Most Influential African-Americans
African-Americans
Alvin Ailey
Alvin Ailey Jr. was an American dancer, director, choreographer, and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He created AAADT and its affiliated Alvin Ailey American Dance Center as havens for nurturing Black artists and expressing the universality of the African-American experience through dance
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Louise Franklin was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Referred to as the “Queen of Soul”, she has twice been placed ninth in Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Artists of All Time”. With global sales of over 75 million records, Franklin is one of the world’s best-selling music artists.
August Wilson
August Wilson was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the “theater’s poet of Black America”. He is best known for a series of ten plays, collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle, which chronicle the experiences and heritage of the African-American community in the 20th century.
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American former politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African-American president of the United States.
Benjamin O. Davis Sr.
Benjamin Oliver Davis Sr. was a United States Army general, and the first African-American to rise to the rank of brigadier general.
Booker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States.
Dr. Charles Drew
Charles Richard Drew, the African American surgeon and researcher who organized America’s first large-scale blood bank and trained a generation of black physicians at Howard University
Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington was the greatest jazz composer and bandleader of his time. One of the originators of big-band jazz, he led his band for more than 50 years and composed thousands of scores.
Ella Baker
Ella Josephine Baker was an African-American civil rights and human rights activist.
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman.
George Washington Carver
George Washington Carver was an American agricultural scientist and inventor who promoted alternative crops to cotton and methods to prevent soil depletion. Carver is best known for his research into alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts, soybeans, and sweet potatoes.
Gordon Parks
Gordon Parks was one of the most groundbreaking figures in 20th century photography. His photojournalism during the 1940s to the 1970s reveals important aspects of American culture, and he became known for focusing on issues of civil rights, poverty, race relations and urban life.
Hank Aaron
Henry Louis Aaron, nicknamed “Hammer” or “Hammerin’ Hank”, was an American professional baseball right fielder who played 23 seasons in Major League Baseball, from 1954 through 1976.
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman was enslaved, escaped, and helped others gain their freedom as a “conductor” of the Underground Railroad.
Henrietta Lacks
Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman whose cancer cells are the source of the HeLa cell line, the first immortalized human cell line and one of the most important cell lines in medical research.
Ida B. Wells
Ida Bell Wells was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Jackie Robinson
The first African-American player in the 20th century to take the field in the American or National league
James Baldwin
James Arthur Baldwin was an American writer. He garnered acclaim for his work across several mediums, including essays, novels, plays, and poems.
Jay Z
Shawn Corey Carter, known professionally as Jay-Z, is an American rapper, record producer, entrepreneur, and founder of Manhattan-based conglomerate talent and entertainment agency Roc Nation.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Basquiat was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement.
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson is an American political activist, Baptist minister, and politician. In 1965 he participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches organized by James Bevel, King and other civil rights leaders in Alabama.
Jesse Owens
James Cleveland “Jesse” Owens was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games.
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, widely regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century.
Katherine Johnson
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.
Madam C.J. Walker
Madam Charles Joseph Walker was an African American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and political and social activist. She is recorded as the first female self-made millionaire in America in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Ira Aldridge
Ira Frederick Aldridge was an American-born British actor, playwright, and theatre manager, known for his portrayal of Shakespearean characters.
Malcolm X
Malcolm X was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement.