Influential African Americans in History

Directions: Match the number with the correct name and description. The first five people to complete will receive a prize courtesy of The City of Olivette. To be eligible, send your completed worksheet to Kiana Fleming, Communications Manager, at [email protected].

__ Ta-Nehisi Coates is an American author and journalist. Coates gained a wide readership during his time as national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he wrote about cultural, social, and political issues, particularly regarding African Americans and white supremacy.

__ Ella Baker was an essential activist during the civil rights movement. She was a field secretary and branch director for the NAACP, a key organizer for Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and was heavily involved in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). SNCC prioritized nonviolent protest, assisted in organizing the 1961 Freedom Rides, and aided in registering Black voters. The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights exists today to carry on her legacy.

__ Ernest Davis was an American football player, a halfback who won the Heisman Trophy in 1961 and was its first African-American recipient. Davis played college football for Syracuse University and was the first pick in the 1962 NFL Draft, where he was selected by the Cleveland Browns.

__ In 1986, Patricia Bath, an ophthalmologist and laser scientist, invented laserphaco—a device and technique used to remove cataracts and revive patients' eyesight. It is now used internationally.

__ Charles Richard Drew, dubbed the "Father of the Blood Bank" by the American Chemical Society, pioneered the research used to discover the effective long-term preservation of blood plasma. He also streamlined the country's blood banks, establishing methods that were used by the Red Cross. Drew's contributions saved countless of lives during World War II.

__ Katherine Johnson was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights.

__ Robert Abbott founded, edited, and published the Chicago Defender, for decades the country's dominant African American newspaper. Through the pages of the Defender, Abbott exercised an enormous influence on the rise of the black community in Chicago, Illinois, and on national African American culture.

__ Benjamin Davis Jr. was a United States Air Force general and commander of the World War II Tuskegee Airmen. He was the first African-American Brigadier general in the United States Air Force. On December 9th 1998, he was advanced to four-star general by President Bill Clinton.

__ Dorothy Dandridge was an American actress, singer, and dancer. She is one of the earliest African- American film stars to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, which was for her performance in Carmen Jones (1954). Dandridge performed as a vocalist in venues such as the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater.

__ Medgar Wiley Evers was an American civil rights activist in Mississippi, the state's field secretary for the NAACP, and a World War II veteran who had served in the United States Army. He was assassinated in 1963 at age 37.

__ Ruby Bridges probably had no idea that the bold act she committed in 1960 would set off a chain reaction leading to the integration of schools in the South. She was just six years old when she became the first African American student to attend William Frantz Elementary in Louisiana at the height of desegregation.

__ Henrietta Lacks was a 31-year-old mother of five when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Just months before her death, doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore took pieces of tissue from her cancerous tumor without her consent — in effect, stealing them. It was another instance of decades of medical apartheid and clinical practices that discriminated against blacks. Lacks’ cells — now worth billions of dollars — live in laboratories across the world. They played an important part in developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping and in vitro fertilization. The HeLa cell line has been used to develop drugs for treating herpes, leukemia, influenza and Parkinson’s disease.

__ Fred Hampton was an American activist and revolutionary socialist. He came to prominence in Chicago as chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and deputy chairman of the national BPP. In this capacity, he founded the Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots, and the Young Lords, and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. He was assassinated by the FBI in 1969 at age 21. Check out the upcoming movie on HBO Max called Judas and the Black Messiah.

__ Jesse Owens was a track-and-field athlete who set a world record in the long jump at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin—and went unrivaled for 25 years. He won four gold medals at the Olympics that year in the 100- and 200-meter dashes, along with the 100-meter relay and other events off the track. In 1976, Owens received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1990.

__ Zora Neale Hurston was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. One of her most notable works, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was turned into a film in 2005.

__ Marcus Garvey organized the first important American Black nationalist movement based in New York City's Harlem. He believed that all black people should return to their rightful homeland Africa, and was heavily involved in promoting the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) which he founded in 1914.

__ Before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, there was a brave 15-year-old who chose not to sit at the back of the bus. Claudette Colvin challenged the driver and was subsequently arrested. She was the first woman to be detained for her resistance. However, her story isn't nearly as well-known as Parks'.

__ Alvin Ailey was an acclaimed dancer and choreographer who earned global recognition for his impact on modern dance. Ailey wished to choreograph his own ballets and works that differed from the traditional pieces of the time. This inspired him to start the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1958.

__ Shirley Chisholm was an American politician, educator, and author. In 1968, she became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress, representing New York's 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In the 1972 United States presidential election, she became the first African-American candidate for a major party's nomination for President of the United States, and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

__ Annie Malone is considered to be one of the first African American women to become a millionaire. In the first three decades of the 20th century, she founded and developed a large and prominent commercial and educational enterprise centered on cosmetics for African-American women in St. Louis.

__ It's safe to say that Garret Morgan's most prominent original designs have saved thousands of lives since their invention. Take his traffic signal, which he patented in 1922. It was the first to offer a third "caution" signal, which we now know as the yellow light. And in 1912, Morgan received a patent for his "Breathing Device," which was one of the earliest versions of a gas mask.

__ Marsha P. Johnson was transwoman and activist, was at the forefront of the LGBTQ movement. In addition to being the co-founder of STAR, an organization that housed homeless queer youth, Johnson also fought for equality through the Gay Liberation Front.

__ Muddy Waters was an American blues singer-songwriter and musician who was an important figure in the post-war blues scene, and is often cited as the "father of modern Chicago blues." His style of playing has been described as "raining down Delta beatitude."

__ Hiram Rhodes Revels was an American clergyman, educator, and politician who became the first African American to serve in the U.S. Senate (1870–71), representing Mississippi during Reconstruction.

__ The West African-born poet, Phyllis Wheatley, spent most of her life enslaved, working for John Wheatley and his wife as a servant in the mid-1700s. Despite never having received a formal education, Wheatley became the first African American and third woman to publish a book of poems, entitled, Poems on Various Subjects.