Breaking the Color Barrier:

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Breaking the Color Barrier

• African American Firsts

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Television 1956 Nat King Cole
Oprah Winfrey
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Boxing 1908 Jack Johnson
Muhammad Ali
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Acting Award 1940Hattie McDaniel
Sidney Poitier
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Law 1967Thurgood Marshall
Clarence Thomas
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International Award 1950 Ralph Bunche
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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First - 1910s Madame C.J.Walker
Robert Johnson
Oprah Winfrey
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Government 1966 Edward Brooke
Barak Obama
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Military 1940Gen. Benjamin Davis
Gen. Colin Powell
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Literature 1773Phillis Wheatley
Gwendolyn Brooks
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Education 1823 Alexander Lucien Twilight
Edward Alexander Bouchet
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Sports (Tennis) 1957Althea Gibson
Arthur Ashe
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Government 2001Colin Powell
Condaleezza Rice
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Space 1967 Robert H. Lawrence, Jr.
Guion Bluford
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Sports 1884 Moses Fleetwood Walker
Jackie Robinson
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National Poetry 1976Robert Hayden
Rita Dove
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Acting Award 1954 Dorothy Dandridge
Halle Berry
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Literature 1853William Wells Brown
Toni Morrison
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Congress 1969 Shirley Chisholm
Carol Moseley Braun
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Medicine 1921James McCune Smith
Charles Drew
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Aviation 1921 Bessie Coleman
Mae Jemison
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Sports 1960/1984 Rafer Johnson
Jackie Joyner Kersee
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• We all have barriers to break. We may not be the
  first but well still break barriers someday.