History has its eyes on us.
What a topical message for what will undoubtedly be known as a historical year. A pandemic that has killed 430,000 people — a disproportionate number of them Black Americans. A movement for racial justice that drove thousands to protest for months. A riot that brought the Confederate flag to the U.S. Capitol. It’s no wonder the words of poet Amanda Gorman struck such a cord with her audience on Inauguration Day.
Black History Month is a time we pay tribute to the heroes and heroines of U.S. history and recognize the vast contributions they’ve made to American culture. To showcase their stories, The Washington Post compiled a selection of recently published stories and columns that represent Black excellence and triumph.
This page will update throughout the month of February.
In tribute to the lives lost
“I follow my conscience, not my complexion.” John Lewis, a civil rights and congressional leader, died at the age of 80 on July 17. The Georgia Democrat spent three decades in Congress defending the gains he had helped achieve for people of color as a 1960s civil rights leader. | By Washington Post Staff
Katherine Johnson, NASA mathematician and inspiration for the film “Hidden Figures”
John Thompson Jr., first Black coach to win the NCAA championship
Lucile Bridges, mother who stood by her daughter Ruby through school desegregation
Fred “Curly” Neal, dribbling “wizard” of the Globetrotters
Bob Gibson, intimidating Hall of Fame pitcher with a blazing fastball
“Purpose crosses disciplines. Purpose is an essential element of you. It is the reason you are on the planet at this particular time in history.” Chadwick Boseman portrayed monumental figures like Jackie Robinson and Marvel superhero Black Panther. | By Matt Schudel
Bill Withers, Grammy-winning writer and singer of “Lean on Me”
Joseph Lowery, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Stanley Crouch, combative writer, intellectual and authority on jazz
David Dinkins, New York City’s first Black mayor
Johnny Nash, singer-songwriter of “I Can See Clearly Now”
“I wait for roles — first, to be written for a woman, then, to be written for a Black woman,” Cicely Tyson told the Entertainment News Service in 1997. “And then I have the audacity to be selective about the kinds of roles I play. I’ve really got three strikes against me. So, aren’t you amazed I’m still here?” Perspective: Tyson embodied what it takes to be a great actor: instinct and intention. | By Anne Hornaday
Herman Cain, chief executive and former GOP presidential hopeful
Little Richard, flamboyant star of early rock-and-roll
C.T. Vivian, aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Freddy Cole, jazz pianist and older brother of Nat King Cole
Ellis Marsalis, pianist who launched a jazz dynasty in New Orleans
“I believed, and still do, that there was a reason why I was chosen to break the record. I feel it’s my task to carry on where Jackie Robinson left off, and I only know one way to go about it.” The life and career of Hank Aaron, a baseball great who became a force for civil rights. | By Washington Post Staff
Bruce Carver Boynton, civil rights lawyer whose prior actions helped spark the Freedom Rides
Theodore Gaffney, photographer who risked his life documenting the Freedom Riders
Gale Sayers, Hall of Fame running back for Chicago Bears
Charley Pride, country music legend
Betty Wright, Grammy-winning soul singer and songwriter
During his final season with the Lakers, Kobe Bryant wrote a poem called “Dear Basketball,” which amounted to a farewell to the game that made him a household name: “As a six-year-old boy / Deeply in love with you / I never saw the end of the tunnel / I only saw myself / Running out of one.” Remembering Kobe Bryant, a tireless competitor who became a global sports icon. | By Kent Babb
Slavery and freedom
Even after abolition, the Black experience has fallen victim to campaigns that obscure the darkest parts of the American story, diminishing African Americans’ connections to their pasts and warping the collective memory of the nation’s history. But in recent years, Black Americans have pursued new efforts to uncover their stories. From exploring sunken vessels of the Middle Passage to reconstructing museum exhibits that chronicle slavery, African Americans are breaking down the barriers that separate them from their ancestors and reconnecting with a lineage once lost. Explore The Descendants project. | By Nicole Ellis.
For the 50 million students attending public school in America, how they are taught about America’s history of slavery and its deprivations is as fundamental as how they are taught about the Declaration of Independence and its core assertion that “all men are created equal.” A deep understanding of one without a deep understanding of the other is to not know America at all. | By Joe Heim
“If they find the remains, we can know how old she was when she arrived. Did she have children? What did she die of? We will know more about this person, and we can reclaim her humanity.” History professor Cassandra Newby-Alexander on Angela, the first African woman documented in Virginia. | By DeNeen L. Brown
Movement for racial justice
The Post’s six-part series examines the role systemic racism played throughout George Floyd’s 46-year life. The reporting explores the institutional and societal roadblocks Floyd encountered as a Black man from his birth in 1973 until his death. | By Washington Post Staff
Perspective: The education sector hasn’t done enough to teach Americans about racism’s causes and to prepare us for its consequences. | By Ruth Simmons
“There is always that sense that, ‘Am I going to have the experience that I want, which is to be free of race and to enjoy this moment? Or will race tap me on the shoulder?’ And it usually does.” Lonnie G. Bunch III, director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, recalls his family’s stories of travel during the Green Book-era and reflects on travel today. | By Rhonda Colvin
Racism denied Auburn’s first Black student a master’s degree. Then, at 86, he returned. | By DeNeen L. Brown
Politics
Vice President Harris is the first woman and Black and South Asian person to hold the nation’s second-highest office. “On this night of celebration, a Black woman was not last. She was not the least of many. She was at the center of it all.” On how Harris made history with quiet, exquisite power. | By Robin Givhan
Read Harris’s acceptance speech.
“I have tears in my eyes but joy in my soul,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) said on Twitter. “I am so overwhelmed, as I know that women around the nation, women of color, and yes Black women can see their equal status in this nation finally.” Harris pick creates an emotional moment for Black women. | By Annie Linskey and Vanessa Williams
“The 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else’s cotton went to the polls and picked her youngest son to be a United States senator. The improbable journey that led me to this place in this historic moment in America could only happen here.” The Rev. Raphael Warnock, Georgia’s first Black senator, referencing his mother’s work in the 1950s picking cotton and tobacco in his victory speech. For many Black church congregants, Raphael Warnock’s projected victory was an answer to their prayers. | By Clyde McGrady
At the turn of the 20th century — more than 50 years after the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls — many White women remained opposed to suffrage, fearing a fall from their domestic pedestals. Meanwhile, Black women, with less to lose and so much to gain, were almost uniformly in favor of the vote. Deltas: The Black sorority that faced racism in the suffrage movement but refused to walk away. | By Sydney Trent
“Leadership is about answering that question: How can I help?” Abrams is the first Black woman in U.S. history to have won the gubernatorial nomination of either major party. She garnered more votes than any Democrat who has run statewide in Georgia. After losing the governor race by just over 50,000 votes, she focused her efforts on combating voter suppression in the 2020 presidential election. | By Washington Post staff
Business and the economy
White Tulsans killed scores of African Americans and destroyed nearly $2 million in property ($29 million in today’s dollars). No Black property owners were compensated. Now, as activists across the country mobilize around reparations to atone for slavery and its legacy of systemic discrimination against African Americans, some Black Tulsans are demanding restitution for the massacre, the theft of Black wealth and government barriers to rebuilding. | By Tracy Jan
Roz Brewer, the only Black woman who helms a Fortune 500 company who is now in charge of Walgreens’ vaccine rollout, recounts an encounter she had with a male CEO who mistakenly asked her if she worked in marketing or merchandising departments at a CEO-only event. | By Jena McGregor
“You always have to be the best and prove a point, simply because of who you are and what your family has gone through.” Morgan Carter, 21, the great-granddaughter of a survivor of the 1923 Rosewood massacre on how a scholarship helped — and didn’t help — descendants of Rosewood victims. | By Robert Samuels
Columnist Michelle Singletary recalls her experience as one of relatively few Black reporters at The Post in the early 1990s and examines the notion that affirmative action gives unqualified Black people an unfair advantage. Read her 10-part series about race and inequality, in which she tackles investing, wealth, reparations and more. | By Michelle Singletary
Military
“I’m thinking about wearing the same flight suit with the same wings on my chest as my peers and then being questioned by another military member, are you a pilot?” The new Air Force chief wasn’t sure how to address George Floyd’s killing. Then he talked to his son. | By Dan Lamothe
Retired four-star Army general Lloyd Austin, who made history by becoming the nation’s first African American defense secretary, on eradicating extremism from the military. | By Missy Ryan and Paul Sonne
Julius Becton Jr., a retired lieutenant general who earned a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts in Korea, on the tragic stories behind the executive order that eventually desegregated the U.S. armed forces. | By DeNeen L. Brown
Art and artifacts
“I get tons of girls who write to me or come up to me after I recite my poetry saying, ‘I have your same exact speech impediment and I’m writing poetry. Thank you for sharing your story.’ Moments like that are the most exciting because the momentum doesn’t end with me. It’s just being generated through me. And I get to watch this new generation take up the mantle and continue those conversations.” Amanda Gorman reflects on her experience as a Youth Poet Laureate. | By Madeline Weinfield
Opinion: On stages large and small, Black artists boldly offered up galvanizing visions that suggest not only can Americans of all races disentangle ourselves from a racist past, but also we can build a better future together. | By Alyssa Rosenberg
The 1619 Project has emerged as a watchword for our era — a hashtag, a talking point, a journalism case study, a scholarly mission. It is the subject of dueling academic screeds, Fox News segments, publishers’ bidding wars and an upcoming series of Oprah-produced films. How the 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones took over 2020. | By Sarah Ellison
Black TV writers have often felt like “diversity decoration.” Now they’re braced for another round of promises. | By Sonia Rao
“The career I have is about storytelling, but I’m more than an actor. I’m a producer and a founder of a hair company and a CEO. I’m an American citizen. I’m a Black woman.” Q&A with Tracee Ellis Ross. | By Geoff Edgers
The great-great granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker, the country’s first Black female millionaire, grew up with the remnants of her wealth. | By DeNeen L. Brown
Sports
“People on the low have told me I could lose my job for this. A lot of people told me not to do it. People told me to stop stirring trouble. I became an agitator in my hometown, for talking about a guy who was murdered in his community. But one of the great things about coaching: I got more support from the community than I got threats.” Jason Vaughn emerged as a leading advocate for justice for Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man — and his former linebacker — who was shot and killed after being chased by armed White men while jogging in a local neighborhood. | By Roman Stubbs
Perspective: Simone Manuel didn’t just win any medal. She didn’t sneak in at the end and get a bronze. No, she recovered from a poor start in the 100-meter freestyle, blazed at the turn and won gold. She finished in a dead heat with Canada’s Penny Oleksiak to share first place in an Olympic record time of 52.70 seconds. She realizes how powerful a symbol she now is. | By Jerry Brewer
Perspective: Two knees. One protesting in the grass, one pressing on the back of a man’s neck. Choose. You have to choose which knee you will defend. There are no half choices; there is no room for indifference. There is only the knee of protest or the knee on the neck. This is why Colin Kaepernick took a knee. | By Sally Jenkins
Perspective: Protesters often win history’s long game. Ask Tommie Smith and John Carlos. | By Jerry Brewer
A sharecropper’s daughter, Wyomia Tyus grew up on a dairy farm in rural Georgia during the Jim Crow era. She overcame family tragedy as a teenager and went on to win four Olympic medals, including the two 100-meter golds. She also set or equaled the 100-meter world record four times. | By Stephen Wilson
Family and relationships
For Black women, looking after their mental and emotional well-being is just as or more important than taking your prenatal vitamin every morning. The existential stress can take a toll. Coverage of the community has revolved around high maternal mortality rates, but Helena Andrews-Dyer needed to read an article about joy. This is it. This isn’t another horror story about Black motherhood. | By Helena Andrews-Dyer
For interracial couples, Vice President Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff are a “monumental” symbol. Together Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants who identifies culturally as Black, and Emhoff, a Jewish entertainment lawyer, represent yet another less-heralded first: the first interracial couple at the highest reaches of the executive branch. | By Sydney Trent
“Our kids are not natural-born activists. They don’t gravitate toward a protest march. But I think, for most people, if you’re troubled by the state of the world, doing something to express your agitation, your concern, your aspiration, is really helpful and healthy. We would love our girls to experience that.” Andrew Grant-Thomas, co-founder of EmbraceRace, a family-focused racial justice nonprofit. What five Black fathers are saying to their children about this historic moment. | By Caitlin Gibson