Despite the rough nature of his sport, Muhammad Ali was one of the smoothest persons ever to walk the Earth. His poetic verse and well-considered metaphors came out a time during the 1960s when boxers were better known for punching than speaking. But Muhammad Ali did speak, and spoke intelligently – in a loud, boisterous […]

American music has always been, at base, African-American music. Gospel, minstrelsy, vaudeville, jazz, blues, rhythm & blues and rock n’ roll — it’s all basically Black, no matter the color of the artist who performs it. But until the 1960s, Black people did not much control their culture, much less profit from it. That all […]

Bill Cosby is a man of many “firsts.” Cosby was the first Black comedian to conquer white American audiences. He was the first African- American to take a starring role in a network television series in the 1960s, “I Spy”; and the first to star in and produce a #1 TV show in the 1980s, […]

Ralph Ellison was the first novelist to portray the Black experience as a critical part of the American experience. His seminal novel, “Invisible Man,” was his only major work, but his letters, articles and fiction work established him as one of the most important writers in history. “Invisible Man” encapsulated the feelings of Black men […]

A master of storytelling, Toni Morrison was the first Black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and legendary professor is known for the vivid black characters brought to life in her novels that recreate the Black experience. Morrison’s novels often illuminate themes of slavery, racism, and identity, but […]

Professing to be “unbossed and unbought,” Shirley Chisholm was the first black female major-party candidate for President of the United States, and the first black woman to be elected to Congress. Chisholm wasn’t intent on winning the presidency, but was steadfast on challenging conventions and showing Black America that they could aim high. She set […]

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a dynamic theology student and pastor who entered the battle for civil rights somewhat reluctantly, thrust into the fray during the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. But the young Dr. King’s moral courage, deep understanding and rhetorical abilities made his local and national leadership inevitable. In the face of […]

It would be easy to say that a black man born in 1947, in the ghetto of uptown Manhattan, has the odds stacked against him. But Kareem Abdul-Jabbar stood tall—7 feet, 2 inches tall — in the midst of this troublesome time and place. In high school, he won three straight New York City Catholic […]

In his seminal work, Race Matters, Dr. Cornel West questions matters of economics and politics, as well as addressing the crisis in Black leadership. The book was written in 1993, but many of its themes are salient today. His scholarship has come to be recognized globally and West, himself, is known for his combination of […]

Obama and Booker T. Washington share a legacy of both personal achievement in the face of past adversity; and, in some ways, prudent accommodation with the larger power structure.