my wake, but I was the one who turned racist minstrelsy into black soul—and by doing so, became a cultural force." During the late 1960s, Brown moved from a continuum of blues and gospel-based forms and styles to a profoundly "Africanized" approach to music-making that influenced the development of funk music. Brown recorded seventeen number-one singles on the Billboard R&B charts. Brown also holds the record as the artist to have charted the most singles on the Billboard Hot 100 which did not reach number-one on that chart. Due to heavy dropout rates in the 1960s, Brown released the pro-education song, "Don't Be a Drop-Out". Royalties of the song were donated to charity used for dropout prevention programs. The success of this led to Brown meeting with President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House. Upon filing his will in 2002, Brown advised that most of the money in his estate go into creating the I Feel Good, Inc. Trust to benefit disadvantaged children and provide scholarships for his grandchildren. A week before his death, while looking gravely ill, Brown gave out toys and turkeys to kids at an Atlanta orphanage, something he had done several times over the years. Brown performed for troops in Vietnam. Brown was asked by President Johnson to visit cities ravaged from riots following King's assassination to not resort to violence, telling them to "cool it, there's another way"

Brown had regrets "Now 'Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud' has done more for the black race than any other record, but if I had my choice, I wouldn't have done it, because I don't like defining anyone by race. To teach race is to teach separatism.

 

[luke1733]

61. Stevie Wonder *Musical Genius*-(The Boy Wonder changed the way Americans sang. Before Stevie people did not use the vibrato in their voice to go up and down singing scales and skip notes. Stevie Wonder pioneered this singing style that is now used by almost every American artist. Stevie Wonder has recorded over thirty top ten hits in the United States and has won twenty-two Grammy Awards; which is the most ever won by a single artist.  He has also won a Lifetime Achievement Award.He has been named the ninth greatest singer of all time by Rolling Stone Magazine.  His album sales have exceeded 100 million units.He is able to play the harmonica, synthesizer, piano, congas, bass guitar, drums, bongos, clavinet, organ, and melodica. Stevie Wonder has helped bring synthesizers into popular music. Also known for being a philanthropist, Stevie Wonder also refused to do concerts in Florida after the state let it be known that they did not want to charge George Zimmermann and allow him to go to court for the killing of Trayvon Martin. Stevie Wonder performed on August 28, 2008, on the day that Barack Obama accepted the nomination of his party for President of the United States. He did all this while being blind. He started recording professionally at age 12 and was known as a child prodigy. He taught himself how to play 5 instruments before age 10. Wonder made headlines when it was announced that he would perform in Marrakesh on June 28, 2013, in an effort to make good on his earlier promise to host a concert if negotiators concluded an international treaty providing blind and visually impaired individuals worldwide with more access to books. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, a treaty to do just that was adopted by more than 600 negotiators from 186 states on June 27, 2013, at a United Nations-backed forum.

62. Jim Brown*Activist,Athlete, Actor, Community organizer*-(NFL player, Actor in over 30 movies, and activist. is an American former professional football player and actor. He is best known for his exceptional and record-setting nine-year career as a running back for the NFL Cleveland Browns from 1957 to 1965. In 2002, he was named by Sporting News as the greatest professional football player ever. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest professional athletes in the history of the United States. In addition to his football accomplishments, he excelled in basketball, track, and especially lacrosse. As a sophomore, he was the second leading scorer for the basketball team (15 ppg), and earned a letter on the track team. His junior year, he averaged 11.3 points in basketball, and was named a second-team All-American in lacrosse. His senior year, he was named a first-team All-American in lacrosse (43 goals in 10 games to rank second in scoring nationally). Brown's record of scoring 100 touchdowns in only 93 games stood until LaDainian Tomlinson did it in 89 games during the 2006 season.Brown holds the record for total seasons leading the NFL in all-purpose yards (5: 1958–1961, 1964), and is the only rusher in NFL history to average over 100 yards per game for a career.Brown led the league in rushing a record eight times. Brown served as a color analyst on NFL telecasts for CBS in 1978. He currently works with kids caught up in the gang scene in Los Angeles and Cleveland through this Amer-I-Can program. It is a life management skills organization that operates in inner cities and prisons.

In the 1960s he threw his support behind black-owned business by helping to create the Negro Industrial Economic Union.

 

[luke1733]

63. Jesse Jackson*Activist* (Activist, Politician- He was the 2nd African American to Run for president and was the 3rd democratic candidate to win the most votes. He was appointed as the organization’s national director in 1967 and under him the protestors boycotted consumer goods in an attempt to force the owners of several businesses to hire African-Americans. In 1966, he was appointed the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an African-American civil rights organization started by Martin Luther King Jr. Jackson was ordained a Baptist minister by the Chicago church in 1968. He travelled to South Africa in 1979 where he gave a public speech disapproving apartheid. He also went to the Middle East and extended his support for the formation of a Palestinian state. This is what made Americans turn their back on him. He founded the ‘National Rainbow Coalition’ in 1984 with the aim of attaining equal rights for African-Americans, women and homosexuals. He made a second run for presidency in 1988 which he lost. He continued working for the right and equality of African-Americans and in 1990 he was elected the shadow senator for the District of Columbia. Jackson participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches organized by James Bevel. Jackson headed the Chicago branch of the SCLC's economic arm, Operation Breadbasket. Operation Breadbasket had been started by the Atlanta leadership of the SCLC as a job placement agency for blacks. Under Jackson's leadership, a key goal was to encourage massive boycotts by black consumers as a means to pressure white-owned businesses to hire blacks and to purchase goods and services from black-owned firms. In 1983, Jackson traveled to Syria to secure the release of a captured American pilot, Navy Lt. Robert Goodman who was being held by the Syrian government. In June 1984, Jackson negotiated the release of twenty-two Americans being held in Cuba after an invitation by Cuban president Fidel Castro. On the eve of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Jackson made a trip to Iraq, to plead to Saddam Hussein for the release of foreign nationals held there as the "human shield", securing the release of several British and twenty American individuals. In April 1999, during the Kosovo War, Jackson traveled to Belgrade to negotiate the release of three U.S. POWs captured on the Macedonian border while patrolling with a UN peacekeeping unit. He met with the then-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević, who later agreed to release the three men. On February 15, 2003, Jackson spoke in front of over an estimated one million people in Hyde Park, London at the culmination of the anti-war demonstration against the imminent invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and the United Kingdom. After meeting with Chávez and addressing the Venezuelan Parliament, Jackson said that there was no evidence that Venezuela posed a threat to the U.S. Jackson also met representatives from the Afro Venezuela and indigenous communities.[29] In 2005, he was enlisted as part of the United Kingdom's "Operation Black Vote", a campaign run by Simon Woolley to encourage more of Britain's ethnic minorities to vote in political elections ahead of the May 2005 General Election. Jackson was a target of the 2002 white supremacist terror plot. I only include so much about Jesse Jackson b/c so many young people my age critique him heavily with a negative view and have no valid reasons other than repeating what somebody told them: saying he is an "opportunist," and speaks for a community that has not elected him. This has been said and believed by many ignorant youths who don't take the time to actually read anything about the people the media might attack and make to look bad. This is a quote said of Jackson: Rev. Jesse Jackson (“We stood there, and Rev. Jackson was reading the 1 Chronicles 16:22 that says, ‘Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm,' as the truck was moving right toward us,” Reed said.” Reed said at one point, he and the group of clergy, holding Bibles, faced down several hundred police and highway patrol troopers and a sanitation truck that appeared to be prepared to move the group of nonviolent protesters out of the way.  The Rev. J.A. Reed recalls this as being part of group of black clergy who decided to take a stand with the city's mostly black sanitation workers who went on strike in 1969 in the hopes of gaining better wages and working conditions. Reed said the sanitation strike was led by the Rev. W.K. Jackson.

64. Little Richard *One of the creators of Rock n' Roll*(The Architect of Rock'n Roll. 1932-present-He might not have created Rock n' Roll like Chuck Berry but he created Rock n' roll with his piano playing which fused the hollering known in Black Gospel churches with the rhythm and blues of the secular world while including stage antics such as walking on pianos, turning splits, wearing make-up, glitter and lipstick. He also introduced the high-falsetto scream pertinent in many male songs today. He single-handedly brought in the new era of music. American recording artist, songwriter, and musician. He has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for over six decade. Penniman was blessed with a phenomenal voice able to generate croons, wails, and screams unprecedented in popular music. Penniman was cited as one of the first crossover black artists, reaching audiences of all races. His concerts broke the color line, drawing blacks and whites together despite attempts to sustain segregation. James Brown sang back up for Little Richard before James Brown was known and Jimmy Preston. Jimi Hendrix was Little Richard's guitar player. Little Richard said The band hated that makeup. If we didn't put on makeup, they wouldn't have let us in those white clubs. They figured we weren't gonna bother the [white] girls.

65. Janet Jackson *Billionaire entertainer*(1966-present- Billionaire entertainer Known for a series of sonically innovative, socially conscious and sexually provocative records, as well as elaborate stage shows, television appearances, and film roles, she has been a prominent figure in popular culture since the early 1970s. Janet still holds the record for the most successful debut concert tour by a recording artist. the first artist ever to produce seven Top Five hits off of one album. The last five of her eight albums (excluding her first two albums "Janet Jackson," "Dream Street" and her greatest hits album "Design of a Decade: 1986 -1996") have all hit #1. Control", "Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation", "Janet", "The Velvet Rope" and "All For You" all reached #1, together selling more than 60 million copies worldwide. Is the #2 most successful artist on the Billboard Dance/Club Play Chart. Holds the record for most weeks spent at #1 on the R&B chart for her 1994 single, "Any Time, Any Place." The Rhythm Nation world tour was the most successful debut tour from any artist

 

[luke1733]

66. Muhammad Ali *The Greatest Ever* also "The Greatest Fighter of All Time*( Uhh. Great, great great beyond great and a poet. Ali is today widely regarded for not only the skills he displayed in the ring but also the values he exemplified outside of it: religious freedom, racial justice and the triumph of principle over expedience.He is one of the most recognized sports figures of the past 100 years, crowned "Sportsman of the Century" by Sports Illustrated and "Sports Personality of the Century" by the BBC. Ali refused to be conscripted into the U.S. military, citing his religious beliefs and opposition to the Vietnam War.He was eventually arrested and found guilty on draft evasion charges and stripped of his boxing title. He did not fight again for nearly four years—losing a time of peak performance in an athlete's career. Ali's appeal worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where in 1971 his conviction was overturned on a technicality. Ali remains the only three-time lineal World Heavyweight Champion; he won the title in 1964, 1974, and 1978. Ali revolutionized the sport of boxing by sheer power and magnetism of his personality often ridiculing fighters as he was fighting and before the fights. During a time when Blacks were often killed for speaking out against racism, Ali used his platform to speak to the entire world in a way no other sports athlete had ever been seen doing. His interviews also involved him condemning America, quoting various atrocities inflicted on his people, the hypocrisies of capitalism and America's democracy, challenging senators and various politicians to debates, and informing the world who Black America was in a very proud, arrogant, boisterous, and sometimes humorously charming way. Often he would talk trash and repeat to the world: "Iam the Greatest". Due to this the American government often spied on him in a secret operation code-named "Minaret," the National Security Agency (NSA) monitored the communications of leading Americans, including Ali, Senators Frank Church and Howard Baker, Dr. Martin Luther King, prominent U.S. journalists, who criticized the U.S. war in Vietnam.[95] A review by NSA of the NSA's Minaret program concluded that Minaret was "disreputable if not outright illegal." He was an avid follower of the NOI.Ali inspired Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been reluctant to address the Vietnam War for fear of alienating the Johnson Administration and its support of the civil rights agenda. Now, King began to voice his own opposition to the war for the first time. On November 17, 2002, Muhammad Ali went to Afghanistan as the "U.N. Messenger of Peace".[56] He was in Kabul for a three-day goodwill mission as a special guest of the UN. "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" As Ali's boxing career ended, he became involved in social causes and politics. He campaigned for Jimmy Carter (1924–) and other Democratic political candidates and took part in the promotion of a variety of political causes addressing poverty and the needs of children. He even tried to win the release of four kidnapped Americans in Lebanon in 1985.

If you want to know a piece of him Go to:

67. Michael A Nutter-*Politician*(1957-present-3rd African American to be mayor of Philadelphia. In 2010, Mayor Nutter commissioned a pilot projected labeled "Public Service Areas" to supplement police response with a coordinated effort from other city agencies in areas of the city plagued with chronic issues of crime and disorder. In October of 2011, Mayor Nutter joined forces with Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans to create Cities United, an initiative committed to reducing African-American male on African-American male violence. In 2009, Mayor Nutter announced Greenworks, the city's plan to become the greenest city in America by 2015. In 2008, Nutter established the Mayor’s Office of Education to work on the related goals of increasing the high school graduation rate to 80 percent by 2015 and raising the rate of Philadelphia residents with a college degree to 36 percent by 2018. Since, 2007, the high school graduation rate has increased by 11 percentage points.)

68. Berry Gordy *Founder of Record Company*(1929-present Founder of Motown Records (responsible for Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, El Debarge, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, Diana Ross, Temptations, Gladys Knight and the Pipsrecord producer, and songwriter. Motown produced so many hits with over 100 titles hitting #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart that the Motown Sound has practically become its own genre of music. Provided multiple Black Artists the platform to express themselves freely in a way and during a time when record labels owned by Whites were restricting the rights of black artists to freely and musically express themselves as they deemed.)

 

[luke1733]

69. Cory Booker *Politician*- (1969-present American politician and the junior United States Senator from New Jersey He attended Stanford University, where he played college football and received a Bachelor of Arts in political science and a Master of Arts in sociology, before earning a Rhodes Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford. Upon returning home, he received his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School. At Yale, Booker was a founding member of the Chai Society (now the Eliezer Society),[12] a Big Brother with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and was active in the National Black Law Students Association. In June 2006 New Jersey investigators foiled a plot to assassinate Booker led by Bloods gang leaders inside four New Jersey state prisons. The motive for the plot was unclear, but was described variously as a response to the acrimonious campaign. The gangs wanted to kill him in retaliation to his stance against crime and promise to lower it. After his first week in office, Booker announced a 100-day plan to implement reforms in Newark. Some of the proposed changes included increasing police forces, ending background checks for many city jobs to help former offenders find employment in the city, refurbishing police stations, improving city services, and expanding summer youth programs. Crime reduction was such a central concern to the Booker administration that Booker, along with his security team, was known to personally patrol the streets of Newark until times as late as 4 a.m. In 2008 Newark had its lowest murder rate since 1959,and March 2010 marked Newark’s first murder-free month in over 44 years.In addition to his crime-lowering initiatives, Booker doubled the amount of affordable housing under development and quadrupled the amount under pre-development, and reduced the city budget deficit from $180 million to $73 million. After taking office Booker voluntarily reduced his own salary twice, reducing his salary by 8% early in his first year as Mayor. Booker also raised the salaries of many city workers. In an effort to make government more accessible, Booker has held regular open office hours during which city residents can meet with him personally to discuss their concerns. n October 16, 2013 he defeated Republican Steve Lonegan in the general election by 55% to 44%, making him the first African-American U.S. Senator from New Jersey and the first African-American to be elected to the Senate since Barack Obama in 2004. Booker was offered the leadership of the new White House Office of Urban Affairs. He turned the offer down, citing a commitment to Newark. Zuckerberg, who had no known ties to Newark, announced in September 2010 that he was donating $100 million of his personal fortune to the Newark school system. According to an article in the New York Times, Booker and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) continued their conversation about Booker's plans for Newark.[115] The initial gift was made to start a foundation for education. In 2012, Booker and tech executives Sarah Ross and Nathan Richardson formed Waywire, a company focused on video sharing technology.[122] Early investors included Oprah Winfrey, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Weiner and Troy Carter. Can you say "he will run for president soon?" Well, I'm saying it.

70.Oscar Robertson*Athlete* (only player in NBA to average a triple-double in a season. The greatest all-around player ever. His playing career, especially during high school and college, was plagued by racism. In 1955 he won the first state championship for any all-black school in the nation. After winning this the city made sure to not run the parade through the ghetto stating: We don’t trust the blacks to behave themselves, so let’s keep this self-contained. The following year the team finished with a perfect 31–0 record and won a second straight Indiana state title, becoming the first team in Indiana to secure a perfect season along the way to a state-record 45 straight victories. Robertson continued to dominate his opponents while at the University of Cincinnati, recording an incredible scoring average of 33.8 points per game. Robertson is the only guard in NBA history to ever average more than 10 rebounds per game, doing so three times. Robertson also owns the chemical company Orchem, based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Established Oscar & Yvonne Robertson Scholarship Fund at University of Cincinnati. Things said to Oscar: University’s coach, Branch McCracken, for recruiting him by saying, “I hope you’re not the kind of kid who wants money to go to school.” In Dallas, fans greeted him by tossing a black cat into his locker room.3 In Houston, he couldn’t check into his hotel because of a NO BLACKS ALLOWED sign … only his team stayed there anyway, with poor Oscar stuck sleeping in a Texas Southern dorm room. In North Carolina, someone delivered him a pregame letter from the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan that simply read, “Don’t ever come to the South.” There were eight teams and eighty-eight players total, along with an unwritten “don’t have more than two black guys on your roster” rule.

71. Robert Johnson's BET *Billionaire. Owner of own TV network.*(1st African American Billionaire better known as Bob Johnson Founded a television network geared toward showcasing Black American entertainment. In 1980, Johnson launched Black Entertainment Television.[This showed black movies, black music videos, black interviews and news geared toward Black interests. No other tv network on tv did this for blacks. Johnson is the former majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats NBA team. Johnson was a member of the board of directors for RLJ Lodging Trust, RLJ Entertainment, Inc., KB Home, Lowe’s Companies, Inc., Strayer Education, Think Finance, Inc., NBA Board of Governors, The Business Council, and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Johnson has also served as a member of the board of directors for several other companies and organizations, including US Airways, Hilton Hotels, General Mills, the United Negro College Fund, and Deutsche Bank’s Americas Advisory Board. In 2011, Johnson worked with Morgan Freeman to raise funds for hurricane preparedness in the Bahamas. In 2000 he hoped to set up a new black-run airline, DC Air, as a spinoff of a merger between US Airways (LCC) and United Airlines (UAUA) that was ultimately derailed by government regulators.In 2007, Johnson created the Liberia Enterprise Development Fund with a $30 million investment. The fund provides credit for Liberian entrepreneurs. Johnson has launched half a dozen other ventures, from hotels to banks to an NBA team, all of which are led primarily -- if not entirely -- by black executives.

 

[luke1733]

72. Nat Turner *Abolitionist*(1800-1831) Within 30 years of his being Hung Blacks were freed from slavery.  The slave rebellion’s set off by 5’6 Nat Turner sparked fear throughout America after more slave rebellions began and this eventually was to prognosis to what resulted in the Emancipation of Proclamation due to the high number of slaves in the South. He led a slave rebellion in Virginia on August 21, 1831 that resulted in over 60 recorded white deaths (the number of deaths by some has been presumed to be much larger). Whites responded with at least 200 black deaths. In the aftermath, the state executed 56 blacks accused of being part of Turner's slave rebellion. Two hundred blacks were also killed after being beaten by white militias and mobs reacting with violence. After he was hung his skin was made into wallets and purses after he was killed worn by whoever bought it..  The Smithsonian Museum was the last to be aware of this. His body was flayed, beheaded and quartered (cut into pieces). Across Virginia and other southern states, state legislators passed new laws prohibiting education of slaves and free blacks, restricting rights of assembly and other civil rights for free blacks, and requiring white ministers to be present at black worship services. A book written by Turner’s attorney was written: "The Confessions of Nat Turner.”  What is mentioned is the fact that the South began to fear the growing number of slaves where the slaves were outnumbering whites drastically. By about 1708, South Carolina had a black majority. Many slave-owners and non-slave owners were practicing killing large groups of Blacks for no reason other than to control the numbers so that they could manage slavery.  This is what was one overwhelming factor in Nat’s decision to retaliate for the unjust mass scale murders of his people. Before the rebellion this is who Turner was: Turner often conducted Baptist services, preaching the Bible to his fellow slaves, who dubbed him "The Prophet". The rebellion was initially planned for July 4, Independence Day

 

73. Charles Deslondes*Abolitionist*-(From Dominican Republic or St. Domingue shows Haiti’s Revolution’s effect on America through 1811 German Coast Uprising in Louisiana- (Regarded as the largest Slave Uprising in the History of the U.S.. a slave revolt that took place in parts of the Territory of Orleans on January 8-10, 1811. Charles Deslondes, a refugee from St. Domingue who worked as a slave driver on the plantation, organized the other slaves on the plantation. With the support of runaway slaves, or "maroons," who lived in the nearby swamps, Deslondes' band wounded Andry and killed his son. Seizing weapons on the plantation, they set off on the road along the river headed for New Orleans, gathering recruits from other plantations as they went. Accounts differ, but they numbered between 150 and 500 strong. His body was mutilated, dismembered, and put on public display as a warning against other attempts at slave uprising. The substantial number of former and current slaves who witnessed the success of the Saint-Domingue slave revolt undoubtedly posed a constant threat to the region. Newspapers across the country chronicled the event in gory details.  )

74. Geeche-*Language/Culture*(Gullah-Is the only truly authentic form of Africans in America that have largely for over 400 years kept their language and customs African. They are descendants of enslaved Africans who live in the Lowcountry region of the US states of South Carolina and Georgia, which includes both the coastal plain and the Sea Islands.  The Geeche have preserved much of their African linguistic and cultural heritage. It is related to Jamaican Patois, Barbadian Dialect, Bahamian Dialect, Belizean Creole and the Krio language of Sierra Leone in West Africa. Gullah storytelling, cuisine, music, folk beliefs, crafts, farming and fishing traditions all exhibit strong influences from West and Central African cultures. Many Gullahs served with distinction in the Union Army's First South Carolina Volunteers. The Sea Islands were the first place in the South where slaves were freed. Shot out to the family)

 

75.  Bill Russell *Only athlete to own 11 championship titles*(Holds the record for being the Only athlete to win 11 championships. Russell was the first African American player to achieve superstar status in the NBA. Declared Greatest Player in the History of the NBA by the Professional Basketball Writers Association of America (1980).In 1959, Bill Russell became the first NBA player to visit Africa. Before the 1961–62 season, Russell's team was scheduled to play in an exhibition game in Lexington, Kentucky when Russell and his black teammates were refused service at a local restaurant. He and the other black teammates refused to play in the exhibition game and flew home, drawing a great deal of controversy and publicity. He was active in the Black Power movement and supported Muhammad Ali's decision to refuse to be drafted. He alienated Celtics fans by saying, "You owe the public the same it owes you, nothing! I refuse to smile and be nice to the kiddies."[59] This supported the opinion that Russell (who was the highest-paid Celtic) was egotistical, paranoid and hypocritical, and even the FBI described Russell in his file as "an arrogant Negro who won't sign autographs for white children".After his retirement, he described the Boston press as corrupt and racist. In 2010 Russell received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civil honor, from President Obama. Bill Russell is very famous to responding to racism in the famouns Celtics Walkout where they walked out before the game and didn’t play as a response to the racism.

 

76. Hank Aaron *Home Run King formally*(1934-Aaron himself downplayed the "chase" to surpass Babe Ruth, while baseball enthusiasts and the national media grew increasingly excited as he closed in on the 714 career home runs record. He probably could have hit more if pitchers would not have deliberately walked him in multiple attempts to keep him from breaking Babe Ruth’s record.  He held the MLB record for career home runs for 33 years, and he still holds several MLB offensive records. He hit 24 or more home runs every year from 1955 through 1973, and is the only player to hit 30 or more home runs in a season at least fifteen times.

Negro League Baseball-were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams predominantly made up of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latin Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relatively successful leagues beginning in 1920 that are sometimes termed "Negro Major Leagues". In 1885 the Cuban Giants formed the first black professional baseball team.

 

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7. Jesse Owens (Olympian)-an American track and field athlete who specialized in the sprints and the long jump. He participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, where he achieved international fame by winning four gold medals: one each in the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the long jump, and as part of the 4x100 meter relay team. He was the most successful athlete at the 1936 Summer Olympics.  In 1936, Owens arrived in Berlin to compete for the United States in the Summer Olympics. Adolf Hitler was using the games to show the world a resurgent Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, Nazi propaganda promoted concepts of "Aryan racial superiority" and depicted ethnic Africans as inferior. Owens countered this by winning four gold medals. "Hitler had a certain time to come to the stadium and a certain time to leave." "It happened he had to leave before the victory ceremony after the 100 meters. But before he left I was on my way to a broadcast and passed near his box. He waved at me and I waved back. I think it was bad taste to criticize the 'man of the hour' in another country." Owens was allowed to travel with and stay in the same hotels in Germany as whites, while at the time African Americans in many parts of the United States had to stay in segregated hotels while traveling. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) never invited Jesse Owens to the White House following his triumphs at the Olympics games. Owens said,"Hitler didn't snub me – it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram."

Just before the competitions, Owens was visited in the Olympic village by Adi Dassler, the founder of the Adidas athletic shoe company. He persuaded Owens to use Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik shoes, the first sponsorship for a male African-American athlete. Owens ran a dry cleaning business and worked as a gas station attendant to earn a living.

The black fist is a meaningless symbol. When you open it, you have nothing but fingers – weak, empty fingers. The only time the black fist has significance is when there's money inside. There's where the power lies.

 Four years later in his 1972 book I Have Changed, he moderated his opinion:

  realized now that militancy in the best sense of the word was the only answer where the black man was concerned, that any black man who wasn't a militant in 1970 was either blind or a coward.)

Tommie Smith and John Carlos- (Famous for raising their fists for the black power salute in 1968 in Mexico. It remains a symbolic moment in the history of the American Civil Rights Movement. Smith received the Courage of Conscience Award from The Peace Abbey in Sherborn, Massachusetts)

 

78.Jackie Robinson*First Black in Baseball*- (1919-1972 the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) Robinson played in six World Series and contributed to the Dodgers' 1955 World Championship. He was the first black television analyst in MLB, and the first black vice president of a major American corporation. In 1964, he helped found, with Harlem businessman Dunbar McLaurin, Freedom National Bank—a black-owned and operated commercial bank based in Harlem. In 1970, Robinson established the Jackie Robinson Construction Company to build housing for low-income families."I'm going to be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at that third base coaching line one day and see a black face managing in baseball." His son moved to Tanzania with much of the rest of his family: “If you had told me at 12 years old in Connecticut that I would end up growing coffee, or even living in Africa, I would have never believed you.”) 

79. Shirley Caesar *Gospel*(American Gospel music singer, songwriter and recording artist whose career has spanned over six decades. "First Lady of Gospel Music" and now the "Queen of Gospel Music"

 

80.  Rakim *Rap Innovator*(created a mathematical rhythmic bar and flow to his rhymes that changed rap from boompt-boomp to a more relaxed free-flowing style of melody. If the flow he created was not enough to introduce into rap; he added a high degree of vocabulary and syntax to his delivery/cadence that had never been seen in rap or any other genre of any music. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential and most skilled MCs of all time. If you listen to the way people rap today, it is because of him. Before Rakim rap music sounded like Run-DMC, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious 5, Afrika Bambataa. Now it all sounds like Rakim. Rakim's rhyming deviated from the simple rhyme patterns of early 1980s hip hop. His free-rhythm style ignored bar lines and had earned comparisons to Thelonious Monk. Born 1968)

81. Stokley Carmichael *Activist*(Stokely Carmichael defines Black Power as: “The goal of black self-determination and black self-identity—Black Power—is full participation in the decision-making processes affecting the lives of black people, and recognition of the virtues in themselves as black people.”[1] "Those of us who advocate Black Power are quite clear in our own minds that a 'non-violent' approach to civil rights is an approach black people cannot afford and a luxury white people do not deserve."[1] This refers to the idea that the traditional ideas and values of the Civil Rights Movement placated to the emotions and feelings of White liberal supporters rather than Black Americans who had to consistently live with the racism and other acts of violence that was shown towards them.Carmichael rose to prominence as a member and later the chairman of SNCC, working with Martin Luther King Jr. and other Southern leaders to stage protests. Carmichael later lost faith in the tactic of non-violence, promoting "Black Power" and allying himself with the militant Black Panther Party.racist economic oppression. As Stokely Carmichael later said, "My old man believed in this work-and-overcome stuff. He was religious, never lied, never cheated or stole. He did carpentry all day and drove taxis all night& The next thing that came to that poor black man was death—from working too hard. And he was only in his 40s.""When I first heard about the Negroes sitting in at lunch counters down South," he later recalled, "I thought they were just a bunch of publicity hounds. But one night when I saw those young kids on TV, getting back up on the lunch counter stools after being knocked off them, sugar in their eyes, ketchup in their hair—well, something happened to me. Suddenly I was burning.'' He joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), picketed a Woolworth's store in New York and traveled to sit-ins in Virginia and South Carolina." He graduated from Howard University with honors in 1964. n one year, Carmichael managed to raise the number of registered black voters from 70 to 2,600—300 more than the number of registered white voters in the county. Unsatisfied with the response of either of the major political parties to his registration efforts, Carmichael founded his own party, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. To satisfy a requirement that all political parties have an official logo, he chose a black panther, which later provided the inspiration for the Black Panthers. In 1967, Carmichael took a transformative journey, traveling outside the United States to visit with revolutionary leaders in Cuba, North Vietnam, China and Guinea. In 1969, Carmichael quit the Black Panthers and left the United States to take up permanent residence in Conakry, Guinea, where he dedicated his life to the cause of pan-African unity. His tireless spirit and radical outlook are perhaps best captured by the greeting with which he answered his telephone until his dying day: "Ready for the revolution!"

 

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82. Black Power *Movement*- The phrase "Black Power" quickly caught on as the rallying cry of a younger, more radical generation of civil rights activists. The term also resonated internationally, becoming a slogan of resistance to European imperialism in Africa. This is not to be associated with hatred of or toward any other race, but only disdain toward those that practice oppression and invest in a system that oppresses others while denying others of human rights. Martin Luther King called black power "an unfortunate choice of words."

83. Shirley Chisholm-*First black candidate for President*(On January 25, 1972, she became the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. 1968 she became the first African-American woman elected to Congress.) All those Chisholm hired for her office were women, half of them black. Chisholm said that during her New York legislative career, she had faced much more discrimination because she was a woman than because she was black. In 1970, she authored the Comprehensive Child Development Bill of 1972.)

84. Bobby Seale *Activist*(Seale and Newton, heavily inspired by Malcolm X, a civil rights leader assassinated in 1965, and his teachings, joined together in October 1966 to create the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and adopt the slain activist's slogan “Freedom by any means necessary” as their own. Seale became the chairman of the Black Panther Party and underwent FBI surveillance as part of its COINTELPRO program. In 2002, Seale began dedicating his time to Reach!, a group focused on youth education programs. He has also taught black studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. A Lonely Rage - The Autobiography of Bobby Seale, 1978.) Famous for appearing inside the Sacramento, California state capitol with the BP armed with shotguns in 1967. Due to this the Mulford Act, a law that stopped the Black Panthers from legally doing armed patrols of the police and policing their own neighborhoods came about. He has made very clear his denouncing of the New BlackPanther Party, which he considers racist and teach hatred which is the opposite of what the original black panthers stood for.)

85. Daniel Williams *Physician*(The first physician to successfully complete open-heart surgery on a patient. An African-American doctor, in 1893, Williams opened Provident Hospital, the first medical facility to have an interracial staff)

86. Huey Newton *Activist* ( Founder of the Black Panther Party. "An illiterate high-school graduate, Newton taught himself how to read before attending Merritt College in Oakland and the San Francisco School of Law.In 1967 Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of a police officer, but his conviction was overturned 22 months later, and he was released from prison. In 1971 he announced that the party would adopt a nonviolent manifesto and dedicate itself to providing social services to the black community.Newton received a Ph.D. in social philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz (1980); his dissertation, “War Against the Panthers,” was subtitled “A Study of Repression in America.” Succumbing to factionalism and pressure from government agencies, the party disbanded in 1982. During his time at Merritt College, Newton and Bobby Seale organized the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in October 1966.I'm actually a rather shy individual. I wouldn't consider myself to be very charismatic; I never did anything hero-like, I just worked on some little community programs. I do have a role to play however - I'm a theorist of sorts - I work on theories." Governor Huey P. Long of Louisiana. That's where I was born, Louisiana. And it seems like my father felt that Huey P. Long had done positive things for black people in Louisiana, so he named me after him. And as you can imagine the name always caused me a few problems. He was a notorious racist.

87.Black Masons *Masons*(Prince Hall Freemasonry is a branch of North American Freemasonry founded by Prince Hall in the 18th century and composed predominantly of African Americans. . On June 24, 1808 they organized African Grand Lodge with the lodges from Philadelphia, Providence and Boston,[11] which was later renamed the Prince Hall Grand Lodge, in honor of their first Grand Master. Today, predominantly black Prince Hall Grand Lodges exist in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean and Liberia, governing Prince Hall Lodges throughout the world. Sugar Ray Robinson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Kwesi Mfume – former NAACP President, Shaquille O’Neal , Scottie Pippin,  Rev. Al Sharpton, Booker T. Washington, Thurgood Marshall, Nat King Cole, Kofi Atta Annan, and Nelson Mandela was made a Mason “on sight” in Atlanta Georgia on June 28, 1990.  The Black Wall Street massacre was also a city of black masons.

 

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8. Bucks of America *Soldiers*- a unit of black soldiers that were Black masons during the American Revolution. The unit received a flag from Governor John Hancock for its faithful service.

 89. Al Sharpton *TV Host and Activist*(American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host.In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election.In 1991, Sharpton founded the National Action Network, an organization designed to increase voter education, to provide services to those in poverty, and to support small community businesses.Sharpton founded the National Youth Movement to raise resources for impoverished youth. Sharpton was appointed by Jesse Jackson as youth director of Operation Breadbasket, a group that focused on the promotion of new and better jobs for African-Americans.

Sharpton has succeeded in getting companies to hire more black lawyers. , such as in the bensonhurst case. These are few cases Sharpton Headlined: Howard Beach, Bensonhurst (during this protest he was stabbed in the chest as he led the protest through Brooklyn), Crown Heights Riot, Freddie's Fashion Mart,Amadou Diallo,Tyisha Miller,Vieques,Ousmane Zongo,Sean Bell,Dunbar Village,Tanya McDowell,George Zimmerman.He is now a host with his own show on MSNBC.

 

90. Prince Hall –*Mason Hall*(1797- Founder of the Black Masons. He worked to abolish slavery and pushed for equal education among the races. In fact, Hall petitioned the Massachusetts Committee of Safety to allow blacks to fight with the colonies, but his petition was declined. England then proclaimed that if blacks fought with the British army that they would have their freedom at the end of the war.

 As the Continental army saw this tactic working for the British when blacks begin enlisting with their army, they decided to reverse their earlier decision in which the Continental army removed its block on admission of blacks into the military. After the Revolutionary War, Hall continued his pursuits and proposed several pieces of legislation to better the lives of African-Americans in New England, reminding his white peers that African-Americans fought side by side for the pursuit of freedom from Britain.

91. Black churches*Church*(have been a resource for fueling the black communities organizing of groups to help find jobs, provide money and scholarships to the community, provide a place of spiritual relief and teach salvation, feed the disenfranchised and the homeless, offer counseling to the felons and former convicts, pioneered organizing Human Rights Laws in America to force America to provide Civil Liberties to people of all races and religions.  The church suffered many casualties in its pursuits in America for over 400 years from preachers being hung to churches being burned to the 4 Little Girls crime. 1963 murder of four African-American girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. The church can be documented as probably the single most power influence over Black Americans life for over 400 years and been the inspiration and resource used by which Black culture defined itself through.)

 

92. Jeff Fort-*Gangs*(1947 former Chicago gang leader, co-founder of the Black P. Stones gang, and founder of its El Rukn faction. He was convicted in 1987 of conspiring with Libya to perform acts of domestic terrorism. Around 1959, Fort and Hairston formed the Blackstone Rangers gang at St. Charles. The Blackstone Rangers originated as a small youth gang along Blackstone Avenue in the Woodlawn area, assembled to defend themselves against other gangs in the South Side. Hairston was the gang's leader with Fort as second in command. The Rangers fought rival gangs, especially the Devil's Disciples. , Fort earned the nickname "Angel" for his ability to solve disputes and form alliances between the Rangers and other gangs. By the mid 1960s, Fort assembled a coalition of 21 gangs with about 5,000 members. He organized the coalition under a governing body called the "Main 21". Under Rev. Fry's guidance, Fort obtained a charter from the State of Illinois to form a political organization. Fort's organization applied for and received a US$1 million federal grant from the now-defunct Office of Economic Opportunity to fund a program to teach job skills to gang members. The Rangers also received grants and loans from private foundations. the Blackstone Rangers were not considered outsiders but had been largely accepted by Chicago society, with Jeff Fort even receiving an invitation from President Richard Nixon, following the 1968 election to attend the 1969 inaugural ball.  During the 1970s, the gang trafficked in cocaine and heroin. In 1983, Fort was convicted of drug trafficking charges and sentenced to 13 years in prison. He was sent to the Federal Correctional Institution at Bastrop, Texas. Fort continued to lead El Rukn through daily telephone calls from prison. He ordered members of El Rukn to meet with Libyan officials. The gang agreed to commit terrorist acts in the U.S. in exchange for US$2.5 million.)

 

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93.100 Pines-*Soldiers*(the “real” first black regiment in U.S. Army history. Hilton Head South Carolina in 1862 David Hunter-Major General commanding ordered all Blacks in Georgia, South Carolina and Florida to be forever declared free under General orders no.11. From this he formed his own infantry of black armed US soldiers from the south fighting on behalf of the Union. 26th of January 1863 A confederate unit met the all black calvary and lost the battle. That was the first black unit in America to be endorsed by the military to fight in a war with a predominately black unit.

 

94. BBA-*Business*( Since 1970, the Black Business Association (BBA), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, headquartered in Los Angeles, has been instrumental in the incubation and development of more than 15,000 African-American businesses.  Nationally, it influences  more than 85,000 African-American-owned and women/minority-owned firms via strategic alliances with more than 100 women/minority trade associations in more than 42 states nationwide.

 

95. Ebony *Magazine*(a monthly magazine for the African-American market, was founded by John H. Johnson and has published continuously since the autumn of 1945. Ebony cover photography has since its inception focused on African-American celebrities and politicians, such as Dorothy Dandridge, Mariah Carey, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Carol Moseley Braun, Barack Obama, Zoe Saldana, Tyrese Gibson and Tyler Perry)

Johnson H. Johnson-(January 19, 1918 – August 8, 2005) was an American businessman and publisher. He was the founder of the Johnson Publishing Company. In 1982, he became the first African American to appear on the Forbes 400. He conceived of a publication patterned after Reader's Digest. He used his mother’s furniture for $500 as collateral to start his first magazine publication edition  Negro Digest in 1942. Within six months circulation had reached 50,000. This publication covered African-American history, literature, arts, and cultural issues. After several decades of publication its name was changed to Black World. Although Negro Digest/Black World achieved some success and at its height had a circulation of more than 100,000, it was dwarfed by Johnson's subsequent publication, Ebony, which was so popular that its initial run of 25,000 copies easily sold out. Professional historians were recruited for the magazine's staff so that the contributions of African Americans to the history of the United States could be adequately documented. In 1951, Johnson launched Tan (a "true confessions"-type magazine). In 1951, Jet, a weekly news digest, began. Later publications included African American Stars and Ebony Jr., a children's magazine. He became chairperson and chief executive officer of the Supreme Life Insurance Company. He developed a line of cosmetics, purchased three radio stations, started a book publishing company, and a television production company, and served on the board of directors of several major businesses, including the Greyhound Corporation.)

 

96. Jet *Magazine*-Jet is an American weekly marketed toward African-American readers, founded in 1951 by John H. Johnson of Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago, Illinois.[2] Initially billed as "The Weekly Negro News Magazine", Jet is notable for its role in chronicling the early days of the American Civil Rights movement from its earliest years, including coverage of the Emmett Till murder, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Johnson called his magazine Jet because, as he said in the first issue, "In the world today everything is moving along at a faster clip. There is more news and far less time to read it

 

97. National Urban League *Organization*(a nonpartisan civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of African Americans and against racial discrimination in the United States. It is the oldest and largest community-based organization of its kind in the nation. Its current President is Marc Morial. The Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes was founded in New York City on September 29, 1910 by Ruth Standish Baldwin and Dr. George Edmund Haynes, among others. It merged with the Committee for the Improvement of Industrial Conditions Among Negroes in New York (founded in New York in 1906) and the National League for the Protection of Colored Women (founded in 1905), and was renamed the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes. The mission of the Urban League movement is "to enable African Americans to secure economic self-reliance, parity, power and civil rights."

Need for an urban league for blacks became necessary due to the scores of African Americans who left the rural South to pursue employment opportunities in Northern cities. Upon their arrival in the North, many blacks encountered discrimination barriers that excluded them from upward mobility. The NUL not only aimed to dismantle these barriers but made economic empowerment of blacks a major part of its mission.)

98. NABHOOD-*Hotel Organization* (since 1997-National Association Of Black Hotel Owners, Operators, and Developers. The mission is to increase the number of African-Americans developing, managing, operating and owning hotels; increase vendor opportunities & executive level jobs for minorities, thereby creating wealth within the African-American community.)

 

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99. Slavery in Africa *Slavery*(for centuries Africans practiced what is called slavery but was actually closer aligned to indentured servitude. Many people today lay claim to saying Africans also enslaved each other. This is only partly true in the part being the understanding of slavery in America versus the type of slavery practiced in Africa. Debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, and criminal slavery were all practiced in various parts of Africa. There were no practices of slavery in Africa for people that were completely innocent. All the slaves were able to have rights and work there way out of slavery and either return to their lands (after a debt was paid) or become a citizen in the village. Slaves were not institutionalized by a system of books, colleges and religion that taught the slave masters and the citizens of that village to hate or consider the slaves less than a human. Slaves were not mutilated to the point of death for entertainment purposes or science experiments and nor were generations of slaves born into slavery. Slaves were also not forced to learn different languages or be killed for trying to educate themselves. Simply put, in Africa, slaves were prisoners of war or criminals that were caught. The exception to this are the Jews in Egypt. This circumstance, I might not be qualified to speak on. With respect to Jewish history in the Bible and Torah it is stated that the Egyptians held the jews as slaves. Moses eventually freed them. To what degree the jews could become citizens or have rights I am not clear on. Opposite to this teaching wikipedia states: Although the Book of Genesis and Book of Exodus describe a period of Hebrew servitude in ancient Egypt, more than a century of archaeological research has discovered nothing which could support its narrative elements— the four centuries sojourn in Egypt, the escape of well over a million Israelites from the Delta, or the three months journey through the wilderness to Sinai. The Egyptian records themselves have no mention of anything recorded in Exodus, the wilderness of the southern Sinai peninsula shows no traces of a mass-migration such as Exodus describes, and virtually all the place-names mentioned, including Goshen (the area within Egypt where the Israelites supposedly lived), the store-cities of Pithom and Rameses, the site of the crossing of the Red Sea (or, more commonly among modern Biblical scholars, the Sea of Reeds), and even Mt Sinai itself, have resisted identification. Scholars who hold the Exodus to represent historical truth concede that the most the evidence can suggest is plausibility. This highly contradicts much of what I learned in school and the teachings of who constructed the pyramids. On this topic I can and will only state both sides of what is said. As for slavery in Africa, this has been the history of slavery in Africa (which was not predicated on enslaving a people for life or religion). No form of slavery is right, but it is important (even in wrongs) to recognize that one is not the same as another. Prisoners in America work in prison and if they practice good behavior they can have their sentences reduced and be re-instituted back into society legally. This is not considered slavery.

100. National Action Network- *Organization*(currently has over forty active chapters nationwide.Founded in 1991 by Reverend Al Sharpton, NAN works within the spirit and tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to promote a modern civil rights agenda that includes the fight for one standard of justice, decency and equal opportunities for all people regardless of race, religion, nationality or gender.The National Action Network is widely credited with drawing national attention to such critical issues as racial profiling, police brutality, and the US Naval bombing exercises on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. Notably, the organization was prominently involved with the police brutality cases of Amadou Diallo (New York), Abner Louima (New York) and Patrick Dorismond (New York). In 2000, the organization launched the Truth Hamer Voter Registration and Education Initiative. The Truth Hamer Initiative set out to register one million women to vote, targeting populations in traditionally overlooked areas, such as public housing developments, transitional housing communities and rural areas. In 2011, Walgreens announced they would be ending their relationship with Express Scripts, a prescription drug program serving mostly poor individuals that gave them discounted prescriptions.[4] This would have resulted in low-income individuals paying up to 30 percent more for their prescriptions. A coalition of minority groups, led by Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, sent letters urging Gregory Wasson, CEO of Walgreens, to reconsider. Groups sending letters were National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, the Congress of Racial Equality, Hispanic Leadership Fund, and others.

101. Harlem Renaissance *1st Artistic Freedom period by free Black Artists*(Period in time from 1920-1940 in which blacks around the country migrated to Harlem New York exercised their rights to practice art design, music, dance, engage in entrepreneurial businesses with a level of sophistication and elegance as the goal that had never in America been seen before from African Americans. Characterizing the Harlem Renaissance was an overt racial pride that came to be represented in the idea of the New Negro, who through intellect and production of literature, art, and music could challenge the pervading racism and stereotypes to promote progressive or socialist politics, and racial and social integration. The creation of art and literature would serve to "uplift" the race. It was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke. In 1910, a large block along 135th Street and Fifth Avenue was bought by various African-American realtors and a church group. Many more African–Americans arrived during the First World War. People and places that sprung from the renaissance: Apollo Theater, Cotton Club, Harlem Globetrotters, Harlem Opera House, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonious Monk, Josephine Banker, Bojangles, Langhston Hughes, Jessie Fauset, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Nugent, Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, WEB Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Walter Francis White, Arthur Schomburg, Charlotte Mason, Carl Van Vechten, Fannie Hurst, Louise Bryant, Walter Jekyll, Annie Nathan Meyer, Amy Joe and Arthur Spingam, Marcus Garvey)

 

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102. Over 30 black colleges and universities *Black Universities*(Oakwood University, Tuskegee Univ., Miles College, Univ. of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Howard University, Bethune Cookman Univ, Florida A&M Univ, Spelman, Morehouse, Morris Brown, Fort Valley State Univ, Albany State Univ, Clark Atlanta Univ, Grambling, Xavier Univ., Langston Univ, Benedict College, Fisk Univ, Univ.of the Virgin Islands, Hampton Univ, Alabama A&M, Alabama State University, Delaware State Univ, Denmark Technical College, Jackson State Univ, Jarvis Christian College, Johnson C. Smith Univ, Morehouse School of Medicine, St. Augustine's College, Savannah State Univ, South Carolina State Univ, Talladega College, The University of Texas at El Paso)

103. Gas masks *Invention*-(Garrett Morgan)

104. *Inventions*The following inventions also are patented by other people too, as some of the inventions below are inventions or improvements made on existing patents; nonetheless they are contributions:

Refrigerator( John Standard and Frederick Jones. Jones is most famous for inventing an automatic refrigeration system in 1935 for long haul trucks and railroad cars. One of the most prolific Black inventors ever, Jones patented more than 60 inventions in his lifetime.)

Transitioning silent movies into movies with sound- (Frederick Jones also invented a self-starting gas engine and a series of devices for movie projectors: adapting silent movie projectors for talking films, and developing box office equipment that delivered tickets and gave change. • U.S. Patent 2,337,164 was issued on December 21, 1943 – Means for automatically stopping and starting gas engines.

• U.S. Patent 2,376,968 was issued on May 29, 1945 – Two-cycle gas engine.

• U.S. Patent 2,417,253 was issued on March 11, 1947 – Two-cycle gas engine.U.S. Patent 2,475,841 was issued on July 12, 1949 – Automatic refrigeration system for long-haul trucks. • U.S. Patent 2,475,842 was issued on July 12, 1949 – Starter generator.

• U.S. Patent 2,475,843 was issued on July 12, 1949 – Means operated by a starter generator for cooling a gas engine.

• U.S. Patent 2,477,377 was issued on July 26, 1949 – Means for thermostatically operating gas engines.

• U.S. Patent 2,504,841 was issued on April 18, 1950 – Rotary compressor.

• U.S. Patent 2,509,099 was issued on May 23, 1950 – System for controlling operation of refrigeration units.

• 159209 U.S. Patent D 159,209 was issued on July 4, 1950 – Design for air conditioning unit.

• U.S. Patent 2,523,273 was issued on September 26, 1950 – Engine actuated ventilating system.

• U.S. Patent 2,526,874 was issued on October 24, 1950 – Apparatus for heating or cooling atmosphere within an enclosure.

• U.S. Patent 2,535,682 was issued on December 26, 1950 – Prefabricated refrigerator construction.

• U.S. Patent 2,581,956 was issued on January 8, 1952 – Refrigeration control device.)

Alexander Mills- elevator

Richard Spikes- gear shifts in cars

Electric Trolley- Elbert Robinson

Street Sweeper-Charles Brooks

Post Marking-William Barry

Electric Lamp- Michael Harvey and Granville T.Woods

Shoe Lasting machine- jan e. matzelinger

Air conditioner- Frederick Jones (like some of the other inventions, various forms of air conditioning had been around since the Han Dynasty. •As for Frederick's contribution: 132182 U.S. Patent D 132,182 was issued on April 28, 1943 – Design for air conditioning unit.

• U.S. Patent 2,336,735 was issued on December 14, 1943 – Removable cooling units for compartments.

 

[luke1733]

105. Nation of Islam- (founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930. The N.O.I. teaches that W. Fard Muhammad was both the "Messiah" of Judaism and the Mahdi of Islam. Within one year, he had approximately 25,000

followers The Nation of Islam's stated goals are to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African Americans in the United States and all of humanity.[ Its critics accuse it of being black supremacist  and

anti-Semitic along with ranking high in organized hate.]After Fard's disappearance in June 1934, the Nation of Islam

was led by Elijah Muhammad, who established places of worship - called Temples - a school named Muhammad

University of Islam, businesses, farms and real estate holdings in the United States and abroad. Elijah Muhammad slowly built up the membership of his movement through recruitment in the postwar decades. His program called for

the establishment of a separate nation for black Americans and  the adoption of a religion based on the worship of Allah

and on the belief that blacks were his chosen people. In 1977, Louis Farrakhan rejected Warith Deen Mohammed's leadership and re-established the Nation of Islam on the

original model. Its official newspaper is The Final Call.The Nation of Islam does not publish its membership numbers; in 2007, the core membership was estimated between 20,000 and 50,000, but their following was believed to be larger.[Central to this doctrine, NOI theology asserts that black people’s experience of slavery was the fulfillment of Bible prophecy and therefore, black people are the seed of

Abraham referred to in the Bible, in Genesis 15:13–14:]And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. —King James Version. This movement has been extremely pivotal in providing

economic opportunities and teachings of spirituality to black prisoners. They have maintained a strict private militia and provide body guard coverage for various celebrities (Michael Jackson). 

 

 

 106. Malcolm X *Philosopher/Soldier/Preacher/Activist*- (He has been called one of the greatest and most

influential African Americans in history. The main leader

during the Civil Rights Movement that attracted millions of

blacks to follow him and his movement for black sovereignty

within the United States. He is credited with raising the

self-esteem of black Americans and reconnecting them with

their African heritage.[235] He is largely responsible for

the spread of Islam in the black community in the United

States. As a Human Rights ActivistHis mission was for blacks

to govern themselves and quit trying to integrate with white

America and instead demand of America to allow black tax

dollars to go to supporting black communities and a black

nation separated from white America. He organized many

marches under the leadership of the Nation of Islam and

sparked fear throughout America due to the fact that his

movement took up arms and believed in going to war with the

system that was using weapons and

  military might to oppress blacks. He was the equivalent of

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr but does not get the

publicity for his movements and philosophy due to the threat

he bolstered on the racist system of the US in the 1950’s

and 1960’s. He labeled Martin Luther King, Jr. a "chump"

and other civil rights leaders "stooges" of the white

establishment.  He called the 1963 March on Washington

"the farce on Washington", and said he did not know why so

many black people were excited about a demonstration "run by

whites in front of a statue of a president who has been dead

for a hundred years and who didn't like us when he was

alive".He was known for his lawyers style of rhetoric and

accusations against America for the crimes it committed

against African Americans; often times delivering speeches

with bulletpoints and clear and concise solutions offered by

his organization of the NOI on how to do for self without

ever depending on America to in any way

  aid you. Evidence of his movement were seen

internationally. In September 1960, Fidel Castro came to New

York to attend the United Nations General Assembly. Malcolm

X was part of a welcoming committee of Harlem community

leaders that met publicly with Castro, who was sufficiently

impressed with Malcolm X to suggest a private meeting. After

two hours of talking, Castro invited Malcolm X to visit

Cuba.During the General Assembly session, Malcolm X was

invited to the official functions of several African

nations, where he met such leaders as Gamal Abdel Nasser of

Egypt, Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, and Kenneth Kaunda of

the Zambian African National Congress.

He was largely credited with the NOI group's dramatic

increase in membership between the early 1950s and early

1960s (from 500 to 25,000 by one estimate;[100] from 1,200

to 50,000 or 75,000 by another).[

Before he was assassinated he renounced the NOI, Elijah

Muhammad and its teachings that were known to be

anti-semitic and hate speech.  He continued to believe

in black sovereignty but no longer believed or preached hate

toward the white race.

 

[luke1733]

107. Benjamin Banneker *Inventor* (1731-1806 Created the first clock built

in the US.  Until this time, clocks were either made in

Europe or the European parts of clocks were finished and

assembled in what is now the U.S.

What is amazing is that Banneker had only seen 2 other

clocks prior to making his own.   In 1792 he

developed an almanac predicting weather and seasonal changes

and included tips on planting crops and medical

remedies.  A free African American scientist, surveyor,

almanac author and farmer. He also predicted solar eclipses

based on his studies of astronomy, mathematics and using

telescopes.

In 1753 at the age of 22, Banneker completed a wooden clock

that struck on the hour. He appears to have modeled his

clock from a borrowed pocket watch by carving each piece to

scale. The clock continued to work until Banneker's death.

Banneker's knowledge of astronomy helped him author a

commercially successful series of almanacs. He corresponded

with Thomas Jefferson, drafter of the United States

Declaration of Independence, on the topics of slavery and

racial equality.

108. Medgar Evers *Community Organizer* (1925-1963he organized voter-registration

efforts, demonstrations, and economic boycotts of companies

that practiced discrimination. He also worked to investigate

crimes perpetrated against blacks. In May 1954, the U.S.

Supreme Court handed down its decision in the famous Brown

v. Board of Education case. This decision legally ended

segregation of schools, but it took many years for it to be

fully implemented.

Evers called for a new investigation to the 1955 lynching of

Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy who had

allegedly been killed for talking to a white woman.

Prince Hall (1735-the founder of Prince Hall Masonry. The

First Black Masonry in the US. Hall encouraged enslaved and

freed blacks to serve the American colonial military. He

believed that if blacks were involved in the founding of the

new nation, it would aid in the attainment of freedom for

all blacks. He later recounted his belief after seeing the

results of black soldiers in the military. In January 1773,

Prince Hall and seventy three other African-American

delegates presented an emigration plea to the Massachusetts

Senate asking for the US to allow blacks to return back to

Africa.  The US denied his plea and stated it would not

let blacks return to Africa. The rest of his story can be

found under the Black Masons number. )

109. Black Liberation Army*Militant Organization*- an underground, black nationalist militant organization that operated in the United States from 1970 to 1981. Composed largely of former Black Panthers (BPP), the organization's program was one of "armed struggle", and its stated goal was to "take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States."[1] The BLA carried out a series of bombings, murders, robberies (what participants termed "expropriations"), and prison breaks.