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Everette Harp (August 17, 1961) is a jazz saxophonist. His album Jazz Funk Soul, a collaboration with Chuck Loeb and Jeff Lorber, received his first nomination for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards.

He was born in Houston. He is the youngest of eight children. His father was a minister and his mother played the organ. He started playing jazz in middle school at Marshall Junior High. He attended the High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Houston and North Texas State University as a music major. He joined Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity. Working as an accountant for a short time, he played in local Houston bands, most notably a jazz/funk group called The Franchise which released an album locally with the first recording of Harp’s “There’s Still Hope”.

He moved to Los Angeles and toured with Teena Marie and then Anita Baker. George Duke signed him to a contract with Capitol Records to record with his group 101 North. Bruce Lundvall of Blue Note Records signed him to a solo contract before the group album was released. His album was produced by Duke and released by Blue Note.

He appeared at the Montreux Jazz Festival as a featured guest artist presented by Duke. He appeared every week on The Arsenio Hall Show. His appearance on Sax by the Fire led to his performing on the theme song for Entertainment Tonight. He played the theme song for Soul Train and shared the stage with President Bill Clinton at the Arkansas Ball.

He worked with Stanley Clarke, Natalie Cole, Neil Diamond, Aretha Franklin, Wayne Henderson, Al Jarreau, The Jazz Crusaders, Billy Joel, Chaka Khan, Kenny Loggins, Bobby Lyle, Peter Maffay, Marcus Miller, Chante Moore, Dianne Reeves, Eros Ramazzotti, Brenda Russell, Joe Sample, and Luther Vandross.

Attorney Alphonso B. David (August 13, 1970) is a lawyer, LGBT civil rights activist, former president of the Human Rights Campaign, and current president and CEO of the Global Black Economic Forum. In August 2019, he became the president of the Human Rights Campaign. He was the first civil rights lawyer and first person of color to serve as president of the organization. Still, he was fired from his role as president on September 6, 2021, after it was revealed that he advised former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo when he was accused of sexually assaulting women. He made national headlines in 2022 for filing a lawsuit against the Human Rights Campaign, alleging racial bias in his firing. On March 15, 2023, the Human Rights Campaign said it had settled the lawsuit and stated that the terms of the settlement were confidential.

On June 30, 2022, he was announced as the president and CEO of the Global Black Economic Forum, an organization working “to serve and advocate on behalf of the economic needs of the Black community.”

He was born in Silver Spring, Maryland. His family moved back to Monrovia, Liberia, when he was one year old. In 1977, his father was elected mayor of Monrovia while his great uncle, William Tolbert, was President of Liberia. During the 1980 Liberian coup d’état, Tolbert was assassinated, and David’s father was incarcerated. His family lived under house arrest for 18 months and sought political asylum in the US when he was 10 years old.

He graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, and Temple University Law School. He was a member of the university’s national trial team and the Political and Civil Rights Law Review.

Thierry Daniel Henry (August 17, 1977), sometimes nicknamed Titi, is a football coach, pundit, former player, and sports broadcaster who works with CBS Sports. He is considered one of the greatest strikers of all time and one of the greatest players in Premier League history. He has been named Arsenal’s greatest-ever player. He was runner-up for both the Ballon d’Or and the FIFA World Player of the Year. He was named the FWA Footballer of the Year a record three times, the PFA Players’ Player of the Year a joint record two times, and was named in the PFA Team of the Year six consecutive times. He was included in the FIFA FIFPro World XI once and the UEFA Team of the Year five times. Pelé named him in the FIFA 100 list of the world’s greatest living players.

He made his professional debut with Monaco before signing for defending Serie A champions Juventus. He became a prolific striker and Arsenal’s all-time leading scorer with 228 goals in all competitions. He won the Premier League Golden Boot a record four times, won two FA Cups and two Premier League titles with the club, including one during an unbeaten Invincibles season. He spent his final two seasons with Arsenal as club captain, leading them to the UEFA Champions League Final. He transferred to Barcelona and was a key part of the club’s historic treble, winning La Liga, the Copa del Rey, and the UEFA Champions League. He joined MLS club New York Red Bulls and returned to Arsenal before retiring in 2014.

He had success with France, winning the FIFA World Cup, UEFA Euro, and the FIFA Confederations Cup. He was named French Player of the Year a record five times, named to the UEFA Euro Team of the Tournament, awarded both the FIFA Confederations Cup Golden Ball and Golden Shoe, and named to the FIFA World Cup All-Star Team. He became his country’s record goalscorer. After amassing 123 appearances and 51 goals, he retired from international football after the FIFA World Cup.

His father, Antoine, is from Guadeloupe, and his mother, Maryse, is from Martinique. He was born and raised in Les Ulis.

Tamara “Tammy” Townsend (August 17, 1970) is an actress and singer. She is known for her roles as Wendy Reardon on Days of Our Lives (1994–96) and as Greta McClure, Eddie’s girlfriend, on Family Matters (1995–98). She starred as Kira Cooper, the mother of K.C. Cooper, on K.C. Undercover (2015-18).

She was born in Los Angeles, the daughter of Anorene, an African American interior designer, and Thomas Townsend, an American judge with English and Yugoslavian ancestry. She is a graduate of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts.

She began her acting career in 1985, appearing in episodes of Diff’rent Strokes and Charles in Charge. In 1997, she played the female leading role in The Pest. She has played guest-starring roles in Quantum Leap, Living Single, The Practice, Felicity, Walker, Texas Ranger, Friends, and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. She appeared in a recurring role on Grown Ups.

Dr. Brian O’Harold Hemphill (August 17, 1969) became the first African American president of Old Dominion University. He served as president of Radford University (2016-21) and was the tenth president of West Virginia State University (2012-16). He challenged Old Dominion, Radford University, and West Virginia State University to grow their infrastructure, and has encouraged his students at West Virginia and Radford to advocate for diversity and equity.

He has been a member of several university communities, both as a student and as a leader. He earned his BA in Organizational Communication from St. Augustine’s University. He completed an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication at Iowa State University and a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration at the University of Iowa. After earning his BA, he remained at the school, serving on the board of trustees of St. Augustine’s. He left North Carolina to work as the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville’s vice chancellor and dean of students before returning to the state to be the associate dean of students at UNC Wilmington. He moved to Iowa State, where he coordinated minority recruitment and retention, and to Northern Illinois University, where he spent his eight-year tenure as an associate professor and as vice president for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management.

He is a published author, with a multitude of writings on topics such as student activism, the effects of financial concerns on higher education, and threat preparedness on college campuses. He co-edited a book titled College in the Crosshairs: An Administrative Perspective on Prevention of Gun Violence, published in 2015.

Calvin LeBrun (August 17, 1966 – April 10, 2024) known professionally as Mister Cee or DJ Mister Cee, was a DJ, broadcaster, record executive, and radio personality on New York’s RADIO 103.9. Credited with the discovery of both rappers, he guest-featured on Big Daddy Kane’s debut album Long Live the Kane (1988). He served as associate executive producer for the Notorious B.I.G.’s debut album, Ready to Die (1994).

He was born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. At a young age, he learned how to DJ from a crew called DJ Knight and the Knights of Hollywood. In high school, he met rapper Big Daddy Kane. After graduation, he worked for several messenger companies, including Airborne Express, until he began deejaying for Kane in the late 1980s.

Edward Lansing Gordon III (August 17, 1960) is a television journalist known for his association with BET over four different decades. A native of Detroit, he is the son of an Olympic athlete named Ed Gordon. He was BET’s main news anchor (1988-96) and (2000-01) before hosting the interview show BET Tonight (2001-02) and another interview show, Weekly with Ed Gordon (2010-11).

He worked for NBC News (1996-2000), CBS News (2004-05), and NPR (2005-06). He hosted the syndicated talk show Our World with Black Enterprise (2006-2010).

He was born in Detroit. His father was a schoolteacher who won gold in the long jump at the 1932 Summer Olympics, and his mother, Jimmie, was a teacher. After graduating from Cass Technical High School, he earned a BA in Communications and Political Science from Western Michigan University.

He considered law school, aspired to be a television journalist, and took an unpaid internship at WTVS, the PBS affiliate in Detroit. At WTVS, he worked as a production assistant (1983-85). He became the host of a local weekly talk show, Detroit Black Journal. He worked as a freelance journalist at the then-fledgling cable network BET.

“The one who has knowledge uses words with restraint, and whoever has understanding is even-tempered. Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues.” Proverbs‬ ‭17:27-28‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Gail Adrienne Cobb (August 17, 1950 – September 20, 1974) was a police officer from DC, the first female police officer in the U.S. to be shot and killed in the line of duty. She was the first uniformed female officer of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia to have been killed in the line of duty.

She was born in DC, the second of five children. Her family moved to DC in the 1930s. Her father was Clinton Cobb, a correctional Captain for the District of Columbia who applied to the Metropolitan Police Department in 1953. He was rejected because he was shorter than the mandatory height requirement of five feet and eight inches. Her mother, Gloria Cobb, worked as a crossing guard at Kingsman Elementary School when she met her father at Cardoza High School. Her sister, Denise, became a schoolteacher.

She attended Elliot Jr. High School, Eastern High School, and the now-defunct St. Cecilia’s Academy. She wanted to become a successful fashion designer. She ended up becoming a long-distance operator at the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company.

Luther Sylvester Allison (August 17, 1939 – August 12, 1997) was a blues guitarist. He was interested in music as a child and toured with a family gospel group called The Southern Travelers. He taught himself guitar and began listening extensively to blues. He dropped out of school and began hanging around outside blues nightclubs with the hopes of being invited to perform. He played with the band Howlin’ Wolf and Freddie King, taking over King’s band when King toured nationally. He worked with Jimmy Dawkins, Magic Sam, and Otis Rush, and backed James Cotton.

Laureate Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin (August 17, 1936 – February 25, 2006) was a poet and novelist. His novels and poems evoke retrospective narratives, fanciful epics, and nationalistic connotations. He is considered one of the most prominent novelists, along with Baalu Girma and Haddis Alemayehu; his books were successful in both commercial sales and academic theses. His works are solely in Amharic and English.

He was born in Bodaa Village, Ethiopia. He is part Amhara and part Oromo. He learned Ge’ez, the ancient language of the church, the Ethiopian equivalent of Latin. He helped the family by caring for cattle. He was still very young when he began writing plays at the local elementary school. One of those plays, King Dionysus and the Two Brothers, was staged in the presence, among others, of Emperor Haile Selassie.

He attended the prestigious British Council-supported General Wingate School. He attended the Commercial School in Addis Ababa, where he won a scholarship to Blackstone School of Law in Chicago. He traveled to Europe to study experimental drama at the Royal Court Theatre in London and the Comédie-Française in Paris. He devoted himself to managing and developing the Ethiopian National Theater.

He attended the first UNESCO-organised World Festival of Black Arts and the Pan-African Cultural Festival. He was awarded his country’s highest literary honor, the Haile Selassie I Prize for Amharic Literature. The prize earned him the title of Laureate.

He was appointed vice-minister of culture and sports and was active in establishing the Addis Ababa University Department of Theatre Arts. He wrote an extended and very poetic essay, “Footprints in Time”, which appeared in large format with photographs. It traced Ethiopian history from the prehistoric era of Lucy, the first known hominid found in the Afar Desert in eastern Ethiopia.

State Representative Lloyd Augustus Barbee (August 17, 1925 - December 29, 2002) was born in Memphis. He was the youngest of three brothers, born to Earnest A. Barbee and Adelina Jenkins Gilliam. He attended LeMoyne College and graduated from law school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He married Roudaba Bunting (1954-59). He became President of the Madison NAACP branch. He worked as an attorney for the Wisconsin State Department of Labor. He won the first housing discrimination case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Gregory III v. Madison Mobile Homes Park.

He ran as State Representative for the 6th District in Milwaukee. He was the only African American in the Wisconsin State Legislature (1965-77). He sponsored the Fair Housing Act, several employment and public accommodation Civil Rights Acts, the legalization of abortion, and reparations. He wrote articles called “Comments,” which were featured in African American newspapers across the nation.

He represented comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory when he was arrested and charged with “disorderly conduct” while participating in a civil rights march in Milwaukee. He won a major civil rights lawsuit, Amos v. Armstrong, against the Milwaukee School Board in Federal District Court, resulting in Milwaukee becoming one of the first major Northern cities to be ordered by a court to integrate its public schools.

He represented African American students at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, who protested to demand that Black history courses be taught, only to be dismissed by the University administration for their actions. He obtained a court order allowing their readmission because the university had violated their due process rights.

He taught at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in the Africology Department. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in Sociology from the University and created the Lloyd A. Barbee scholarship in his honor.

Julius W. Harris (August 17, 1923 – October 17, 2004) was an actor who appeared in more than 70 movies and numerous television series in a career that spanned four decades. He is known for his roles in 1970s films such as Live and Let Die, Super Fly, Black Caesar, and Hell Up in Harlem.

Born in Philadelphia to a dancer mother and musician father, he worked as a nurse and a bouncer in New York City jazz clubs. Before he began his acting career, he served as a medic in the Army during WWII. After hanging out with many struggling actors, he took a dare and auditioned for his first role. He was cast as the father in Nothing But a Man, a critically acclaimed 1964 film about Black life in the South, starring Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln.

Some of his most prominent roles included the villainous, steel-armed Tee Hee in Live. They Let Die, Scatter in Super Fly, Bubbletop Woodson in Let’s Do It Again, Captain Bollin in Shaft’s Big Score, Inspector Daniels in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Joseph in Islands in the Stream, and Ugandan President Idi Amin in Victory at Entebbe.

He appeared in Trouble Man, King Kong, Black Caesar, Hell Up in Harlem, Friday Foster, Shrunken Heads, Harley Davidson, and the Marlboro Man, and in guest-starring roles on Sanford and Son, Good Times, and Love Boat, among others. He was a member of the Negro Ensemble Company in New York City and appeared on Broadway in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play No Place to Be Somebody.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. (August 17, 1887 – June 10, 1940) was a political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, through which he declared himself Provisional President of Africa. A Black nationalist and Pan-Africanist, his ideas came to be known as Garveyism.

He became involved in trade unionism before living in Costa Rica, Panama, and England. He founded UNIA in 1914. He moved to the US and established a UNIA branch in New York City’s Harlem district. Emphasizing unity between Africans and the African diaspora, he campaigned for an end to European colonial rule across Africa and the political unification of the continent. He envisioned a unified Africa as a one-party state, governed by himself, that would enact laws to ensure Black racial purity. He was committed to the Back-to-Africa movement, arguing that many African Americans should migrate there. His ideas became increasingly popular, and UNIA grew in membership. His Black separatist views and his collaboration with white racist groups like the kkk to advance their shared interest in racial separatism divided him from other prominent African American civil rights activists such as W. E. B. Du Bois promoted racial integration.

He launched various businesses, including the Negro Factories Corporation and Negro World newspaper. He became President of the Black Star Line, a shipping and passenger company designed to forge a link between North America and Africa and facilitate African American migration to Liberia.

Attorney Archibald Henry Grimké (August 17, 1849 – February 25, 1930) was a lawyer, intellectual, journalist, diplomat, and community leader in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A graduate of Freedmen’s schools, Lincoln University, and Harvard Law School, he was appointed as American Consul to the DR (1894-98). He was an activist for African American rights, working in Boston and Washington, DC. He was a national VP of the NAACP and president of its DC branch.

He was born enslaved near Charleston, South Carolina. He was the eldest of three sons of Nancy Weston, who was born enslaved as the daughter of an enslaved African or African American female and her white owner, Henry W. Grimké, a widower. Henry acknowledged his sons, although he did not manumit them or make the rest of his family aware of their existence. His brothers were Francis and John. Henry was a member of a prominent, large slaveholding family in Charleston. His father and relatives were planters and active in political and social circles.

Attorney John Sinclair Leary (August 17, 1845 – December 9, 1904) was a lawyer and politician. He was one of the first African American lawyers in North Carolina and served in the state legislature (1868- 70). He was an alderman in Fayetteville and held federal government appointments. He was the first dean of the law school at Shaw University (1890).

He was born in Fayetteville to Matthew Leary and Julia Memriel. He had at least three siblings: Lewis Sheridan Leary, Henrietta, and Michael Leary, Jr. Lewis was killed taking part in John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. He was a cousin to Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first African American to serve in the Senate.

Matthew Leary, Sr. was one of the wealthiest African Americans both before and after the American Civil War. His business was successful enough that as early as 1848 he was credit-rated and owned property worth $6,000. His brother, Matthew Leary, Jr. went into politics as well and became a federal government clerk in DC.

He attended school in Fayetteville for about eight years before 1861. He learned the trade of a saddler and harness-maker in his father’s shop where his father had worked for a long time.

He moved to Charlotte, becoming that city’s first African American lawyer, and continued to practice there until his death. He was disappointed in several attempts to obtain higher-appointed offices. In 1892, the Raleigh Signal suggested him as a candidate for state attorney general. In 1901, he was endorsed by Reverend D. C. Covington in The Colored American for the position of federal judge of the Philippines. In 1896, he was key to supporting Daniel Russell’s successful run for Governor of North Carolina and sought the position of assistant US District Attorney as a reward.