Born on October 17, 1956, Mae Jemison grew up watching Apollo airings on TV but was upset that there were no female astronauts. She was determined to one day travel in space. Mae graduated high school at 16 and attended Stanford University where, as one of the only African American students in her class, she experienced racial discrimination. Following Stanford, Ms. Jemison went on to get her medical degree at Cornell and open a family practice. She worked as a physician until she witnessed Sally Ride become the first American woman in space. In 1987, Jemison was chosen as one of 15 people out of 2,000 applicants to join NASA Astronaut Group 12. Her September 12, 1992 voyage on the space shuttle Endeavor made Mae Jemison the first African American woman in Space.

Click here for a read aloud of "Mae Among The Stars" by Rhoda Ahmed.

In 1958, after being a member of one of the first racially-integrated dance companies in the United States, Alvin Ailey founded his own dance company. His dance theater carried out his vision of a company dedicated to enriching the American modern dance heritage and preserving the uniqueness of the African-American cultural experience. Mr. Ailey was a pioneer of programs promoting arts in education, particularly those benefiting underserved communities. Throughout his lifetime, he was awarded numerous distinctions, including the Kennedy Center Honor in 1988 in recognition of his extraordinary contribution to American culture. In 2014, he posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, in recognition of his contributions and commitment to civil rights and dance in America.

-excerpted from alvinailey.org

Click here for a read aloud of the book "Alvin Ailey" by Andrea Davis Pinkney

Bessie Coleman was born in Atlanta, Texas, on January 26, 1892. Her mother was African American, and her father’s ancestors were Black and Choctaw, a Native American people; they were both sharecroppers who picked cotton for a landowner. As a young girl, her family moved to Texas, where she attended segregated schools. When her brother John returned from fighting in France during World War I, he told stories of the freedom that women overseas enjoyed; they could be pilots. That sparked Bessie’s new dream: to be an aviatrix. She saved up money and applied to U.S. flight schools. But every school rejected her because she was Black and a woman. She learned French, left the United States, and enrolled in the Cauldron Brothers’ School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, France. She earned her international pilot’s license on June 15, 1921, within a year of enrolling.When she returned to the United States in 1922 as an aerial acrobat, Coleman amazed Black and white audiences with her daredevil feats. On April 30, 1926, she died in a plane accident caused by a loose wrench lodging into the engine’s controls. But her courageous feats of flight have inspired a fleet of Black women pilots who came after her and journeyed to the sky.

- excerpted from National Geographic Kids

Click here for a read aloud of "Nobody Owns The Sky" by Reeve Lindbergh and Pamela Paparone

A precocious child, Simone played piano and organ in girlhood. She became sensitive to racism when at age 12 she gave a piano recital in a library where her parents had to stand in back because they were Black. A student of classical music at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, she began performing as a pianist. Her vocal career began in 1954 in an Atlantic City, New Jersey, nightclub when the club owner threatened to fire her unless she sang too. Her first album featured her distinctive versions of jazz and cabaret standards, including “I Loves You, Porgy,” which became a 1959 hit. By the early 1960s, Simone became active in the Civil Rights Movement, taking part in the Selma to Montgomery marches and recording several songs that soon became civil rights anthems. Her original song, “Mississippi Goddam,” was banned from radio play throughout the South for its frank discussion of racism. She also covered Billie Holliday’s “Strange Fruit” and wrote the gospel-influenced “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” in memory of her late friend, the playwright Lorraine Hansberry. Simone became a friend of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, and performed at civil rights demonstrations.

-excerpted from Boulder Swing Dance and and Biography,com

Click here for a read aloud of "Nina" by Traci N. Todd

Illustrated by Christian Robinson

Click here to watch a new music video for the song " I'm Feelin' Good" by Nina Simone

During the 2016 pre-season of the American National Football League, Colin Kaepernick knelt during the US national anthem, as a respectful way of calling for the country to protect and uphold the rights of all its people. The bold move was a response to the disproportionate numbers of black people being killed by police. It sparked a movement that follows a long tradition of non-violent protests that have made history.

While the polarized response to the “take-a-knee” protest has ignited a debate about the right to protest and free speech, Colin Kaepernick has remained focused on highlighting the injustices that moved him to act. His charity, the Colin Kaepernick Foundation, works to fight oppression around the world through education and social activism, including through free “Know Your Rights” camps which educate and empower young people.

-excerpted from Amnesty International

Click here for an animated video of interesting facts about Colin Kaepernick

Born in 1949 in Mobile, Ala., Johnson grew up tinkering and taking things apart. He dismantled his sister’s doll to see what made the eyes close and built a go-cart out of junkyard scraps and a lawnmower engine. He represented his segregated high school in a 1968 science fair — the only black student to compete. His compressed-air-power robot, the “Linex,” took first prize. After earning a master’s degree in nuclear engineering Johnson went to work for Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the U.S. Air Force. It was there he helped develop the stealth bomber program.

Four years later, he was hired at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a systems engineer for the Galileo mission to Jupiter, the Mars Observer spacecraft and the Cassini mission to Saturn.

In 1982, while working at home on a heat pump, Johnson was trying out nozzles in his bathroom sink when one of them shot a powerful steam into the bathtub. “And from that point, I thought if I had a toy water gun that was really high pressure and something that a small kid could operate, it would really be neat,” said Johnson. After several years of tinkering and some setbacks, he licensed his idea to the Larami Corporation, which was eventually bought by Hasbro Inc.

-excerpted from Lonniejohnson.com

Click here to read "Whoosh: Lonnie Johnson's Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions" by Chris Barton and Don Tate