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Bessie Coleman was born into poverty and picked cotton to help support her family. As WWI ended, her dream was to fly, but every flying school turned her down because of her gender and race.Full Story African-Americans have contributed to American society in every walk of life, and one purpose of Black History Month is to call attention to some of those who may have escaped notice. Here are 10 brief biographies from the Profile America series produced by the U.S. Census Bureau.Full Story Zora Neale Hurston was one of the great talents of the Harlem Renaissance - but had to work as a manicurist to support herself.Full Story A century ago, bread bought at stores was hand-made, a time intensive process. That changed when a baker from Boston, Joseph Lee, invented the automatic bread-making machine.Full Story Thousands of Americans owe their lives to the inventions of Garrett Morgan. The son of former slaves, Morgan invented the gas mask.Full Story When William Grant Still mounted the podium and began conducting the L.A. Philharmonic in 1936, it marked the first time that an African-American had led a major symphonic orchestra.Full Story Sarah Breedlove Walker was born the daughter of former slaves and orphaned at the age of seven. She went on to become America's first African-American woman millionaire business-owner.Full Story Seventy years before Rosa Parks sparked the civil rights movement by refusing to move to the back of a bus, there was Ida B. Wells.Full Story On a hot summer night in Chicago, in 1893, a deliveryman was rushed to the emergency room of Provident Hospital. He had been stabbed in the heart in a barroom brawl.Full Story Paul Williams was orphaned at the age of 4 and no one paid much attention to the child's artistic talent. But he earned his engineering degree and went on to become one of the nation's premier architects.Full Story
From the U.S. Census Bureau
Seventy years before Rosa Parks sparked the civil rights movement by refusing to move to the back of a bus, there was Ida B. Wells.
Riding a train in 1884, she was asked by a conductor to move from her seat in the ladies' car to the smoking car. When she refused, it took three men to remove Wells from her seat. She immediately hired a lawyer to bring suit against the railroad, winning 500-dollars in damages.
Although the decision was overturned on appeal, Wells spent the rest of her life as a journalist and tireless crusader against racial injustice. Now, there are just over 300,000 reporters and editors in the U.S., more than half of them women, and five percent African American.
This profile is adapted from Profile America, a radio series produced by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2004.
