African American history is filled with important milestones and breakthrough achievements. The following list calls out just a few notable "firsts" in the history of African Americans.

Astronauts
In August 1983 Guion Bluford became the first African American to go into space, while serving on a mission aboard the Challenger space shuttle. Bluford said that the blastoff of the shuttle was like riding in a high-speed elevator through a bonfire. He also recognized that, "From a black perspective, my flight on the shuttle represented another step forward."

Astronaut Mae Jemison became the first African American woman to travel in space when she flew on the space shuttle Endeavor in a September 1992 mission. After her space flight, Jemison resigned from NASA and established the Jemison Group, a company that researches, develops, and markets advanced technologies.

 

Black Church
Protestant minister Richard Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first black church that would have a nationwide following, in Philadelphia in 1816. A group of black parishioners at Saint George's Church in Philadelphia had formed the congregation that became the AME as early as 1786. From its inception, the AME has been dedicated to black self-improvement and Pan-Africanist ideals.

African American historian Carter G. Woodson organized the first annual celebration of Negro History Week in 1926. It was held during the second week in February in honor of the birthdays of African American scholar Frederick Douglass and former United States president Abraham Lincoln. Promoted by schools and the press as a way to celebrate black history and achievement, the event steadily gained in popularity. In the early 1970s, Negro History Week was extended and renamed Black History Month.

 

Film
In 1919 writer and motion-picture director Oscar Micheaux made The Homesteader, the first full-length film directed by an African American. The film, based on Micheaux's own novel, depicts the adventures of a self-made black settler in the American West. Micheaux went on to produce, write, and direct more than 30 films over the next three decades. In 1931 he made the first African American feature-length sound movie, The Exile.

 

Golf champion
In 1997 Tiger Woods, whose father is African American and whose mother is Thai, became both the first African American and the first Asian American to win the Masters golf tournament. At the same time, he broke several tournament records, including youngest champion (21 years of age), lowest score for 72 holes (18 under par at 270), and widest margin of victory (12 strokes). Woods's winning streak continued in subsequent years, making him one of the greatest players in the sport's history.

 

Governor
Douglas Wilder became the first African American to be elected governor when Virginia voters chose him to lead their state in 1989.  (In 1872, another African American, P. B. S. Pinchback, briefly served as governor of Louisiana after the sitting governor was impeached, but Pinchback was never elected to the post.) A decorated hero of the Korean War (1950-1953), Wilder began his political career as Virginia state senator (1969-1985) and later served as Virginia's lieutenant governor (1985-1989) before being elected governor. His success as a Democrat in a largely white, Republican state stemmed from his position as a "healer" of racial strife, his moderate views on social policy, and his fiscal conservatism.

 

Major league baseball player
In 1947 Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers lineup, becoming the first African American to play in the major leagues since baseball became segregated in the mid-1880s (see Baseball: The History of Baseball). Breaking baseball's color barrier was a serious challenge, and Robinson met fierce resistance from many players and fans who believed in the separation of people on the basis of race. Robinson endured malicious catcalls and racial slurs shouted from the stands. He also received anonymous notes threatening death if he continued to play baseball. Some rival players threw pitches at Robinson's head, spat on him when he slid into a base, and attempted to injure him with the spikes on their shoes. Despite this abuse, the determined Robinson helped the Dodgers win the National League (NL) pennant in 1947. During the season he led the NL with 29 stolen bases, and sportswriters named Robinson rookie of the year.

 

Nobel Peace Prize
Scholar and diplomat Ralph J. Bunche became, in 1950, the first African American to win a Nobel Peace Prize. Bunche received the award for his role as the architect of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping efforts and for having negotiated the four armistice agreements that halted the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. In 1955 Bunche was named the UN's Undersecretary for Special Political Affairs; in that capacity he oversaw UN peacekeeping operations in some of the most heated conflicts around the world. United States President John F. Kennedy awarded Bunche the nation's highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, in 1963.

 

Novel
In 1853 William Wells Brown wrote Clotel; or, The President's Daughter, the first novel by an African American author. First published in England, Clotel is a fictional account of slave children allegedly fathered by United States president Thomas Jefferson. The first novel published in the United States by an African American author was also the first novel published by a black American woman, Harriet Wilson. Her novel Our Nig (1859) details the difficulties faced by Northern free blacks.

 

Poem
In 1746 Lucy Terry, an African-born slave in Rhode Island, composed the first known poem by a black American: "Bar's Fight." The poem, which was not published until 1855, describes a Native American raid against white settlers in New England. In 1773 poet Phillis Wheatley became the first African American to publish a book, entitled Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Considered the founder of African American literature, Wheatley is perhaps best remembered for her poem "On Being Brought from Africa to America," which describes her experience coming to America as a seven-year-old child and as a slave.

 

Pulitzer Prize
In 1950 poet and novelist Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize, which she received for her second book of poetry, Annie Allen (1949). 
Brooks was praised throughout her writing career for poems that grapple with issues of art, identity, race, gender, and the relation between literature and popular culture.  

 

Secretary of state
In 2001 General Colin Powell became the first African American secretary of state, when he was appointed to the post by president George W. Bush. Earlier in his distinguished career as a military leader, Powell became, in 1989, the first black officer to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military post in the country. Appointed to that position by Bush's father, President George Herbert Walker Bush, Powell played a pivotal role in the Persian Gulf War of 1991.

 

 

Senator
The son of former slaves, Hiram Revels became the first African American to serve in the United States Senate. Revels was elected in 1870 to fill the seat left vacant by--of all people--Jefferson Davis, the champion of slavery who had resigned from the Senate to become president of the Confederate States of America and to lead the South in the American Civil War (1861-1865). A former minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Revels was one of the first in a long history of black "preacher-politicians."

 

Supreme Court justice
In 1967 civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall became the first African American justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. One of the country's most influential and well-known lawyers, Marshall was a tireless advocate for the rights of minorities and the poor. Before his term as Supreme Court justice, Marshall was director of the legal defense fund for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and a lawyer whose victory in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) outlawed segregation in American public education. Although he was the first African American to serve in several powerful government positions, Marshall said he hesitated to take on the roles, not wanting to abandon his friends in the civil rights movement. But, he said, "when one has the opportunity to serve the government, he should think twice before passing it up."

 

Tennis champion
The Associated Press (AP) honored tennis champion Althea Gibson with the Female Athlete of the Year Award in 1957, the year she won the women's singles and doubles tennis championships at Wimbledon, the United States women's clay court singles championship at River Forest, Illinois, and the U.S. Open singles and doubles championships at Forest Hills in New York City. Gibson was the first African American to win each of these major tournaments. In the 1960s Gibson retired from tennis and became a professional golfer.

 

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