# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Rosa Parks stood up for African Americans-by sitting down.

Although Abraham Lincoln 's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation granted slaves their freedom, for many years Black people were discriminated against in much of the United States. In southern states, for instance, most Black children were forced to attend separate schools from white kids in classrooms that were often rundown, with outdated books. African Americans also couldn't eat at the same restaurants as white people and had to sit in the back seats of public buses. Segregation-the separation of races-was enforced by local laws.

Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913. On December 1, 1955, she boarded a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama and sat in the middle, where Black passengers in that city were allowed to sit unless a white person wanted the seat. As the bus filled with new riders, the driver told Parks to give up her seat to a white passenger. She refused. The driver called police, and Parks was arrested.

Her arrest sparked a major protest. For more than a year, most Black people in Montgomery stood together and refused to take city buses. (One of the leaders of the boycott was a young local pastor named Martin Luther King, Jr.) Public vehicles stood idle, and the city lost money. Still, the Montgomery Bus Boycott didn't end until a 1956 Supreme Court decision ended racial segregation on public transportation throughout the United States.

Parks died on October 24, 2005. But throughout her life, her refusal to give up her seat inspired many others to fight for African-American rights and helped advance the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Rosa Parks stood up for African Americans-by sitting down.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A hero is born

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1929. At the time in that part of the country, segregation-or the separation of races in places like schools, buses, and restaurants-was the law. He experienced racial predjudice from the time he was very young, which inspired him to dedicate his life to achieving equality and justice for Americans of all colors. King believed that peaceful refusal to obey unjust law was the best way to bring about social change.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., never backed down in his stand against racism. Learn more about the life of this courageous hero who inspired millions of people to right a historical wrong.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Scientists, engineers, and inventors find the solutions to the world's problems. Learn about the work that these Black scientists and inventors have accomplished that make our lives better.

George Washington Carver was an agricultural chemist who gained acclaim for his discovery of alternative farming methods. Carver is best known for his discovery of uses for the peanut. Among the products Carver developed from peanuts were soap, face powder, mayonnaise, shampoo, metal polish, and adhesives-but he did not invent peanut butter.

Known as a "human computer," Dorothy Johnson Vaughan was part of a team that did mathematical calculations to help launch satellites-and later humans-into space. The group used math to help engineers figure out how wind and gravity affects aircrafts.

When she was first hired to work on the space program, Vaughan's department was segregated, or separated, by race. She and the other African-American women in her unit used separate dining areas and bathrooms. Six years after she was hired, Vaughan became the manager of her division and its first Black supervisor.

A decade later, the agency desegregated and she joined the Analysis and Computation division, where she learned computer programming and worked on the program that launched John Glenn and other astronauts into space for the first time. The accomplishments of Vaughan and other female African-American mathematicians was the focus of the book and movie Hidden Figures.

Mark E. Dean is one of the top engineering minds at the International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation. He made his first mark in the industry in the early 1980s, when he and a colleague developed a system that allowed computers to communicate with printers and other devices. Every time you print something, you can thank Dean.

In all, Dean holds 20 patents, and was honored as one of the "50 Most Important African Americans in Technology" by the California African-American Museum in 2000. Dean wants to help increase awareness of the contributions of Black engineers to both the engineering industry and the African-American community.

Before her 30th birthday, Mae C. Jemison had received two undergraduate degrees and a medical degree, served two years as a Peace Corps medical officer in West Africa, and was selected to join the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's astronaut training program. Her eight-day space flight aboard the space shuttle Endeavour in 1992 established Jemison as the United States' first female African-American space traveler.

Percy L. Julian is known as the "soybean chemist," for his extraordinary success in developing innovative drugs and industrial chemicals from natural soya products. The firefighting solution he devised, known as "bean soup," helped save the lives of thousands of sailors and naval airmen during World War II. His discoveries earned him more than 130 chemical patents and many professional awards.

His spirit lives on in dozens of lifesaving discoveries, as well as in the halls of Percy L. Julian Junior High School in Oak Park, Illinois. Julian was quoted as saying, "I have had one goal in my life, that of playing some role in making life a little easier for the persons who come after me."

Sarah Breedlove Walker was an inventor and businesswoman, and became one of the largest employers of African-American women of her time.

Often know as Madame C.J. Walker, she manufactured beauty products for other African-American women using formulas she developed after working for a pharmacist who taught her chemistry. Her popular hair-softening cream and shampoo helped heal dry skin and other itchy annoyances that were common in the early 1900s because indoor plumbing wasn't widely available.

Walker's company hired and trained thousands of Black women to sell her hair-care products in shops, by mail, and door-to-door. This helped many become more independent during a time when job opportunities for women were limited.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Black Scientists and Inventors | Black History Month

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn about these inspiring men and women.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Booker T. Washington really wanted to go to school. Born on April 5, 1856-a time when most Black children weren't educated-he wanted to go to school so badly that at 16, without money or a map, the former slave traveled 500 miles by foot and train across Virginia to enroll.

Inspired to spread knowledge to others, Washington later established and became the first principal and teacher of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Opened in 1881, the school taught academic as well as practical skills (like farming and blacksmithing) to newly freed African Americans, who would then be able to make more money as well as teach the skills to others.

In the beginning, Washington taught 30 students in a one-room shack and an empty church. But in just 15 years, thanks to his leadership and influence, the school soon grew to 800 students, 79 teachers, and 30 buildings. (One famous teacher was George Washington Carver.)

Washington continued as Tuskegee's principal until his death on November 14, 1915, educating new generations of teachers and skilled workers. And the school continues today, called Tuskegee University.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Booker T. Washington really wanted to go to school. Born on April 5, 1856-a time when most Black children weren't educated-he wanted to go to school so badly that at 16, without money or a map, the former slave traveled 500 miles by foot and train across Virginia to enroll.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
To George Washington Carver, peanuts were like paintbrushes: They were tools to express his imagination. Carver was a scientist and an inventor who found hundreds of uses for peanuts. He experimented with the legumes to make lotions, flour, soups, dyes, plastics, and gasoline-though not peanut butter!

Carver was born an enslaved person in the 1860s in Missouri. The exact date of his birth is unclear, but some historians believe it was around 1864, just before slavery was abolished in 1865. As a baby, George, his mother, and his sister were kidnapped from the man who enslaved them, Moses Carver. The kidnappers were slave raiders who planned to sell them. Moses Carver found George before he could be sold, but not his mother and sister. George never saw them again.

After slavery was abolished, George was raised by Moses Carver and his wife. He worked on their farm and in their garden, and became curious about plants, soils, and fertilizers. Neighbors called George "the plant doctor" because he knew how to nurse sick plants back to life. When he was about 13, he left to attend school and worked hard to get his education.

In 1894 he became the first Black person to graduate from Iowa State College, where he studied botany and fungal diseases, and later earned a master's degree in agriculture. In 1896, Booker T. Washington offered him a teaching position at Tuskegee Institute, a college for African Americans.

There, Carver's research with peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans flourished. He made agricultural advancements to help improve the lives of poor Black farmers like himself. With the help of his mobile classroom, the Jesup Wagon, he brought his lessons to former enslaved farmworkers and used showmanship to educate and entertain people about agriculture.

On January 5, 1943, Carver died after falling down some stairs. But his contributions to the field of agriculture would not be forgotten. Carver became the first Black scientist to be memorialized in a national monument, which was erected near his birthplace in Diamond Grove, Missouri.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How this scientist nurtured the land-and people's minds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The stars were always within reach for Katherine Johnson. Using her mathematics skills, she helped NASA send astronauts to the moon and return them safely home. She also overcame racial and gender hurdles that helped make giant leaps for humankind.

Johnson was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, on August 26, 1918. Math came easy to her, but she worked hard to master geometry and algebra. She started high school when she was just 10 years old (most kids are in fourth or fifth grade when they're 10!) and college when she was 15. After she graduated with honors at 18, Johnson taught Black students math. She later enrolled in graduate school at West Virginia University to study math but left early to raise a family and return to teaching.

In 1952, when she was 34 years old, she learned about jobs for Black women with mathematics and computing skills at the Langley laboratory at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which would later become NASA. She and the other women worked as "human computers," figuring out the difficult calculations needed for spaceflight. During her time there, she broke racial barriers, like using the bathroom that was supposed to be for white women only.

One of her biggest accomplishments at NASA was helping calculate the trajectory, or path, of the country's first human spaceflight in 1961, making sure astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr., had a safe trip. A year later she helped figure out John Glenn's orbit of the planet, another American first. In 1969, she calculated the trajectories of Neil Armstrong's historic mission to the moon on Apollo 11.

Yet unlike the white male astronauts she helped launch into space, no one knew of the groundbreaking work Johnson and dozens of other Black women did for NASA and space exploration. It wasn't until the 2016 release of the movie Hidden Figures that these women received widespread recognition.

Johnson died on February 24, 2020, at the age of 101. In her honor, NASA had dedicated the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility at the Langley Research Center to commemorate the hard work she did to help take them to the stars.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How this math whiz helped explorers reach new worlds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Nothing was going to stop Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., from becoming a pilot. Not his white classmates at West Point, a military academy, refusing to be his roommate. Or being banned from an all-white officers' club, even though he was an officer himself. Or being rejected from the Army Air Corps, an early version of the Air Force, because he was African American.

Until the late 1940s, the U.S. military was segregated, meaning that Black and white soldiers served in separate units. Even though African Americans like Davis, who was born on December 18, 1912, could join the military, they weren't allowed to become pilots. But in 1941-the year the United States entered World War II-the Tuskegee Army Air Field began training African Americans as military pilots.

Davis was part of the first graduating class and immediately given a command of a unit of all-Black pilots; he later commanded an even larger group. His men bravely flew into enemy territory in Germany and Italy, successfully completing many dangerous missions. Known as the Tuskegee Airmen, the African-American pilots proved that they were just as skilled as white pilots.

Thanks to Davis's leadership and his pilots' success, the military now understood that allowing Black and white soldiers to serve together was the right thing to do. In 1948, President Harry Truman signed an executive order to integrate the armed forces. The man who helped draft a report on how the Air Force should accomplish that? Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. His influence on equal rights for soldiers lived on, even after his death on July 4, 2002.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Nothing was going to stop Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., from becoming a pilot. Not his white classmates at West Point, a military academy, refusing to be his roommate. Or being banned from an all-white officers' club, even though he was an officer himself.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The skies had never seen a pilot like Bessie Coleman before. She was the first African-American woman to obtain an international pilot's license, soaring to new heights that Black people in the United States had never reached before. But as a Black woman in the 1920s, she faced many obstacles because of her race and gender. She would say that "the air is the only place free from prejudice."

Coleman was born in Atlanta, Texas, on January 26, 1892, the 10th of 13 children. Her mother was African American, and her father's ancestors were Black and Choctaw, a Native American people; they were both sharecroppers who picked cotton for a landowner.

When she was young, her family moved to Waxahachie, Texas, where she attended segregated schools (meaning Black children went to separate schools, which usually weren't as good as schools for white children). She enrolled in Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University in 1910 but had to drop out because she didn't have the money to pay for school.

She eventually moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1915 and worked in a barber shop painting fingernails. When her brother John returned from fighting in France during World War I, he told stories of the freedom that women overseas enjoyed. They could be pilots, he said. That sparked Bessie's new dream: to be an aviatrix.

She saved up money and applied to U.S. flight schools. But every school rejected her because she was Black and a woman. Finally, Robert Abbott, the publisher of an African-American newspaper called the Chicago Defender, suggested she try schools in France. She learned French, left the United States, and enrolled in the Cauldron Brothers' School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, France. She earned her international pilot's license on June 15, 1921, within a year of enrolling. Afterward she studied stunt flying across Europe.

When she returned to the United States in 1922 as an aerial acrobat, Coleman amazed Black and white audiences with her daredevil feats. Known as "Queen Bess" and "Brave Bessie," she would do loops, barrel rolls, and figure eights in her plane-she'd even walk on the wings and parachute out. She also used her fame to fight racism and segregation, refusing to fly in shows that forced Black and white spectators to enter through separate gates.

In 1923, Coleman survived a bad accident that left her with a broken leg and ribs. But soon she recovered and started doing stunts at air shows again. Her goal was to open a school for Black pilots, but she never completed that dream. On April 30, 1926, she died in another plane accident caused by a loose wrench lodging into the engine's controls. But her courageous feats of flight have inspired a fleet of Black women pilots who came after her and journeyed to the sky.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The skies had never seen a pilot like Bessie Coleman before. She was the first African-American woman to obtain an international pilot's license, soaring to new heights that Black people in the United States had never reached before. But as a Black woman in the 1920s, she faced many obstacles because of her race and gender.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Born on November 30, 1924, Shirley Chisholm was the first African-American woman to serve in the United States Congress. An early education expert from New York City, Chisholm began working with local political organizations and in 1964 won a seat on the New York state legislature, representing her Brooklyn neighborhood. Four years later, she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Chisholm was outspoken and brave. Instead of accepting her seat on the Agriculture Committee-even though she represented people from a city-she complained to leaders until they reassigned her to an education committee. When she was blocked from television debates after she decided to run for president (the first African-American woman to do so), she sued. She fought for equal rights for women, minorities, immigrants, and the poor.

Serving seven terms (14 years) in Congress, Chisholm helped open up opportunities for people like President Barack Obama and Senator Elizabeth Warren. But she said she didn't want to be remembered as the first woman or African American to do something. She wanted to be remembered as someone who "had guts." She died on January 1, 2005.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Born on November 30, 1924, Shirley Chisholm was the first African-American woman to serve in the United States Congress. An early education expert from New York City, Chisholm began working with local political organizations and in 1964 won a seat on the New York state legislature, representing her Brooklyn neighborhood.