Featuring Information on Influential Black Figures in History

from the @SaintsBHM2022 Instagram

UVA’S MEMORIAL TO ENSLAVED LABORERS

The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers is a memorial in honor of the 4-5,000 enslaved people who lived and worked at UVA at any point between 1817 and 1865. The memorial includes 4,000 memory marks in their honor.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, planetary scientist, author, and science communicator. Tyson studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. From 1991 to 1994, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University.

Tyson’s professional research interests include star formation, exploding stars, dwarf galaxies, and the structure of the Milky Way. Like his friend Carl Sagan, Dr. Tyson has played an important role in popularizing astrophysical concepts and discoveries.

He is most famous for popularizing science with books such as The Pluto Files (2009) and through hosting his series about science, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014).

KEHINDE WILEY

Kehinde Wiley is an American portrait painter based in New York City known for his highly naturalistic paintings of Black people, frequently referencing the work of the Old Masters. He was the first Black artist to paint the official portrait of a President of the United States (Barack Obama- 2017).

Wiley’s portrait paintings pioneered the use of historical Western art conventions to portray BIPOC, showing them to be as worthy as they already were of appearing in galleries and museums. By shifting the subjects of classical portraiture, Wiley’s work has shifted the limited labels of who can feel welcome within art institutions. He says, “When I have exhibitions, the people who don’t belong to the typical museum demographic show up. People view themselves within the rubric of possibility.”

MEL’S CAFE

The premier Black-owned business of C’ville.

Located on Main Street, Mel’s Cafe is a family business that has been around for about 15 years. They sell traditional soul food and cater large events.

Check them out this weekend!

BAYARD RUSTIN

He organized the March on Washington in 1963 and was a key advisor a key advisor to MLK. to In MLK. 2013, he In 2013, was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Medal Freedom.

MARSHA P. JOHNSON

Marsha P. Johnson was a Black activist, self-identified drag performer, and a trans woman who was integral in the Stonewall Riots of 1969. She marched for members of America’s most marignalized citizens: members of the queer, Black, poor, and gender-nonconforming communities. She founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) with Sylvia Rivera.

DUKE ELLINGTON

Duke was an extremely influential jazz singer, pianist, and composer. Even through the Depression and WW2, he continued to share music with the help of his orchestra (which he unconventionally conducted from his piano). His most famous song is “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”, first recorded in 1932.

PHIL WILSON

A prominent African American HIV/AIDS activist, Wilson founded the Black AIDS Institute in 1999. He was, in part, inspired by the death of his partner from an HIV-related illness and his own HIV diagnosis. In 2010, Wilson was appointed to President Obama’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. Wilson also served as a World AIDS Summit delegate and advocated for the CDC to provide additional funding to black groups, so they have the resources to educate and mobilize their community around HIV/AIDS issues.

TONI MORRISON

Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison is a novelist who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. After getting her B.A. in English from Howard University, she went to Cornell University for a master’s degree in American Literature. She became the first black female editor at Random House in New York. Some of her famous books include The Bluest Eye, Beloved and Song of Solomon.

JAMES BALDWIN

James Baldwin was a prominent writer and activist in both the Civil Rights Movement and the Gay Liberation Movement. His books sought to educate and tell the Black narrative. He spent time in Paris to escape American Racism and find a place to more openly express his sexuality.

PAULI MURRAY

Pauli Murray was an American civil rights activist, women’s rights activist, lawyer, Episcopal priest, and author. Drawn to the ministry in 1977, Murray was the first African-American woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. She was the first Black person to earn a JSD (Doctor of the Science of Law) degree from Yale Law School and founded the National Organization for Women. Pauli Murray crafted a broad vision of justice, equity, and human rights using words as her primary tool in the fight for liberation.

HENRIETTA LACKS

She was one of the many Black women who doctors took advantage of to conduct experiments: her cancer cells were taken from her without consent and are used even to this day for medical research. Her cells are used to test the effects of radiation and poisons, to study the human genome, to learn more about how viruses work, and wre crucial in the development of the polio and COVID-19 vaccines.

To learn more, visit the The Henrietta Lacks Foundation whose goal is to help individuals and their families who have made important contributions to scientific research without their consent.

MARIE MBULLU

Marie Mbullu is a 20-year-old Tanzanian American who, in addition to her obligations as a college student, runs the TikTok series “Habari Njema,” meaning good news in Swahili. “Habari Njema” focuses on spreading accurate news from politics to pop culture that spans the breadth of the African continent.

RUTH WILSON GILMORE

Geographer, professeur, prison abolitionist, and author, Ruth Wilson Gilmore continues to make an impact on the modern Civil Rights Movement. She authors the book Golden Gulag, which comments on the prison growth in California, despite the falling crime rate.

PAUL ROBESON

A strident voice for Civil Rights, Paul Robeson bridged the gap between Black performers and Civil Rights. He weathered the backlash of anti-communist witch hunts, where he considered the inextricability of entertainment from politics: “music is a weapon”

AUDRE LORDE

Audre Lorde was an American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist. As a poet, she is best known for technical mastery and emotional expression. She’s also known for her poems that express anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life. As a spoken word artist, her delivery was called powerful, melodic, and intense by the Poetry Foundation.

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is a Professor at Princeton University and scholar of racial inequality in public policy making and the various ways that Black communities have challenged or resisted these constraints. She writes extensively on race and politics, Black social movements, and radical activism. Taylor’s book From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, won the Lannan Cultural Freedom Award for an Especially Notable Book in 2016.

BARBARA JORDAN

She was the first African-American elected to the Texas Senate in 1966 and the first woman and first African American elected to Congress from Texas in 1972. In the chaos of the Watergate scandal, she helped the nation remain calm and restored a sense of faith in the U.S. Government when it felt all was lost. In 1994, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She and her life partner, Nancy Earl, were together for over 30 years.