- There some African-American people from black history you may not know about.
- During the civil rights movement, Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Hosea Williams all worked closely with Martin Luther King, Jr. to help organize the black community.
- Ethel Waters was the first black woman to have her own TV show, and Jane Bolin was the first black woman to become a US judge.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Malcolm X are some of the most famous names in American history.
However, there are other African Americans who shaped the course of history — but whom you might not know. From the civil rights movement to the Stonewall riots, here are some African-American people you ought to know.
At just 15 years old, Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on the bus and was arrested — just months before Rosa Parks became famous for doing the same.
On March 2, 1955, Claudette Colvin was on her way home from school in Montgomery, Alabama, when she was asked to give up her seat on the bus for a white woman. The 15-year-old refused and said, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right."
Colvin was then arrested and fought for the desegregation of the bus system as one of the plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle.
"I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other, saying, 'Sit down girl!' I was glued to my seat," Colvin told Newsweek after the bus incident.
Bessie Coleman was the first African-American woman to get a pilot's license and the first to make a public flight.
Since no American flight schools would welcome women, Bessie Coleman taught herself French and studied at the Caudron Brothers' School of Aviation in France in 1922. In just seven months, Coleman became the first black woman to earn a pilot's license. That same year, she performed a public fight — the first black woman to do so in history.
Coleman continued flying, becoming an expert in stunt flying and aerial tricks.
Mildred Loving helped end the ban on interracial marriage when she married her white husband, Richard Loving.
In June 1958, Mildred, who was both black and Native American, and Richard Loving, a white man, married, defying Virginia's Racial Integrity Acts. They were then told to leave the state or face prison time, causing them to live in exile for five years while raising three children.
Their story eventually led to the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia. The court decided the Racial Integrity Act was unconstitutional, which led to the ban of similar laws in other states.
On the 40th anniversary of her marriage, Mildred said, "The older generation's fears and prejudices have given way, and today's young people realize that if someone loves someone, they have a right to marry."
Robert Sengstacke Abbott created an extremely popular African-American newspaper, making him one of the first black millionaires.
In 1905, Robert Sengstacke Abbott published the first Chicago Defender, which eventually became the most popular newspaper for black people in the country. At one point, it was called the"world's greatest weekly."
The paper's greatest achievement was supporting the Great Migration by publishing job listings and train schedules to encourage black people to move north. It was a success in that 110,000 people migrated to Chicago and most of them were black.
The popularity of the newspaper made Sengstacke Abbott one of the first African-American self-made millionaires.
Madam CJ Walker was America's first female self-made millionaire.
Madam CJ Walker was the first child in her family to be born free. But she was orphaned when both her parents died when she was 7 years old. Once grown, she worked in the cotton fields and then in barbershops.
In the 1890s, Walker lost most of her hair due to a scalp disorder. This prompted her to create hair products for African Americans. Walker traveled around the South giving tutorials on how to use her products in the early 1900s. This became known as the "Walker Method. "
Eventually, the hair products took off, making Walker a millionaire.
Ella Baker was a civil rights activist who worked alongside Martin Luther King, Jr.
Ella Baker started her career in activism in the 1930s when she joined the NAACP, and she helped the organization integrate schools and make black children's lives better. In 1957, she helped form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which focused on reforming the South during the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King, Jr., was the organization's president, while Baker was its director.
After that, she helped create the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960, which helped young civil rights activists to organize.
Hosea Williams helped Martin Luther King, Jr. run the Christian Leadership Conference and became known as a powerful civil rights activist.
After being severely beaten for drinking at a whites-only water fountain, Hosea Williams joined the NAACP and worked his way up. In 1963, he joined forces with Martin Luther King, Jr., by traveling around the South, teaching people about civil disobedience. At Bloody Sunday in 1965, he was beaten again during the first Selma to Montgomery march. After that, Williams entered local politics.
Charles Hamilton Houston was a famous lawyer who was nicknamed "The Man Who Killed Jim Crow."
Between 1930 and 1954, Charles Hamilton Houston had a hand in nearly every major civil rights case that was brought to the Supreme Court. One by one, he planned to dismantle the system of Jim Crow laws.
"This fight for equality of educational opportunity (was) not an isolated struggle. All our struggles must tie in together and support one another. ... We must remain on the alert and push the struggle farther with all our might," Houston once said.
Fannie Lou Hamer was known as a voting and women's rights activist.
Fannie Lou Hamer began her career as an activist in the early '60s when she was first denied the right to vote because of literacy tests, which prevented black people from voting. In 1963, she sat in a whites-only bus station and was beaten, leaving her with life-long injuries including a blood clot in her eye.
She entered the national spotlight when she co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which fought the local democrats on voting rights. She also organized Freedom Summer, which was an event that brought students of all races together to help African-American students in the South register to vote.
Hamer was known for her eloquent and powerful speeches. Her most famous line, however, is, "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."
Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman elected to Congress.
After years of working in education and participating in local civil rights organizations, Shirley Chisholm ran and won a seat in the New York state legislature in 1964. Four years later, she was voted into Congress, becoming the first black woman to do so. In Congress, she was known as "Fighting Shirley," as she brought in several pieces of legislation that focused on black rights and women's rights.
Chisholm eventually ran for president in 1972, but she was barred from most debates and public events. She did not earn the Democratic nomination, but she has been remembered as the first woman and the first African American to seek the presidency.
Bayard Rustin organized the famous March on Washington that prompted Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
Although most people associate the March on Washington with Martin Luther King, Jr., Bayard Rustin is the person who actually organized the massive event. In fact, Rustin is the one who taught Dr. King about Gandhi's belief in non-violence and civil disobedience.
Rustin was also an openly gay man, so he often spoke about the importance of fighting for LGBTQ rights.
Ethel Waters was the first African American to star in her own TV show.
In the 1920s, Ethel Waters made a name for herself, singing the blues in hit Broadway musicals like "Africana,""At Home Abroad," and "Cabin in the Sky." In 1939, she starred in her own TV show called "The Ethel Waters Show," becoming the first black entertainer to do so. She made history again in 1962 when she became the first African-American woman to receive an Emmy nomination.
Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African-American writer to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Gwendolyn Brooks is best known for her poems "A Street in Bronzeville" and "Annie Allen," for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950. Her work expertly dove into the world of racial tensions and black identity. One critic said Brooks' work was the perfect mixture of "academic poets of her generation in the 1940s and the young Black militant writers of the 1960s."
Even Langston Hughes praised the writer, saying, "The people and poems in Gwendolyn Brooks' book are alive, reaching, and very much of today."
Jane Bolin was the first black woman to attend Yale Law School and became the nation's first female African-American judge.
Jane Bolin was no stranger to making history. In 1931, she became the first African-American woman to graduate from Yale Law School. After that, she became the first African-American woman to be the assistant corporate counsel for New York City. Then in 1939, Bolin became the first African-American woman in the US to be sworn in as a judge.
For the next four decades, Bolin worked in the Family Court and became an advocate for children and families.
Marsha P. Johnson, a black, transgender woman, was an important figure in the gay rights movement.
Although Marsha P. Johnson never officially identified as transgender, she is considered a transgender pioneer. As a drag performer, a sex worker, and a self-identified transvestite, Johnson played a major role in the historic Stonewall riots in 1969 that jump-started the gay liberation movement.
"We were ... throwing over cars and screaming in the middle of the street 'cause we were so upset 'cause they closed that place," Johnson said in an interview in 1989 about the riots.
After the riots, Johnson became a leader in the community and used the power to open Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, which helped transgender youth.
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