Elbert Frank Cox was born in 1895 in Evansville, Indiana. He came from a highly religious family and his father was a school principal. While in high school, Cox showed and unusual aptitude toward mathematics and physics. After he graduated high school, he was sent to Indiana University.

After earning his baccalaureate degree in mathematics from Indiana, he served in the US Army as a staff sergeant during World War I. After being discharged from military service, Cox became a math teacher at a high school in Henderson, Kentucky. In 1920, he joined the faculty of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. After teaching there for two years, he received a scholarship to attend Cornell University. In 1925, he became the first-ever African-American to earn his doctoral in pure mathematics, with his dissertation in the area of polynomial solutions of difference equations.

In the fall of 1925, he became the head of mathematics and physics at West Virginia State College. Soon after, he married a local school teacher and had three children. In 1929, he was invited to teach at Howard University. He taught there for the next 20 years before becoming the chair of the Department of Mathematics for the university. During his time at Howard, he continued research into abstract mathematics and helped craft the university’s grading system. He remained at Howard until 1966.

Cox specialized in interpolation theory, differential equations, and difference equations. He gained membership in various educational societies such as Beta Kappa Chi, Pi Mu Epsilon, and Sigma Pi Sigma. He was an active member of the American Mathematical Society, the American Physics Institute and the American Physical Society. He passed away in 1969, but he will be remembered as a trailblazer for African-Americans in the field of mathematics. His academic contributions made Dr. Cox a Great American.

Fannie Lou Townsend was born the youngest of 20 children in Sunflower County, Mississippi in 1917. Her entire family were sharecroppers who picked cotton. She attended school for only six years before being forced to quit in order to help the family pick cotton. She worked as a cotton picker until the age of 27 when it was discovered by the plantation owner that she was literate. She was then moved to be a record keeper for the plantation. In 1945, she married Perry Hamer. She would continue to work on the plantation with her husband for the next 18 years.

During the 1950s, she attended several civil rights meetings throughout Mississippi. During this time in 1961, Hamer was forcibly sterilized while having a tumor removed. This procedure was a part of a plan, developed by the government of Mississippi, to reduce the number of poor blacks in the state. In 1962, she decided to register to vote with a group as they sang spirituals. Because of her actions, she was fired from the plantation.

Hamer then joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and began travelling throughout the south as a activist and literacy workshop organizer. In 1963, she was arrested in Winona, Mississippi and nearly beaten to death by police and inmates. After her release and recovery, she helped to organize the “Freedom Summer” initiative. She insisted that the initiative be multi-racial in nature. In 1964, she was elected the vice-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. This was a direct threat to the nomination of Lyndon Johnson for president in 1964. Hamer ran for Congress that same year, but was defeated. She continued to be active in politics during the 1968 elections.

Hamer was very involved in helping poor black families in the south. She advocated blacks coming together to farm in collectives instead of being beholden to white plantation owners. She died in 1977 from breast cancer. On her tombstone is one of her most famous quotes: “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Since her death, books, songs, and a musical have been created in her honor. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. She received an honorary doctorate from Tougaloo College and Shaw University. Her contributions to the plight of poor blacks in the south and the cause of equal rights have truly made her a Great American.