Stories of Real People that Will Inspire You and Your Students

“You read the life story of a famous person and then students PREDICT what happens to that person.

Ready	Person	Year	Importance
	Jack Johnson	1910	First African American World Heavyweight Champion in boxing
	W.E.B. Du Bois	1910	Founder of the NAACP
	Ida B. Wells	1910	Founder of the NAACP. Crusader against lynching
	Mary Church Terrell	1910	Founder of the NAACP. Joined Alice Paul in the struggle for women’s suffrage.
	George Washington Carver	1916	Botanist. Inducted into the Royal Society of Arts in England.
	Claude McKay	1919	“If we must die,” (1919 during Red Summer), Home to Harlem (1928)
	Madame C.J. Walker	1919	Businesswoman
	Marcus Garvey	1920	UNIA and the “Back to Africa” movement
	Langston Hughes	1921	Poet. Author of The Negro Speaks of Rivers
	James Weldon Johnson	1922	Author of “Life Every Voice and Sing” (The Negro National Anthem).
	Bessie Smith	1923	Blues singer. “Queen of the Blues.”
	Jean Toomer	1923	Author of Cane
	Countee Cullen	1925	Color
	Carter G. Woodson	1926	Historian; founder of Black History Month
	Satchel Paige	1929	Baseball star confined to the Negro leagues. Sets the single season strikeout record.
	Louis Armstrong	1929	Jazz musician and singer. From Chicago to New York City. At the Cotton Club?
	The Scottsboro Boys	1931	Nine black youth, ranging in age from 13 to 19, were accused of raping two white women
	Billie Holiday	1933	One of the greatest female jazz vocalists.
	Mary McLeod Bethune	1935	Part of FDR’s “Black Cabinet.”
	Jesse owens	1936	Track star. Won four gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Berlin - in Nazi Germany.
	Zora Neale Hurston	1937	Author, Their Eyes Were Watching God
	Joe Louis	1938	World Heavyweight Champion in boxing.
	Hattie McDaniel	1939	First African American to win Academy Award, Best Supporting Actress Oscar, Gone With the Wind
	Marian Anderson	1939	Opera singer. Sang on Easter Sunday, 1939 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in D.C.
	Dr. Charles Drew	1940	Set up the first blood bank.
	Richard Wright	1940	Author, Native Son
	Dorie Miller	1941	As a result of Pearl Harbor, he was the first African American to be awarded Navy Cross.
	The Tuskegee Airmen	1941	First African American pilots in the U.S. Air Force, flew with distinction during World War II.
	A. Philip Randolph	1941	March on Washington. Labor leader.
	Duke Ellington	1943	Composer, pianist, and band leader and influential in jazz. Black, Brown and Beige at Carnegie Hall.
	Paul Robeson	1943	Played in Shakespeare’s play, Othello, on Broadway
	Lena Horne	1943	Jazz singer. Sang “Stormy Weather.”
	Katherine Dunham	1945	Katherine Dunham School of Dance.
	Charlie Parker	1945	Jazz saxophonist and composer. The greatest saxophonist of all time.
	Jackie Robinson	1947	Brooklyn Dodgers; ended 80 years of segregation in baseball
	John Hope Franklin	1947	Historian. Author, From Slavery to Freedom
	Gordon Parks	1948	Photographer for Life magazine.
	Miles Davis	1949	Great jazz musician. Played the trumpet.
	Gwendolyn Brooks	1950	Author of Annie Allen, first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize (for poetry).
	Ralph Ellison	1952	Author, The Invisible Man
	Dorothy Dandridge	1954	Carmen Jones. First African American nominated for Best Actress.
	Benjamin O. Davis	1954	First African-American general in the U.S.
	Linda Brown	1954	Brown v. Board of Education
	Thurgood Marshall	1954	NAACP. Brown v. Board of Education.
	Emmet Till	1955	Murdered in Mississippi
	Roy Wilkins	1955	Executive Director of the NAACP. Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1967.
	Rosa Parks	1955	Sparked the Montgomery bus boycott
	Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.	1955	SCLC. Nobel Peace Prize.
	Charles Mingus	1956	Great jazz composer. Pithecanthropus Erectus
	Thelonius Monk	1956	Great jazz pianist and composer.
	Daisy Bates	1957	Head of the Arkansas NAACP, she organized the integration of Little Rock High School.
	Elizabeth Eckford	1957	“Little Rock Nine”
	Althea Gibson	1957	Tennis star. Won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in both 1957 and 1958.
	Alvin Ailey	1958	Founder of the American Dance Theater.
	Lorraine Hansberry	1959	“A Raisin in the Sun” was the first Broadway play written by an African-American woman.
	John Coltrane	1960	Great jazz saxophonist and composer. “Giant Steps” came out in 1960.
	The Greensboro Four	1960	Launched the sit-in movement by a sit-in to integrate a Woolworth lunch counter, Greensboro, NC
	Julian Bond	1960	One of the founders of SNCC; 1965 elected to the Georgia state legislature
	James Farmer	1961	National Director of CORE, which conducted the “Freedom Rides”.
	Harry Belafonte	1961	First African-American man to win an Emmy, he financed Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement
	James Meredith	1962	First black student at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss)
	Medgar Evers	1963	Head of the Mississippi NAACP. Murdered for registering voters.
	Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth	1963	Founder of the SCLC. Led the confrontation with “Bull Connor” in Birmingham.
	The Children’s Crusade	1963	In Birmingham, hundreds of children marched and 600 were put in jail.
	Four Little Girls	1963	16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham
	Bayard Rustin	1963	Helped organize the March on Washington, at which Dr. King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech
	James Baldwin	1963	Author of The Fire Next Time
	Sidney Poitier	1963	The first black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor
	Andrew Young	1964	Head of the SCLC and close aide to Dr. King; became Mayor of Atlanta.
	Andrew Goodman	1964	Murdered during Mississippi Freedom Summer.
	Michael Schwerner	1964	Murdered during Mississippi Freedom Summer.
	James Chaney	1964	Murdered during Mississippi Freedom Summer.
	Ella Baker	1964	Founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
	Fannie Lou Hamer	1964	Protested at the national convention of the Democratic Party: “Is this America?”
	Nina Simone	1964	Jazz musician and singer
	Muhammad Ali	1964	Fought Sonny Liston. Befriended Malcolm X. Joined the Nation of Islam.
	Hosea Williams	1965	“Bloody Sunday” in Selma
	John Lewis	1965	“Bloody Sunday” in Selma
	Viola Liuzzo	1965	A white woman murdered near Selma
	Claude Brown	1965	Author of Manchild in the Promised Land
	Edward Brooke	1966	First African-American Senator since Reconstruction (represented Massachusetts)
	Rev. Jesse Jackson	1967	Founder of Operation Breadbasket in Chicago
	Carl Stokes	1967	First black mayor of a major city (Cleveland)
	Stokely Carmichael	1966	Chairman of SNCC; called for “Black Power”
	Malcolm X	1964	Black nationalist. Nation of Islam.
	Huey Newton	1966	Founder of the Black Panthers
	Bobby Seale	1966	Founder of the Black Panthers; 1968 “The Chicago Eight” riot at the Dem National Convention
	H. Rap Brown	1968	Minister of Justice, the Black Panthers
	The Orangeburg Three	1968	Shot by police while they protesting against a segregated bowling alley.
	Shirley Chisholm	1968	First African American woman elected to Congress
	Eldridge Cleaver	1968	Author of Soul on Ice
	Anne Moody	1968	Author of Coming of Age in Mississippi
	Coretta Scott King	1968	Convinced Congress to establish Martin Luther King Day as a federal holiday.
	Maya Angelou	1969	Author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
	James Van Der Zee	1969	Photographer