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Ashley Bryan wrote and illustrated award-winning children’s books including “Beat the Story-Drum, Pum Pum” and Beautiful Blackbird.”Bryan began creating art as a child and went on to study art at Cooper Union. While in school, he was drafted into the U.S.

Lusia Harris was a basketball pioneer and the only woman ever drafted by the NBA.Harris played high school basketball before joining the newly established women’s team at Delta State University in 1973. She was a standout on a team that won three consecutive national championships. While she was in college, Harris was selected for the U.S.

Chris Dickerson was a bodybuilder who became the first Black man to win the Mr. America title, in 1970.Dickerson found his way to bodybuilding through an unusual route. He trained as a dancer, actor, and opera singer at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and he began lifting weights at the suggestion of a vocal instructor who said it would expand his vocal range.

Eloise Greenfield was a children’s author whose picture books told stories of Black lives and history.Greenfield published her first children’s book, “Bubbles,” in 1972, after years of rejections at a time when Black voices weren’t common in children’s literature. She went on to publish almost 50 children’s books, including prose, poetry, and biographies.

Bob Moses was a civil rights activist known for his work in the South registering Black voters in the 1960s.Moses was working as a high school teacher in New York City in 1960 when he was inspired to relocate to Mississippi to help register Black voters. He became known for his calm determination even in the face of violence – he once continued registering voters even after he was hit in the head with a knife handle, later seeking medical attention and getting nine stitches.

Gloria Richardson was a civil rights activist known for her role in intense protests in early-1960s Cambridge, Maryland.Richardson became involved in the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, becoming a leader of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC), an associate of the famed Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She worked to survey the Black residents of Cambridge and determined they were most concerned about severe inequalities in housing, jobs, and education.

Henry Parham was at U.S. Army veteran of World War II who was the last known living member of the only all-Black unit to land on the beach at Normandy on D-Day.Parham was drafted into the U.S.

Edward J. Perkins was a diplomat who became the first Black U.S.

George W. Biggs was a U.S.

Malcolm Nettingham was one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen, the group of elite Black pilots and airmen who fought in World War II.Nettingham was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1944, while the U.S.

Ola Mae Spinks was a retired librarian who led the team that organized the historic “Slave Narratives” in the U.S. Library of Congress.Raised in the historic all-Black community of Vernon, Oklahoma, Spinks settled in Detroit as an adult, where she taught first grade before becoming a middle school librarian.