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.

"I often find myself the only black woman or the only woman in a room all the time. I mean, all the time,” she...

Jean Baptiste DuSable, also known as Jean Baptiste Point DuSable (Point de Sable, Point au Sable, Point Sable, Pointe DuSable), was a black pioneer trader and...

It's election season in Chicago, and every candidate for Mayor is black, but one. This was the complete opposite in 1983, when Harold Washington,...

Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939 (age 81), in Montgomery, Alabama, U.S. She is an activist who was a pioneer in the...