The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Voting Rights Act is considered one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. 

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/voting-rights-act

Entrepreneur, philanthropist, and activist, Madam C.J. Walker rose from poverty in the South to become one of the wealthiest African American women of her time. She used her position to advocate for the advancement of black Americans and for an end to lynching.

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/madam-cj-walker

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first Black military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps (AAC), a precursor of the U.S. Air Force. Trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, they flew more than 15,000 individual sorties in Europe and North Africa during World War II. Their impressive performance earned them more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses.

https://www.tuskegee.edu/support-tu/tuskegee-airmen

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/tuskegee-airmen

Dr. King accepted the call to the pastorate of the then Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as its twentieth pastor, on May 14, 1954.

https://www.dexterkingmemorial.org/about/history/former-pastors/former-pastors-martin-luther-king-jr-1954-1960/

Barack Obama served as the 44th President of the United States. His story is the American story — values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/barack-obama/

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education was one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement, and helped establish the precedent that “separate-but-equal” education and other services were not, in fact, equal at all.

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka

Berry Gordy, Jr., (born November 28, 1929, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.), American businessman, founder of the Motown Record Corporation (1959), which became the most successful Black-owned music company in the United States. Through Motown, he developed the majority of the great rhythm-and-blues (R&B) performers of the 1960s and ’70s,

https://www.motownmuseum.org/legacy/berry-gordy/

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Both an esteemed actor and a respected humanitarian, Sidney Poitier received an Academy Award for Best Actor for Lilies of the Field (1963) Born in Miami, he grew up both in the Bahamas and the United States and became a noted actor both in such films as In the Heat of the Night (1967) and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). He has also directed nine features and remains a major inspirational figure among the creative community.

https://www.oscars.org/collection-highlights/sidney-poitier

1921 Attack on the African American district of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma 

Following World War I, Tulsa was recognized nationally for its affluent African American community known as the Greenwood District. This thriving business district and surrounding residential area was referred to as “Black Wall Street.” In June 1921, a series of events nearly destroyed the entire Greenwood are

https://www.tulsahistory.org/exhibit/1921-tulsa-race-massacre/

Born in Cairo, Georgia in 1919 to a family of sharecroppers. His mother, Mallie Robinson, single-handedly raised Jackie and her four other children. They were the only black family on their block, and the prejudice they encountered only strengthened their bond. From this humble beginning would grow the first baseball player to break Major League Baseball's color barrier that segregated the sport for more than 50 years.

https://www.jackierobinson.com

Enslaved Africans were bought and sold after traveling the Middle Passage from West Africa to North America. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, approximately 12 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic as human property. 

https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-middle-passage.htm

A former slave, Sojourner Truth became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women’s rights in the nineteenth century. Her Civil War work earned her an invitation to meet President Abraham Lincoln in 1864.

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sojourner-truth

Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who became a prominent activist, author and public speaker. He became a leader in the abolitionist movement, which sought to end the practice of slavery, before and during the Civil War. After that conflict and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, he continued to push for equality and human rights until his death in 1895.

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/frederick-douglass

Known as the “Moses of her people,” Harriet Tubman was enslaved, escaped, and helped others gain their freedom as a “conductor" of the Underground Railroad. Tubman also served as a scout, spy, guerrilla soldier, and nurse for the Union Army during the Civil War. She is considered the first African American woman to serve in the military. 

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/harriet-tubman

The United States’ 16th President in 1861, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/abraham-lincoln/

Founder and First President of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute

(now Tuskegee University). Educator and reformer, first president and principal developer of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University), and the most influential spokesman for Black Americans between 1895 and 1915.

https://www.tuskegee.edu/discover-tu/tu-presidents/booker-t-washington

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American civil rights activist, leader, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, educator, historian, writer, editor, poet, and scholar. He was born and raised in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He had two children with his wife, Nina Gomer. He became a naturalized citizen of Ghana in 1963 at the age of 95 – the year of his death.

https://www.naacp.org/naacp-history-w-e-b-dubois/

Born on a farm near Mayesville, South Carolina in 1875, Mary McLeod Bethune, the 15th child of former slaves, rose from humble beginnings to become a world-renowned educator, civil and human rights leader, champion for women and young people, and an advisor to five U.S. presidents.  

https://www.cookman.edu/about_BCU/history/our_founder.html

At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, African American track star Jesse Owens wins his fourth gold medal of the Games in the 4×100-meter relay. His relay team set a new world record of 39.8 seconds, which held for 20 years. In their strong showing in track-and-field events at the XIth Olympiad, Jesse Owens and other African American athletes struck a propaganda blow against Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, who planned to use the Berlin Games as a showcase of supposed Aryan superiority.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/owens-wins-4th-gold-medal

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of going to the back of the bus, which was designated for African Americans, she sat in the front. When the bus started to fill up with white passengers, the bus driver asked Parks to move. She refused. Her resistance set in motion one of the largest social movements in history, the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/rosa-parks

Thurgood Marshall was an influential leader of the civil rights movement. He also had a profound contribution to the NAACP and his legacy lives on in the pursuit of racial justice. 

https://www.naacpldf.org/about-us/history/thurgood-marshall/

Representative John Lewis was among the 13 original Freedom Riders, who encountered violence and resistance as they rode buses across the South, challenging the nation’s segregation laws.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/us/politics/freedom-riders-john-lewis-work.html

A civil rights campaigner and field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) whose murder in 1963 prompted President John F. Kennedy to ask Congress for a comprehensive civil rights bill. Evers became the first martyr to the 1960s civil rights movement, and his death was a turning point for many in the struggle for equality, infusing other civil rights leaders with renewed determination to continue their struggle despite the violent threats being made against them. In the wake of Evers’s assassination, a new civil rights motto was born—”After Medgar, no more fear.”

https://www.mec.cuny.edu/history/life-of-medgar-evers/