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“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Philippians‬ ‭4:8‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Caila Marsai Martin (August 14, 2004) is an actress and producer, known for her role as Diane Johnson on Black-ish (2014–22).

She was born in Plano to Joshua and Carol Martin. Her acting career started after a glamour pictorial. The photographer gave them a discount in exchange for her father’s promise to submit the photos to talent agencies. The photos were sent out to four agencies, and one immediately signed her. At age five, she landed her first national commercial for Choice Hotels. Her family then moved to Los Angeles in 2013, so she could pursue an acting career.

She starred in the comedy film Little, which she produced, becoming the youngest person ever to produce a movie. Time magazine named her on its “Time 100 Next”.

She has received numerous awards and nominations, including three NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and a Young Artist Award. She has received six NAACP Image Awards nominations and two Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.

She made her film debut in the leading role of the original An American Girl Story – Melody 1963: Love Has to Win, set in Detroit during the Civil Rights Movement. She also did a voice role in the movie “Nina,” the life story of American artist and activist Nina Simone.

Theo Shaw (1989) is the E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center. He obtained his BA in Political Science from the University of Louisiana at Monroe. He graduated from the University of Washington School of Law with his JD. He received an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center.

He was a member of the Jena Six, who pleaded no contest to the battery of a white classmate that took place in Jena, Louisiana, in 2006. The prosecutor’s decision to charge the six teens with attempted murder generated media and public outrage across the country. The charges were lowered, but he spent several months in jail. While he was serving time in jail, he consulted law books and drafted motions to lower his bail. The experience led Shaw to pursue law school: “I really didn’t have a plan….I lived in a poor community….That experience changed my whole path. It awakened a desire within me to attend law school.”

He was an intern in 2010 working with the Innocence Project, a nonprofit focused on freeing the wrongfully convicted. After he graduated from the University of Louisiana, he worked as a community advocate at the Southern Poverty Law Center, where his activities were part of the center’s efforts to correct violent and inhumane conditions for incarcerated children and adults.

He chose to attend the University of Washington School of Law, where he received the Gates Public Service Law Scholarship. His classmates and faculty selected him as class valedictorian. In his valedictorian speech, he shared his sense of responsibility as a young attorney: “We may not be guilty or have had anything to do with the injustices that other people experienced in the criminal justice system. But we have a responsibility: a responsibility to the poor, to the condemned, to those who may not be popular in the eyes of the majority.”

Rhonda Ross Kendrick (Rhonda Suzanne Silberstein; August 14, 1971) is a singer and former actress. She is the eldest daughter of singer and actress Diana Ross. She was born in Los Angeles and raised by Ross and her first husband, Robert Ellis Silberstein. Her biological father is Motown Records founder Berry Gordy. She is a graduate of Brown University.

Her most famous acting credit is Toni Burrell on Another World. She played the role (1997-99) and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award in 1998. She appeared in the movie The Personals (1999) and the miniseries The Temptations. In 2004, she released her debut live album, Rhonda Ross Live Featuring Rodney Kendrick.

After working for two years as an agent with the firm Citi Habitats, she founded Ross Realty International, a real estate brokerage firm in New York City in 2008.

In 2013, she joined her mother (Diana Ross) on the In the Name of Love Tour as the opening act for her concerts. In July 2016, she released her first studio album, In Case You Didn’t Know. The album spawned the singles “Summer Day” and “In Case You Didn’t Know”.

Hannah Beachler (August 14, 1970) is a production designer. The first African American to win the Academy Award for Best Production Design, she is known for her Afrofuturist design direction on Marvel Studios’ Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. She has been involved in numerous projects directed by Beyoncé, including Lemonade and Black Is King.

She worked on Creed, the Miles Davis biopic Miles Ahead, and Moonlight. She was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award and won three ADG Awards, a Critics’ Choice Movie Award, and a Saturn Award.

Halle Berry (Maria Halle Berry; August 14, 1966) is an actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film Monster’s Ball, becoming the only woman of African American descent and the only woman of color to have won the award.

She was born in Cleveland to Judith Ann, a white English immigrant from Liverpool, and Jerome Jesse Berry, an African American man. Her name was legally changed to Halle Maria Berry at the age of five. Her parents selected her middle name from Halle’s Department Store, a local Cleveland landmark. Her mother worked as a psychiatric nurse, and her father worked in the same hospital as an attendant in the psychiatric ward; he later became a bus driver.

She was a model and entered several beauty contests, finishing as the first runner-up in the Miss USA pageant and coming in sixth in Miss World. Her breakthrough film role was in the romantic comedy Boomerang, which led to roles in films such as The Flintstones, Bulworth, and the television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

In addition to her Academy Award, she garnered high-profile roles, such as Storm in X-Men, the thrillers Swordfish and Gothika, and the spy film Die Another Day. She appeared in the X-Men sequels, X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand. She has appeared in the science fiction film Cloud Atlas, the crime thriller The Call, and the action films X-Men: Days of Future Past, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.

The Negro Ensemble Company was founded in New York City under the direction of actor Robert Hooks, actor, playwright, and director Douglas Turner Ward, and producer and director Gerald Krone. NEC was criticized for its integrated administration (Krone was white), its Ford Foundation grant, its location in Greenwich Village, and its first season’s bill.

The genesis of the NEC can be traced to 1965 with the production of two one-act plays by Douglas Turner Ward, Happy Ending and Day of Absence, both satires.

The success of the plays prompted the New York Times to ask Ward to write an article on the Afro-Americans in the theatre titled “American Theatre: For Whites Only?” In the article published on August 14, 1966, Ward stressed the need for an established Black theatre by African American playwrights with an unfettered, imaginative Negro angle of vision. He targeted Black audiences as the primary audience. Still, he also wanted to attract an informed white audience who shared common experiences and could readily understand and debate the playwrights’ explorations. Ward’s Times article attracted the attention of W. McNeil Lowrey at the Ford Foundation, which asked him to apply for a grant for such a theatre. The Ford Foundation awarded Ward a $434,000 grant to establish the NEC. Teaming with Robert Hooks, who brought to the NEC his three-year-old Group Theater Workshop, they made the St. Mark’s Playhouse the permanent home of NEC since it had been the site of Ward’s successful playwriting debut. A defined policy established the company as a Black-oriented, Black-controlled theatre of high professional standards with an extensive training program in all facets of theatre, from acting to backstage crafts.

Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr. (August 14, 1959) is a retired basketball player and former president of basketball operations for the Los Angeles Lakers. He played point guard for the Lakers for 13 seasons. After winning championships in high school and college, he was selected first overall in the NBA draft by the Lakers. He won a championship and an NBA Finals MVP Award in his rookie season and won four more championships with the Lakers.

His career achievements include three NBA MVP Awards, nine NBA Finals appearances, twelve All-Star Games, and ten All-NBA First- and Second-Team nominations. He led the league in regular-season assists four times and is the NBA’s all-time leader in average assists per game, at 11.2. He was a member of the 1992 US men’s Olympic basketball team (“The Dream Team”), which won the gold medal. After leaving the NBA in 1992, he formed the Magic Johnson All-Stars. He was honored as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History.

He became a two-time inductee into the Basketball Hall of Fame, being enshrined for his career and for his role on the “Dream Team”.

Since his retirement, he has been an advocate for HIV/AIDS prevention and safe sex, as well as an entrepreneur, philanthropist, broadcaster, and motivational speaker. He is part of a group of investors that purchased the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Los Angeles Sparks.

He runs Magic Johnson Enterprises, a conglomerate with a net worth of $700 million; its subsidiaries include Magic Johnson Productions, a promotional company; Magic Johnson Theaters, a nationwide chain of movie theaters; and Magic Johnson Entertainment, a film studio. He has created the Magic Card, a prepaid MasterCard designed to help low-income people save money and participate in electronic commerce. He created a contract food service with Sodexo USA called Sodexo-Magic. He and his partner Ken Lombard sold Magic Johnson Theaters. He launched a cable TV network called Aspire.

Reverend Dr. Regena Lynn Thomas (1957) is a former politician who served as secretary of state for New Jersey and is the director of the Human Rights and Community Relations Department of the American Federation of Teachers. She was born and raised in Clinton, Kentucky. She graduated from Morehead State University with her BA in Universal Studies.

She began working for the Legislative Research Commission under the Hon. Georgia Davis Powers. She relocated to DC and began working with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the National Rainbow Coalition, where she served as a grassroots campaign organizer. She worked with District of Columbia Mayors Marion Barry and Sharon Pratt during their political campaigns. She remained with the Rev. Jackson for 12 years.

She worked for the DNC as a base vote director. She served on the Democratic Senatorial Committee specializing in African American voter turnout. New Jersey Gov. James McGreevy appointed her as New Jersey’s secretary of state.

She accepted the call into ministry. She attended New Brunswick Theological Seminary and graduated with an M.Div. She was ordained into the African Methodist Episcopal Church and began ministering at Grant Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Trenton, New Jersey. She continued her work in politics as deputy campaign manager for the National Education Association.

Jacqueline Yvonne Harry (August 14, 1956) known by her mononymous stage name Jackée, is an actress, singer, comedian, director, and television personality. She is known for her roles as Sandra Clark, the sexy nemesis of Mary Jenkins on the TV series 227 (1985–90), and as Lisa Landry on Sister, Sister. She is the first and only African American to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.

She made her Broadway debut in A Broadway Musical. Throughout the 1980s, she starred in numerous productions, both on and off Broadway and in national touring productions. She made her return to the theater by starring as Billie Holiday in the play Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill. Following that stage production, she fulfilled the role of “madam who runs a bordello” in the Broadway musical The Boys from Syracuse. In the mid-2000s, she appeared in stage productions of The Sunshine Boys, Damn Yankees, and A Christmas Carol. She toured nationally in JD Lawrence’s The Clean Up Woman.

She was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to an Afro-Trinidadian mother and an African American father, and was raised in Harlem. She began studying acting at the High School of the Performing Arts in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. She graduated from Long Island University with a BA in education. She worked as an American History teacher at Brooklyn Technical High School for two years before beginning a career on the New York stage.

Carl Winston Lumbly (August 14, 1951) is an actor. He is known for his roles as Dick Hallorann in Doctor Sleep, NYPD detective Marcus Petrie on Cagney & Lacey, CIA agent Marcus Dixon on Alias, and as the voice of J’onn J’onnz / Martian Manhunter in Justice League and Justice League Unlimited, as well as Justice League: Doom and the video game Injustice: Gods Among Us. He is known for his roles on the Arrowverse as J’onn J’onnz’s father, M’yrnn, on Supergirl, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as Isaiah Bradley.

He was born to Jamaican immigrants in Minneapolis. He graduated from South High School there and Macalester College.

His first career was as a journalist in Minnesota. While on assignment for a story about a workshop theatre, he was cast as an actor. He stayed with the improvisational company for two years and moved to San Francisco, where he discovered a newspaper ad seeking “two Black actors for South African political plays.” He went to the audition and landed one of the parts. He toured with Danny Glover in productions of Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Island.

He garnered positive reviews for his portrayal of Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale in Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8. He portrayed the ongoing character Earl Williams on L.A. Law.

He co-starred in Sleep with Anger. He starred as the main character in M.A.N.T.I.S. One of his most visible roles was as Marcus Dixon in Alias.

He was cast as the father of the same character for Supergirl. In Superman: The Animated Series, he voiced the mayor of Metropolis in the 1997 episode “Speed Demons” and an alien military general in the episode “Absolute Power”. He voiced the villain Stalker on Batman Beyond. He was cast as Ali in South Central.

Raymond Lee Washington (August 14, 1953 - August 9, 1979) was the founder of the Los Angeles-based street gang known as the Crips. He was born in Los Angeles to Violet Samuel and Reginald Washington. He had three older brothers and one younger brother.

He was a bodybuilder who used his size to intimidate. He had a strong aversion to guns, choosing instead to settle matters with his fists. His penchant for fighting led to his being routinely expelled from school for fighting and being sent to Juvenile Detention Camps.

He admired the Black Panthers and their efforts to bring about social change through their militant stance. He sought to emulate these tactics, joining the Avenues street gang led by Craig Munson. He got into a fight with Munson’s brother and afterward decided to leave the gang to start his group known as the Baby Avenues. The youthful aspect of the gang’s membership led them to adopt the name “the Avenue Cribs,” which later became the Crips.

He told rival gang members that if they refused to join the Crips, they would become the enemy and be subject to attack. Several rival gangs, such as the Piru and Brims, began a loose partnership that evolved into the major Crips’s rival, the Bloods. The Crips numbered over 35,000 members in Los Angeles County, making it by far the largest street gang in US history.

He found little success in establishing an agenda for social change within the Crips. As the gang continued to expand with different branches being founded across California, the violence began to focus less on hand-to-hand combat and more on firearms. He was disillusioned with the gang he had founded, and he began spending time with a motorcycle group. He saw both his interest and influence with the Crips wane.

Larry Graham Jr. (August 14, 1946) is a bassist and singer, both with the psychedelic soul/funk band Sly and the Family Stone and as the founder and frontman of Graham Central Station. In 1980, he released the single “One in a Million You”, which reached the top ten on the US Billboard Hot 100. He is credited with the invention of the slapping technique on the electric bass guitar, which expanded the tonal palette of the bass, although he refers to the technique as “thumpin’ and pluckin’ . In 1993, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Sly and the Family Stone.

Born in Beaumont to successful musicians, he played bass in the funk band Sly and the Family Stone from 1967 to 1972.

It is said that he pioneered the art of slap-pop playing on the electric bass, in part to provide percussive and rhythmic elements in addition to the notes of the bass line when his mother decided to have a drummer in her band no longer, while he admits in a BBC documentary on funk music that he is unsure if it was done on economical grounds; the slap of the thumb being used to emulate a bass drum and the pop of the index or middle finger as a snare drum. This style has become archetypal of modern funk. Slap-pop pairs a percussive thumb-slapping technique on the lower strings with an aggressive finger-snap on the higher strings, often in rhythmic alternation. The slap-and-pop technique uses a high ratio of muted, or “dead,” notes to normal notes, which enhances the rhythmic effect.

Antonio Juan Fargas (August 14, 1946) is an actor known for his roles in movies and his portrayal of Huggy Bear in the TV series Starsky & Hutch.

He was born in New York City to Mildred and Manuel Fargas; he was one of 11 children. His father was a Puerto Rican who worked for the City of New York. His mother was from Trinidad and Tobago. Raised in New York’s Spanish Harlem, he graduated from Fashion Industries High School.

His breakout role was in the comedy film Putney Swope. After starring in a string of movies, such as Across 110th Street and Foxy Brown, he gained recognition as streetwise informant Huggy Bear in Starsky & Hutch. He had a regular role in All My Children.

He had a part in the blaxploitation spoof I’m Gonna Git You Sucka as well as another Wayans brothers “hood” parody, Don’t Be a Menace. He guest-starred in the sitcoms Living Single, Martin, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and The Steve Harvey Show. He played the driver in the music video for the Backstreet Boys hit “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)”. He appeared in Our Kind of People.

Some of his notable appearances on British television shows include Series 4 of the reality series I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! and Frank Sidebottom’s Proper Telly Show. He played the part of Toledo in a revival of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. He had a regular role as Doc on the television series Everybody Hates Chris.

He acted in the British boxing film Sucker Punch. He appeared in an episode of Lie to Me as the father of a murdered firefighter.

Dr. Niara Alberta Sudarkasa (August 14, 1938 – May 31, 2019) was a scholar, educator, Africanist, and anthropologist who held 13 honorary degrees and received nearly 100 civic and professional awards. Essence magazine named her “Educator for the ‘90s,” and she became the first African American to be installed as a Chief in the historic Ife Kingdom of the Yoruba of Nigeria.

She was born Gloria Albertha Marshall in Fort Lauderdale. She graduated from high school and, at 15, accepted early admission to Fisk University on a Ford Foundation scholarship. She left Fisk and transferred to Oberlin College, where she earned a BA. She received her MS in anthropology from Columbia University. She taught at Columbia University, becoming the first African American woman to teach there when she earned her Ph.D.

She was appointed assistant professor of anthropology at New York University, the first African American woman to hold that position. She was the first African American to be appointed to the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. She became involved in civil rights and student issues. She became the first woman to serve as president of Lincoln University.

Dr. Herman Russell Branson (August 14, 1914 - June 7, 1995) was a pioneer in biophysics. Not much is known about his early life, as he was born in Pocahontas, Virginia. He attended Virginia College and received a BS. He graduated from the University of Cincinnati, where he earned a Ph.D., and began a career in academia.

He served as Assistant Professor of Physics and Chemistry at Howard University. He served as the Director of the Experimental Science and Mathematics Technology Program in Physics. He became a tenured professor of Physics and was named Chairman of the Physics Department at Howard University.

He entered into a partnership with Linus Pauling at the California Institute of Technology. He focused on the structure of proteins. His process used mathematics to determine possible helical structures that would fit the X-ray data, as well as chemical restrictions outlined by Pauling. He narrowed down the possible structures to two helices. The two coils were named Alpha and Gamma. Linus Pauling initially dismissed his work, saying that the shape of his coil was impossible. Pauling published the data in his name, giving him minor credit for his original research. In the initial press release from Caltech University announcing the discovery of the Alpha Helix, his name was excluded. When Linus Pauling received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, he was not credited for his contribution.

He returned to Howard University as a full professor of Physics and Chairman of the Physics Department. He served as the President of Central State University. He assumed the presidency of Lincoln University of Pennsylvania. He continued to research and published more than one hundred articles in his lifetime.

He became one of the founders of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education. He led a group of educators to the White House to speak with President Richard Nixon about the growing disparity in higher education funding.

Lieutenant Dick Tiger (Richard Ihetu; August 14, 1929 – December 14, 1971) was a professional boxer who held the World Middleweight and World Light Heavyweight Championships.

He emigrated to Liverpool, England, to pursue his boxing career and later to the US. He was Igbo and served as a Lieutenant in the Biafran army during the Nigerian Civil War, primarily training soldiers in hand-to-hand combat.