In 1956, Lila Fenwick became the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Law School. Fenwick later led the United Nations’ Human Rights Division. She attended Harvard in 1954 when the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education came down, joining only a handful of women and the only black woman a one year before Ruth Bader Ginsburg started as a first-year student at the school.

Alexander Lucius Twilight was the first Black-American known to have earned a bachelor's degree from an American college or university. He was also the...

Charles Henry Turner stands among the earliest African Americans to receive a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. In 1892, he became the first...

Ketanji Brown Jackson is the first African-American woman and federal public defender to sit on the supreme court. Jackson will replace Associate Justice Stephen...

Frank "Sugar Chile" Robinson is an American jazz pianist and singer. He became famous as a child prodigy in the mid–1940s, and this little...