Black History Month Gallery

Hank Aaron (Henry Louis Aaron)
Henry Louis Aaron 02/05/1934-01/22/2021 also known as Hank Aaron was a MLB player with the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves for 21 seasons and the Milwaukee Brewers for two seasons. He played right field and hit 755 home runs during his career surpassing Bath Ruth. He made $200 a month at the beginning of his career playing in the Negro American League playing for the Indianapolis Clowns. Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982 and presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2002.

Elmer Lucille Allen
(born in Louisville, KY, 1931)
Elmer Lucille Allen is a ceramic artist and chemist who graduated from Nazareth College (now Spalding University) in 1953. She became the first African-American chemist at Brown-Forman in 1966. As an artist, she creates richly colored cotton and silk shibori wall hangings that reflect her scientific background both in style and process. She is able to translate geometric patterns of triangles, squares, diamonds, and circles masterfully using the serendipitous–and sometimes fickle–Nui, Iajime, and Arashi shibori methods.

Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay)
January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016
Muhammad Ali was an American professional boxer, activist, and philanthropist. Nicknamed “The Greatest,” he is widely regarded as one of the most significant and celebrated sports figures of the 20th century and as one of the greatest boxers of all time. G.O.A.T (Greatest of all time). Born across the bridge in Louisville, Ky.

Maya Angelou
(April 4, 1928-May 28, 2014)
Was an American poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years.

James Arthur Baldwin
(August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987)
Was an American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist. His essays, collected in Notes of a Native Son (1955), explore intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in the Western society of the United States during the mid-20th-century North America.

Simon Biles
Simone Arianne Biles (born March 14, 1997) is an American artistic gymnast. With a combined total of 30 Olympic and World Championship medals, Biles is the most decorated American gymnast and the world’s third most decorated gymnast, behind Belarus’ Vitaly Scherbo (33 medals) and Russia’s Larisa Latynina (32 medals).

Guion Stewart Bluford Jr.
(November 22, 1942)
Is an American aerospace engineer, retired U.S. Air Force officer and fighter pilot, and former NASA astronaut, who is the first African American and the second person of African descent to go to space.

Chadwick Boseman
(November 29, 1976 – August 28, 2020) was an American actor and playwright. After studying directing at Howard University, he became prominent in theater, winning a Drama League Directing Fellowship and an acting AUDELCO, and being nominated for a Jeff Award as a playwright for Deep Azure. Transitioning to the screen, he landed his first major role as a series regular on Persons Unknown in 2010, and his breakthrough performance came in 2013 as baseball player Jackie Robinson in the biographical film 42. He continued to portray historical figures, starring in Get on Up (2014) as singer James Brown and Marshall (2017) as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Kobe Bryant

(August 23, 1978 – January 26, 2020)
Kobe Bean Nryant was an American professional basketball player. A shooting guard, Bryant played his entire 20-season career in the National Basketball Association with the Los Angeles Lakers. He entered the NBA directly from high school and won five NBA chanpionships. Bryant finished his NBA career with 33,643 points. An 10-time All-Star, Bryant was known for his remarkable scoring ability – – his turnaroumd jumper was nearly unstoppable – – and his championship pedigree. He teamed with fellow All-Star Shaquille O’Neal to win three consecutive NBA titles from 2000 to 2002 and later wontwo more rings, in 2009 and 2010.

Shawn and Ann Carruthers
Shawn and Ann Carruthers have emerged as one of Southern Indiana’s preeminent power couples. Voters have chosen Shawn to serve as the Floyd County Commissioner for District 1; Ann serves a New Albany Township Trustee. More so, they are both the first African-Americans to win their respective offices. Shawn is also the first African-American Republican Party Chair in Floyd County. He took over that role in 2016 and still holds the position. True to form, Ann stepped up as well and currently serves as the Floyd County Republican Women’s Chair. She is the first African-American in that role, as well. Ann Carruthers currently serves as the president of The Floyd County Library board of directors.

Shirley Anita Chisholm
Was an American politician, educator, and author. In 1968, she became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. Representing New York’s 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1969 to 1983.

Misty Copeland
(September 10, 1982)
Is an American ballet dancer for American Ballet Theatre, one of the three leading classical ballet companies in the United States. On June 30, 2015, Copeland became the first African American woman to be promoted to principal dancer in ABT’s 75-year history.

Kizzmekia Corbett
Kizzmekia “Kizzy” Shanta Corbett is an American viral immunologist at the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health (NIAID NIH) based in Bethesda, Maryland. She earned a PhD in microbiology and immunology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill) in 2014. Appointed to the VRC in 2014, she is currently the scientific lead of the VRC’s Coronavirus Team, with research efforts aimed at propelling novel coronavirus vaccines, including a COVID-19 vaccine. In December 2020, the Institute’s Director, Dr. Anthony Fauci said: “Kizzy is an African American scientist who is right at the forefront of the development of the vaccine.”

Dorothy Jean Dandridge
(November 9, 1922 – September 8, 1965)
Was an American actress, singer, and dancer. She is one of the earliest African-American film stars to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, which was for her performance in Carmen Jones (1954).

Amanda Gorman
Amanda S. C. Gorman (born 1998) is an American poet and activist. Her work focuses on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalization, as well as the African diaspora. Gorman was the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate. She published the poetry book The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough in 2015. In 2021, she delivered her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden.

Honorable Judge Maria Granger
Maria Granger is the Presiding Judge of Floyd Superior Court 3 in New Albany, IN. Judge Granger has been recognized for establishing the state’s first Veterans Court and assisting other parts of the state in forming similar courts. She is a frequent speaker to community groups about the legal system, has served as faculty for the Indiana Judicial Conference on the subjects of new legislation, sentencing, and the transition to the bench. She has also taught at the Indiana Judiciary’s Law School for Journalist.

Kamala Harris
Is an American politician and attorney who is the 49th and current vice president of the United States. She is the United States’ first female vice president, the highest-ranking female elected official in U.S. history, and the first African American and first Asian American vice president. A member of the Democratic Party, she served as a United States senator from California from 2017 to 2021, and as the Attorney General of California from 2011 to 2017. Harris became vice president upon inauguration in January 2021 alongside President Joe Biden, having defeated the incumbent president, Donald Trump, and vice president, Mike Pence, in the 2020 election.

Langston Hughes
(February 1, 1902-May 22, 1967)
James Mercer Langston Hughes was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, the flowering of black intellectual, literacy, and artistic life that took place in the 1920s in a number of American cities, particularly Harlem. A major poet, Hughes also wrote novels, short stories, essays, and plays. He sought to honestly portray the joys and hardships of working-class black lives, avoiding both sentimental idealization and negative stereotypes.
He was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He moved to New York City as a young man, where he made his career.

Mae Carol Jemison
(October 17, 1956)
Is an American engineer, physician, and former NASA astronaut. She became the first black woman to travel into space when she served as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Jemison joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 1987 and was selected to serve for the STS-47 mission, during which she orbited the Earth for nearly eight days on September 12–20, 1992.

Colin Rand Kaepernick
Is an American civil rights activist and football quarterback who is a free agent. He played six seasons for the San Francisco 49ers in the National Football League (NFL). As a political activist, he knelt during the national anthem at the start of NFL games in protest of police brutality and racial inequality in the United States.

John Robert Lewis
Was an American politician, statesman, and civil rights activist and leader who served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia’s 5th district congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020. He was the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from 1963 to 1966.

Thurgood Marshall
(July 2,1908 -January 24, 1993)
Thurgood Marshall – perhaps best known as the first African American Supreme Court Justice – played an instrumental role in promoting racial equality during the civil rights movement. As a practicing attorney, Marshall argued a record-breaking 32 cases before the Supreme Court, winning 29 of them. In fact, Marshall represented and won more cases before the high court than any other person.
During his 24-year term as Supreme Court justice, Marshall’s passionate support for individual and civil rights guided his policies and decisions. Most historians regard him as an influential figure in shaping social policies and upholding laws to protect minorities.

Toni Morrison
(February 18, 1931-August 5, 2019)
Was an American novelist, essayist, book editor, and college professor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she gained worldwide recognition when she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

Barack Obama
(August 4, 1961)
Is an American politician and attorney who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.

Michelle Obama
Is an American attorney and author who was the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She is married to the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama, and was the first African-American first lady.

Rosa Parks
(February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has called her “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement”.

Colin Powell
(April 5, 1937) Is a United Statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State (2001-2005), serving under President George W Bush. He was the first African American appointed to that position. He was the first, and so far the only, African American to serve on the Chief of Staff.

Jack Roosevelt Robinson
(January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972)
Was an American professional baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. When the Dodgers signed Robinson, they heralded the end of racial segregation in professional baseball that had relegated black players to the Negro leagues since the 1880s. Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.

Madame C.J. Walker
(December 23, 1867-May 28, 1965)
Sarah Breedlove, known as Madame C.J. Walker, was African American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and a political and social activist. Walker was considered the wealthiest African American businesswoman and wealthiest self-made woman in American at the time of her death in 1919.
Net worth: $10,000,000

Venus & Serena Williams
The Williams sisters are two professional American tennis players: Venus Williams (b. 1980), a seven-time Grand Slam title winner (singles), and Serena Williams (b. 1981), twenty-three-time Grand Slam title winner (singles), both of whom were coached from an early age by their parents Richard Williams and Oracene Price. There is a noted professional rivalry between them— between the 2001 US Open and the 2017 Australian Open tournaments, they met in nine Grand Slam singles finals. They became the first two players, female or male, to play in four consecutive Grand Slam singles finals from the 2002 French Open to the 2003 Australian Open; Serena famously won all four to complete the first of two “Serena Slams”.