| By Carol Brennan |
For Black History Month this February, we have another round of outstanding Americans from past and present to highlight in honor of Black achievement. All are featured in Gale In Context: Biography.
One of the more fascinating milestones recently added to Gale In Context: Biography was the achievement of John Hawkins (born c. 1962), a University of Mississippi student who became the first Black cheerleader at the school in 1982. When he objected to carrying the Ole Miss flag that still featured Confederate-era symbolism, it became a national news story and prompted the Ku Klux Klan to stage a march through his college town of Oxford. Hawkins graduated into a long career in corporate marketing and still grants television interviews to discuss the ongoing controversy over the South’s Civil War monuments.
In 2024, Philadelphia’s first female mayor, Cherelle Parker (born 1972), was sworn into office, capping a storied career devoted to public service and advocating for the health and prosperity of Pennsylvanians. A West Philadelphian born to a 16-year-old mother, Parker was raised by her grandparents; at the age of 16 herself, Parker became the sole caregiver for her disabled, newly widowed grandfather. She has cited the 1946 novel The Street by Ann Petry (1908–1997), the first Black woman to achieve bestseller status, as a profound influence on her as a high schooler, along with the classic choreopoem by Ntozake Shange (1948–2018), For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf. Also in 2024, voters elected two Black women who are making history by serving in the Senate at the same time: Lisa Blunt Rochester (born 1962), the first woman and first African American from Delaware to represent her state in both chambers of Congress, and Angela Alsobrooks (born 1971), the first African American to represent Maryland.
Pioneering surgeon and blood-research specialist Dr. Charles R. Drew (1904–1950) was one of the many accomplished graduates of Paul L. Dunbar (1872–1906) High School in Washington, DC. The Amherst College alumnus earned his medical degree in Montreal and went on to complete a doctorate from Columbia University with a 1940 dissertation on blood bank practices. Drew also discovered the process by which blood plasma is stored; his scientific breakthroughs saved countless lives in battlefield during World War II. Another outstanding figure in the field of medicine, Daniel Hale Williams (1856–1931), is credited with performing the first successful open-heart surgery. Williams founded the first Black-owned hospital in the United States, and in 1895 was a co-founder of the first medical association for Black American medical professionals.
American fashion designer Ann Lowe (1898–1981) had a long list of prominent clients, including future First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994), who wore one of Lowe’s creations for her 1953 wedding to Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy (1917–1963). A third-generation dressmaker from Alabama, Lowe studied at a New York City design academy as a young woman and dressed multiple generations of socialites from her atelier in Manhattan. Her work paved the way for future fashion trailblazers such as André Leon Talley (1948–2022), Tracy Reese (born 1964), Kimora Lee Simmons (born 1975), Virgil Abloh (1980–2021), and Telfar Clemens (born 1985).
Not surprisingly, we’ve run out of space here and must save more fascinating Black trailblazers for next February. In the meantime, feel free to start exploring Gale In Context: Biography to discover thousands of amazing profiles of both the celebrated and the unsung.
About the Author
Carol Brennan has been writing biographical entries for Cengage/Gale since 1993. If she’s not writing, she is either at yoga or walking her dachshund. Carol consumes an alarming volume of podcasts and audiobooks weekly.