Ida Louise Jackson In 1926 was the first black teacher or any gender to teach in the Oakland, California Public Schools.

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Ezola Foster became the first black person of any gender to be nominated for Vice President in 2000, the Reform Party with Pat Buchanan. She was the second woman to be so nominated.

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Henrietta Lacks (HeLa) was a black woman with cervical cancer whose cells were used without her knowledge for research in 1951 when she entered the hospital and died the same year. Her family was unaware of the research until 1975. Her tombstone, dedicated in 2010 reads in part: “her immortal cells will continue to help mankind […]

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Marilyn French Hubbard is the founder and first president of the National Association of Black Women Entrepreneurs.

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NASA has redesignated its Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) Facility in Fairmont, West Virginia, as the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility, in honor of the West Virginia native and NASA “hidden figure” February 2019.

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Charlene Carruthers is the leader of the Black Youth Project 100, a Chicago-based organization made up of queer and cis gender students and activists who work to end expand rights for women and the LGBT community, in 2013.

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Selma Burke was an artist best known for her sculpture of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945 which inspired the profile found on a dime.

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May Edward Chinn was the first black woman to graduate from Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1926 and the first black woman to intern at Harlem Hospital.

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Unita Blackwell born in 1933 was the first black woman to become a mayor in Mississippi in 1976.

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Ella Hill Hutch was the first black woman elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977.

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