Alvin Ailey (1931-1989) was a choreographer and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Ailey School in New York City; 1958.

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Lori Lightfoot born 1962, first Black woman and first openly gay person elected mayor of Chicago on April 2nd 2019.

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Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) was a civil rights activist who helped organize the March on Washington in 1963.

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Moms Mabley (1894-1975) was billed “as the funniest woman in the world”. She was one of the first comics to come out as a lesbian in 1921.

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Bill T. Jones born 1952 is a choreographer, director, author and dancer. He is the co-founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 1983.

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Wanda Sykes born in 1964 is a comic, writer, and actress She was the featured entertainer for the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, becoming both the first Black woman and the first openly LGBT person to get the role in 2009.

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George Washington Carver (1860’s– 1943) was the first Black student at Iowa State Agricultural College in Ames, Iowa in 1891 and later was the first Black faculty member there as well. He was a scientist, inventor and professor.

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Young M.A born in 1992, is a rapper and entrepreneur from Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, NY and is also the founder of the KWEENZ Foundation. M.A. stands for “me always”.

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James Baldwin (1924 – 1987) was a novelist, playwright, and activist. His essays in Notes of a Native Son (1955), explore intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions and of of his novels, If Beale Street Could Talk, was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film in 2018.

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Lorraine Hansberry, 1930 – 1965 was the 1st Black woman to have a play performed on Broadway, A Raisin in the Sun in 1959.

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