20 American historical figures everyone should know

Accompanied (preceded, actually) Robert Peary to the North Pole

Civil rights organizer in the 1950s and 1960s who was never prominently credited because he was openly gay

In March, 1955 she was arrested in Montgomery, AL at the age of 15 for refusing to surrender her bus seat to a white man

Inventor, abolitionist, mathematician, astronomer, and clock-maker who helped survey the land that became Washington DC

Abolitionist, suffragette, and political activist who served as a Union spy and helped more than 70 escaped slaves reach freedom

First player to cross major league baseball’s “color line”, with the Toledo Blue Stockings in 1884

Abolitionist, preacher, former slave, educator; founded the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Philadelphia in 1794

Investigative journalist, educator, and early civil rights activist who was a co-founder of the NAACP

Civil rights activist, head of Illinois Black Panther Party, founder of the Rainbow Coalition, murdered by Chicago PD and FBI in 1969 at age 21

Established protocols for collecting, storing, and transfusing blood; led collection of blood for US troops during WW2

Born into slavery in New York; escaped with her infant child and became a leading abolitionist and advocate for women's rights

Jazz pianist who wrote thousands of original compositions and provided the soundtrack for the Harlem Renaissance; honored in song by Stevie Wonder

Real estate mogul who turned Harlem into a center of Black culture and art

Navigated from New Orleans to Illinois where he settled and for 20 years; now regarded as the founder of Chicago

Civil rights & women's rights leader; focused on issues of African American women; President of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years

Prolific playwright, novelist, and poet who was an innovator of "jazz poetry" and a leader of the Harlem Renaissance

Enslaved preacher who led a rebellion of enslaved and free Black people in Virginia in 1831

Won 4 Gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics; despite smashing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy, he was also never invited to the White House to meet the President

First African American and first Native American to hold a pilot's license, she was an inspiration to many before her death in a plane crash in 1926

Political scientist who was involved in the formation of the United Nations and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediation work in Israel