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African Americans: Quick Facts

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News •

US Democrats candidate Colom wins Mississippi, is state's first Black senator in over 150 years • Nov. 11, 2026, 11:25 PM ET (Jerusalem Post)
Taft Museum announces major Duncanson exhibition for 2027 • Nov. 11, 2026, 12:08 PM ET (Cincinnati CityBeat)
Today in History: November 10, white supremacists stage coup in Wilmington, North Carolina • Nov. 10, 2026, 4:02 AM ET (South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Scott Colom and Black Mississippians stand on the cusp of Senate history as vote count stretches on • Nov. 7, 2026, 12:54 PM ET (PBS)
SLU weighs cuts to African American, gender studies, sparking backlash • Nov. 6, 2026, 11:30 AM ET (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Photos and Videos

Barack Obama waves on stage with his wife Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia at an election-night rally in Chicago, surrounded by American flags and cheering crowds.
Portrait of Crispus Attucks, shown from the chest up wearing a dark coat and white cravat, with short hair and a neutral expression.
The Confessions of Nat Turner
Freedmen
Henry Highland Garnet
United States: extension of slavery
Martin R. Delany
American Civil War diary
Hiram Rhoades Revels
Booker T. Washington
Collage spells African American English in cutout letters; at right, a large open mouth, a hand with megaphone, and chat bubbles with laptop.
Two reenactors and an illustration of a Black soldier from the First Rhode Island Regiment stand against a background of historical handwritten text.
How the Whitney Plantation teaches the history of slavery
Learn about the Union regiments and commanders Michigan contributed largely to the Western front of the American Civil War
Black and white image of the Greensboro Sit-In, in which young African American students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter.
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Related Topics and References

Topics
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Key People

Abraham Lincoln portrait
Abraham Lincoln
president of United States
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Frederick O’Neal
American actor
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams
president of United States
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
president of United States
John Calhoun
John C. Calhoun
vice president of United States
Jackie Wilson, 1950s.
Jackie Wilson
American singer
John Marshall Harlan
John Marshall Harlan
United States jurist [1833-1911]
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Sophia B. Packard
American educator
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Myrtilla Miner
American educator
Benton, Thomas Hart
Thomas Hart Benton
American writer and politician
Benjamin F. Wade
Benjamin F. Wade
American politician
Brown, Hallie Quinn
Hallie Quinn Brown
American educator
Byllye Avery accepting Lifetime Television's 2002 Trailblazer Award, at Lifetime's first annual achievement awards ceremony, celebrating women who made a positive impact on the world.
Byllye Avery
American health-care activist
Fannie Barrier Williams
Fannie Barrier Williams
American civic leader and lecturer
Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald
American merchant and philanthropist
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Houston A. Baker, Jr.
American educator and critic
Mary McLeod Bethune
Mary McLeod Bethune
American educator
Coppin, Fanny Jackson
Fanny Jackson Coppin
American educator
Walter White, 1942
Walter White
American civil rights activist
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Sonia Sanchez
American poet, playwright, and educator

Related Quizzes

Transfused Human blood in storage
Do You Know These African American Innovators? Quiz
Brown v. Board. L-R: George E.C. Hayes, Washington, D.C. lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, special counsel for the NAACP; and James Nabrit, Jr., Professor and Attorney at law at Howard University, pose outside Attorneys who argued the case against segregation stand together smiling in front of the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. after the decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka on May 17, 1954. In this case, the Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
How Well Do You Know Your African American History? Education, Politics, and Protest