Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni, Jr. is a black poet and activist, who has won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal, the NAACP Image Award, and a Grammy Award for her poetry album, The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection; 2002.

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George Irving Shirley was the 1st black tenor to perform a leading role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City; 1960.

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Clara McBride Hale was a black humanitarian who founded the Hale House Center, a home for unwanted children and children who were born addicted to drugs; 1969.

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Lena Horne was a black singer, dancer, actress who, in 1941, sang at Cafe Society during World War II and  refused to perform for segregated audiences.

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Unita Blackwell 1st black woman mayor in Mississippi, 1976.

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The Supremes, a back female singing group, became Motown’s most successful act and the best charting group in U.S. history as well as the world’s best-selling girl groups of all times; 1959.

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Dr. Walter Turnbull was a black musician and the founder of the Boys Choir of Harlem; 1968.

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Dinah Washington, black singer and pianist, was cited as “the most popular black female recording artist of the ’50s” and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

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Robert Sengstacke Abbott, a black newspaper publisher and editor, founded The Chicago Defender which grew to have the highest circulation of any black-owned newspaper in the country; 1905.

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Yvonne Brathwaite Burke first black woman ever elected to Congress from CA, 1972.

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