Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Floyd Patterson
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Floyd Patterson, an American professional boxer, first to hold the world heavyweight championship twice.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Frank Yerby
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Frank Yerby, an American author of popular historical fiction.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Gene Ammons
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Gene Ammons, an American jazz tenor saxophonist, noted for his big sound and blues-inflected, "soulful" improvising.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: George Allan Russell
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features George Allan Russell, an American jazz artist born June 23, 1923, Cincinnati, Ohio .
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: George Moses Horton
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features George Moses Horton, an African American poet who wrote sentimental love poems and antislavery protests. He was one of the first professional black writers in America.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Harriet Beecher Stowe
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Harriet Beecher Stowe, an American writer and philanthropist, the author of the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which contributed so much to popular feeling against slavery that it is cited among...
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Harry Howell Carney
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Harry Howell Carney, an American musician, featured soloist in Duke Ellington's band and the first baritone saxophone soloist in jazz.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Herbie Hancock
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Herbie Hancock, an American keyboard player, songwriter, and bandleader, a prolific recording artist who achieved success as an incisive, harmonically provocative jazz pianist and then...
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Horace Pippin
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Horace Pippin, an American folk painter known for his depictions of African American life and of the horrors of war.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: James Earl Jones
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features James Earl Jones, an American actor who made his name in leading stage roles in Shakespeare's Othello and in The Great White Hope, a play about the tragic career of the first black...
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: James Farmer
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features James Farmer, an American civil rights activist who, as a leader of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), helped shape the civil rights movement through his nonviolent activism and...
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Jean Baptist Point Du Sable
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Jean-Baptist-Point Du Sable, a black pioneer trader and founder of the settlement that later became the city of Chicago.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Jerry Rice
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Jerry Rice, an American professional gridiron football player whom many consider the greatest wide receiver in the history of the National Football League (NFL). Playing primarily for the...
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Joe Morgan
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Joe Morgan, an American professional baseball player who won consecutive National League (NL) Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards in 1975-76, when he led the Cincinnati Reds to back-to-back...
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Kathleen Battle
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Kathleen Battle, an American opera singer, among the finest coloratura sopranos of her time.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Laurence Fishburne
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Laurence Fishburne, an American actor noted for the intensity of his performances. He was the recipient of a Tony Award (1992) for his work in August Wilson's play Two Trains Running, and...
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Lloyd Price
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Lloyd Price, an American singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur. Price made his mark in rock music history with his exuberant tenor and his flair for recasting rhythm and blues as...
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Louis Jordan
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Louis Jordan, an American saxophonist-singer prominent in the 1940s and '50s who was a seminal figure in the development of both rhythm and blues and rock and roll. The bouncing, rhythmic...
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Mari Evans
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Mari Evans, an African American author of poetry, children's literature, and plays.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Nas
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Nas, an American rapper and songwriter who became a dominant voice in 1990s East Coast hip-hop. Nas built a reputation as an expressive chronicler of inner-city street life.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Nat Turner
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Nat Turner, a black American slave who led the only effective, sustained slave rebellion (August 1831) in U.S. history. Spreading terror throughout the white South, his action set off a...
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Paule Marshall
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Paule Marshall, a novelist whose works emphasize the need for black Americans to reclaim their African heritage.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Pearl Primus
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Pearl Primus, an American dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, and teacher whose performance work drew on the African American experience and on her research in Africa and the Caribbean.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Philly Joe Jones
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Philly Joe Jones, a black American jazz musician, one of the major percussionists of the bop era, and among the most recorded as well.