African-American History

The 10 African Americans profiled below will be remembered as pioneers in their fields--business, government, journalism, literature, medicine, religion, science and technology, the military--but their legacy goes far beyond their titles of "first." As one of them remarked, "There may be significance in being the first, but there is more significance in being the second, third, fourth, and fifth." It is their commitment to make the way better for those that follow, to leave behind something that lasts longer than their own spotlight, that sets these trailblazers apart.
 

On and off the tennis court, Arthur Ashe was known for his grace and dignity in the face of challenge. In 1975, the seemingly unflappable Ashe defeated the brash Jimmy Connors at Wimbledon, becoming the first African American to win the men's singles in what was considered the crowning achievement in an almost lily-white sport. Ten years later he would become the first African American inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

The year 1985 was also a turning point in one of Ashe's most significant battles off the court: He was arrested for taking part in an anti-apartheid demonstration outside the South African embassy in Washington. Ashe admitted, regretfully, that he was a relative latecomer to social and political activism--during the civil rights protests of the '60's he was focused on developing his tennis game--but by the late 1970's he was an outspoken leader in the anti-apartheid movement. He was involved in TransAfrica and was a founder and co-chair of Artists and Athletes Against Apartheid.

It was a challenge to his health that forced Ashe to retire from tennis in 1980, at age 37, following a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery. He then turned to other endeavors, such as the captaincy of the U.S. Davis Cup team, writing, and working as a television sports commentator.

In 1992 Ashe announced that he had contracted the AIDS virus, apparently from a blood transfusion during a second open heart surgery in 1983. Turning this final challenge into an opportunity to help others with the disease, he started the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS. Ashe died on February 6, 1993 of AIDS-related pnuemonia, at age 49.

Ashe, who grew up in the segregated South, once told a reporter that race--not heart disease, not even AIDS--was his biggest burden in life. He overcame barriers to make his mark in the nearly all-white world of professional tennis and made it easier for other Black players--like Lori McNeil, Yannick Noah, and Zina Garrison--to become champions in the game.
 

In 1992, the year some political commentators dubbed "The Year of the Woman," a coalition of African-American and women voters spoke loud and clear when they helped elect Carol Moseley Braun as the nation's first African-American woman in the Senate.

Braun, who also happens to be the only African-American Senator in U.S. history, decided to run after watching the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and becoming angry at the all-White, all-male Senate Judiciary Committee's behavior.

"We all thought of the Senate as this lofty place . . . where weighty decisions were made by these serious men," Braun told The New York Times during her campaign . "Instead, we saw that they were just garden-variety politicians making bad speeches. We need to open up the Senate to the voices that have been excluded."

She was the decided underdog in the race, and her defeat of the incumbent Senator Alan Dixon in the Demacratic primary surprised quite a few political pundits. They still weren't counting on her winning the general election against Republican Richard S. Williamson, but Braun would have last word--in her victory speech.

Braun is a lawyer who worked in the U.S. Attorney's office and was member of the Illinois state legislature before becoming Cook County Recorder of Deeds in 1988. Her election to that post was also historic, making her the highest-ranking African- American elected official in the county.

Once Braun was elected to the Senate, she received an opportunity that most likely sweetened her victory: She became a member of the Judiciary Committee, integrating the very group whose exclusiveness had sparked her decision to run against the odds.
 

Dr. Benjamin Carson, one of the world's most gifted surgeons, made medical history in 1987 when he performed the first successful separation of occipital craniopagus (joined at the head) Siamese twins. A specialist in pediatric neurosurgery, Carson also established a remarkable success record in peforming the procedure called hemispherectomy, or removal of half the brain, to treat certain forms of epilepsy. Nineteen of the first 20 patients Carson operated on survived.

If it were not for the determination of his mother, Carson might never have discovered his gift. She worked domestic jobs to support Carson and his brother after their father abandoned the family, and she insisted that they study and read books regularly. Carson had been a poor student in elementary school, but he ended up graduating third in his high school class.

Carson credits prayer with helping him to overcome another threat to his future: his violent temper as a teenager. An episode in which he nearly stabbed a friend during an argument over a radio show shook him so much that he locked himself in the bathroom for three hours, reading the Bible and praying to God for help. Afterward, he says, the rage never returned, and he focused on achieving his dream of becoming a doctor.

He won a scholarship to Yale University and, after graduating, went on to obtain a medical degree from the University of Michigan.

In 1984, Carson joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University and soon became director of pediatric neurosurgery-- the youngest in the country, at age 33.

Carson has written an autobiography, Gited Hands, and a motivational book, Think Big. He is currently an associate professor at Johns Hopkins. He often speaks to groups of young people to share with them the lessons he learned about how to see obstacles "as hurdles that strengthen you each time you go over one." (Pazrade, December 25, 1988). According to Carson, it's that kind of vision that leads to success.
 

Mae Jemison's penchant for pushing the limits was evident long before her historic odyssey into space on September 12, 1992, as the world's first Black woman astronaut. At 16 she entered Stanford University, earning degrees in both chemical engineering and African and Afro-American studies, before going on to get a medical degree from Cornell. Before her selection as an astronaut candidate in 1987, she spent two and a half years as a Peace Corps medical officer in Sierra Leone and Liberia, then was a general practicioner with CIGNA Health Plans of California.

Five years later, during her eight-day mission aboard the space shuttle Endeavour, Jemison conducted several scientific experiments on subjects ranging from semiconductors to frog embryos.

For Jemison, the fact that there were no female astronauts when she was dreaming of becoming one herself was only "some silly male stuff that was going on," nothing to deter her from pursuing her dream.

When speaking to young people who viewed her as role model, Jemison liked to point out that the U.S. space program has room for people with all kinds of talent--not just astronauts but lawyers, accountants, and research scientists as well.

In an interview following her space flight, Jemison expressed a particular interest in how space technology can be used to aid developing countries. Today Jemison is pursuing that interest outside the space program. She left NASA in 1993, taking a teaching fellowship at Darmouth College and concentrating her vocation in the areas of education and health care.
 

The faith that Leontine Kelly inherited helped her to weather the storm of controversy that accompanied her historic achievement--becoming the first African-American woman bishop in a major religious organization. While she says that "there was dancing in the street" following her ordination, Kelly's 1984 election to the episcopacy of the United Methodist Church was also opposed by many who thought she was unfit for the role because she was a Black woman, or because she was a divorced mother of four. But as she told USA Today writer Barbara Reynolds, "Eventually I felt God called me as I was."

When she first considered becoming a candidate for bishop, Kelly was pastor of a church in Richmond, Virginia, which was part of the Southeastern jurisdiction. Thinking that her chances of being elected bishop as an African-American woman in the South were slim, she agreed to allow a group of clergywomen in California to nominate her.

She was consecrated in July 1984 at a ceremony in Boise, Idaho, and two months late was named resident bishop of the United Methodist Church for the San Francisco Bay area, making her the chief administrative officer and spiritual leader of more than 100,000 United Methodists in northern California and Nevada.

Kelly, who left a teaching career to enter the ministry in the late 1960s, came full circle in 1988 when she retired from the episcopy to become a visiting professor at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California.
 

In the spring of 1983 journalists were writing headlines about the history-making feat of one of their own. Oakland Tribune editor Robert C. Maynard announced his purchase of the ailing newpaper in a $22 million management-leveraged buyout, a first for a U.S. paper. The move also made Maynard the first African-American owner of a major U.S. metropolitan daily.

Remembering how difficult it was for him to enter mainstream journalism in the early '60s, Maynard became an advocate for the integration of the newspaper industry. In 1978 he and his wife, Nancy, founded the Institute for Journalism Education, to help create job opportunities for journalists of color in American newspapers. As editor and publisher of the tribune, he made diversifying the staff a priority.

Maynard realized at an early age that he wanted a writing career. In fact, he dropped out of school at age 16 to work for the New York Age, a Black weekly in Brooklyn. Years later, in 1966, he would attend Harvard University under a Nieman Fellowship. Next came a 12-year stint at the Washington Post. He became editor of the Tribune in 1979. Maynard also wrote a syndicated column.

As publisher, he struggled to make the paper profitable, in spite of the recessionary market. He finally sold the paper in 1992 to the Alameda Newspaper Group. In November of that year, Pearl Stewart was named editor, the first African-American woman in that position at a major daily.

In a 1988 article in Esscence, Maynard wrote: "My mother and father shared the philosophy that people of faith thrive on challenge." He went on to say that he had recently come to a deep appreciation of that philosophy. He might have been talking about his journalism career, but this time he was speaking of his battle with cancer. He lost the battle five years later, at age 56.
 

Toni Morrison's graceful, magical way with words has earned her worldwide critical acclaim and a place in literary history. In October 1993, she became the first African American to receive the Nobel Prize for literature.

Morrison, who has been an editor with Random House since 1965, is a multiple-award-winning novelist whose weaving of the visual and oral qualities of language, the mythical and mundane aspects of character, creates a style of writing that is unforgettable.

Morrison's works include the Bluest Eye, her first novel, published in 1970; Song of Solomon, which was published in 1977 and won the National Critics Circle Award; her Pulitzer Prize- winning novel, Beloved, published in 1987; and Aazz, published in 1992.

Morrison did not begin her writing career until her late thirties, after she had taught at Texas Southern and Howard universities and had been working for several years at Random House. At Howard, where she taught literature and composition, her students included Stokeley Carmichael, Houston Baker, and Claude Brown. At Random House, she helped writers like Toni Cade Bambara and Gayle Jones to get their works published.

In 1987, Morrison joined the faculty of Princeton University, where she is currently the Robert F. Goshen Professor of the Humanities.

Morrison's writing has made a major impression on the literary world. In fact, one critic called her "the closest thing the country has to a national writer." She also has earned the admiration of other African-American writers. In an interview with Rebecca Carroll in I Know What the Red Clay Looks Like, poet and essayist Nikki Giovanni says: "You cannot like words and not just love Toni."
 

General Colin Powell, whose unquestionable capabilities led him to the highest U.S. military post, just might be America's favorite national hero. The cover of a biography by Howard Means touted: "General Colin Powell embodies the fulfillment of the American Dream." In 1989, Powell became the youngest and the first African-American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he served until 1993. Today, admirers and journalists are breathlessly speculating about whether he will try to become the nation's Chief Executive Officer. While Powell remains close- mouthed about his interest in the presidency, as well as about his political party affiliation, he continues to make news--and history.

In the fall of 1994, Powell played an important role in negotiating a peaceful end to the military dictatorship in Haiti and the return of popularly elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide. It was said that Powell, the son of Jamaican immigrants, drew upon his understanding of Caribbean culture in working out a successful solution to the crisis, along with former President Jimmy Carter and Senator Sam Nunn.

The four-star U.S. army general and former U.S. National Security Advisor retired in 1993 after 35 years of military service. Soon he was making headlines for his $6.5 million deal with Random House to publish his memoirs.

Powell believes that education is a key to creating the world of unlimited opportunity he spoke of. Another is each person's duty to help others succeed. He once told a group of Fisk University graduates: "As we climbed on the backs of others, so must we allow our backs to be used for others to go higher than we have."
 

If Clifton Wharton's impressive string of "first" achievements has the kind of influence he envisions, then he has paved the way for other African Americans to reach the top in a wide range of fields. In 1987, Wharton took the helm of largest private pension program in the U.S., the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association and College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA- CREF), and became the first African American to head a Fortune 100 company. In that position, Wharton was also the highest paid African-American executive in the country.

Before Wharton started blazing trails in the business world, he was making history in higher education. In 1958, he was the first African American to earn a PhD in economics from University of Chicago and, in 1970, the first African-American president of a major, predominantly White university--Michigan State. He also was the first African American chancellor of the State University of New York, and the first to chair the board of a major foundation--the Rockefeller Foundation.

Wharton left TIAA-CREF in 1993 to make history again, this time in politics and foreign policy. That year he became Bill Clinton's deputy secretary of state, the second highest official in the State Department. There, he was involved in reorganizing the Department and restructuring the Agency for International Development. After eight months at the post, he resigned, amid controversy over his role in the Clinton administration's foreign policy.

Wharton, the son of a career diplomat, maintained an interest in foreign affairs, speaking out on such issues as the crisis in Rwanda and U.S. policy in Africa.
 

Lawrence Douglas Wilder, named in honor of two great African-American historical figures--the abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar--made the pages of history himself, when,in 1989, the people of the Commmonwealth of Virginia chose him as the first African-American elected governor in the United States. For this grandson of slaves to become governor of a Southern state was, indeed, an inspiring achievement.

As fellow Richmond, Virginia native Arthur Ashe recalled in Days fio Grace: "I did not think that any [B]lack could ever be elected governor of reactionary, segregated Virginia. I never dreamed that one of the older boys who came to play at Brook Field on the courts my father tended could become governor of our state. But Doug Wilder did so."

Before becoming governor, Wilder had served for three years as his state's first African-American lietenant governor. And 30 years before his gubanatorial election, he became Virginia's first African-American state senator since Renconstruction.

He ran briefly for president in 1991 and was an Independent candidate in the 1994 Senate race against Democrat incumbent Charles Robb (who retained his seat) and Republican Oliver North.

While he is out of the political spotlight for now, Wilder's accomplishments--and his determination to reach for even greater heights--make him an outstanding role model for the next generation of African American leaders.
 

1. Ashe, Arthur, and Rampersad, Arnold. Says of Grace. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.

2. "Carol Moseley Braun: Her First Year in the Senate." Glamour, November 1993.

3. Carson, Benjamin. Gifted Hands. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Books, 1990.

4. Stinson, Sonya. "The African-American Astronauts." JOURNAL of the National Technical Association, Fall 1989.

5. Reynolds, Barbara. And Still We Rise. Washington: USA Today Books, 1988.

6. Ragsdale, Rose. "Maynard Buys Tribune." Essence, August 1983.

7. New York Times, 11 September 1977.

8. Jet, 11 September 1989.

9. "Clifton Wharton: The Nation's Highest Paid Black Executive." Ebony, September 1987.

10. Campbell-Rock, C.C. "The Challenges and Opportunities Facing African Americans in the 21st Centure." THE BLACK COLLEGIAN, April 1991.
 

Mary Frances Berry First woman to head a major research university, University of Colorado, 1976.

Guion Bluford, Jr. First African-American astronaut in space, 1983.

Jacquelyn Barrett First African-American woman sheriff, Fulton County, Georgia, 1992.

Rita Dove First African-American U.S. Poet Laureate, 1993.

Joycelyn Elders First African-American U.S. Surgeon General, 1993.

Patricia Roberts Harris First African-American woman in presidential cabinet, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, 1977.

Reginald Lewis First African-American to make the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans, 1992.

John Singleton Youngest and first African-American nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards, for "Boyz in the Hood," 1992.

Franklin Thomas First African American to head a major foundation, The Ford Foundation, 1979.

Andrew Young First African American U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, 1977.