Timeline of African-American firsts

16th century

1500s

1528

• Estevanico becomes the first black person to explore what would become the continental United States in the Narváez expedition.

1539

• Estevanico becomes the first black person and first non-Native American person to explore New Mexico.

17th century

1600s

1604

• First black person to arrive in what is now Maine: explorer and interpreter Mathieu Da Costa

1624

• First African American who was born in the British colonies that later became the United States: William Tucker (Virginia colony)

1650

• First African American to own land in the United States July 24, 1651: Anthony Johnson (colonist)

1670s

1670

• First African American to own land in Boston: Zipporah Potter Atkins

18th century

1730s–1770s

1738

• First free African-American community: Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose in Spanish Florida

1746

• First known enslaved African American person to compose a work of literature: Lucy Terry with her poem "Bars Fight", composed in 1746 and first published in 1855 in Josiah Holland's History of Western Massachusetts.

1760

• First known African-American published author: Jupiter Hammon

1767

• First African-American clockmaker, Peter Hill, was born.

1768

• First known African American to be elected to public office: Wentworth Cheswill, town constable and justice of the peace in Newmarket, New Hampshire.

1773

• First known African-American woman to publish a book: Phillis Wheatley
• First separate African-American church: Silver Bluff Baptist Church, South Carolina|Aiken County], South Carolina

1775

• First African American to join the Freemasons: Prince Hall

1778

• First African-American U.S. military regiment: the 1st Rhode Island Regiment

1780s–1790s

1783

• First African American to formally practice medicine: James Derham, who did not hold an M.D. degree.

1785

• First African American ordained as a Christian minister in the United States: Rev. Lemuel Haynes. He was ordained in the Congregational Church, which became the United Church of Christ

1792

• First major African-American Back-to-Africa movement: 3,000 Black Loyalist slaves, who had escaped to British lines during the American Revolutionary War for the promise of freedom, were relocated to Nova Scotia and given land. Later, 1,200 chose to migrate to West Africa and settle in the new British colony of Settler Town, which is present-day Sierra Leone.

1794

• First African Episcopal Church established: Absalom Jones founded Episcopal Church of St. Thomas">Episcopal Church (United States)">Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• First Episcopal Church|African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church] founded: Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church, Philadelphia, was founded by Richard Allen

1799

• First African American to attend college : John Chavis; later went on to be a preacher and educator for both black and white students.

19th century

1800s

1804

• First African American ordained as an Episcopal priest: Absalom Jones in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

1807

• First African-American Presbyterian Church in America: founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by John Gloucester a former slave.

1810s

1816

• Richard Allen founded the first fully independent African-American denomination: African Methodist Episcopal Church, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and mid-Atlantic states

1817

• The First African Baptist Church was the first African-American church west of the Mississippi River. It had its beginnings in 1817 when John Mason Peck and the formerly enslaved John Berry Meachum began holding church services for African Americans in St. Louis. Meachum founded the First African Baptist Church in 1827. Although there were ordinances preventing blacks from assembling, the congregation grew from 14 people at its founding to 220 people by 1829. Two hundred of the parishioners were slaves, who could only travel to the church and attend services with the permission of their owners.

1820s

1821

• First African American to hold a patent: Thomas L. Jennings, for a dry-cleaning process
• First African American theatre, the African Grove Theatre, was founded in New York City by: William Alexander Brown

1822

• First African-American captain to sail a whaleship with an all-black crew: Absalom Boston There were six black owners of seven whaling trips before Absalom Boston's in 1822.

1823

• First African American to receive a degree from an American college: Alexander Twilight, Middlebury College

1826

• First African American to graduate from Bowdoin College: Future governor of the Republic of Maryland, John Brown Russwurm
• First African American to graduate from Amherst College: Edward Jones (missionary)

1827

• First African-American-owned-and-operated newspaper: Freedom's Journal, founded in New York City by Rev. Peter Williams Jr., Samuel Cornish, John Brown Russwurm and other free blacks

1828

• First African American to graduate from Dartmouth College: Edward Mitchell

1829

• First African American to attend Princeton Theological Seminary and graduate: Theodore S. Wright

1830s

1832

• First governor of African descent in what is now the United States: Pío Pico, an Afro-Mexican, was the last governor of Alta California before it was ceded to the U.S. Like all Californios, Pico automatically became a U.S. citizen in 1848.

1836

• First African American elected to serve in a state legislature: Alexander Twilight, Vermont
• First African American to found a town and establish a planned community: Free Frank McWorter
• First African American governor of the Republic of Maryland or any other colony in Africa: John Brown Russwurm

1837

• First formally trained African-American medical doctor: Dr James McCune Smith of New York City, who was educated at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and returned to practice in New York.

1840s

1844

• First African American approved to practice law: Macon Bolling Allen from the bar association of Portland, Maine

1845

• First African American to practice law: Macon Bolling Allen from the Boston bar

1847

• First African American to graduate from a U.S. medical school: Dr. David J. Peck

1848

• First African-American president of any nation: Joseph Jenkins Roberts, Liberia

1849

• First African-American college professor at a predominantly white institution: Charles L. Reason, New York Central College

1850s

1850

• First African-American woman to graduate from a college : Lucy Stanton

1851

• First African-American member of the Society of Jesus : Patrick Francis Healy

1853

• First novel published by an African American: Clotel; or, The President's Daughter, by William Wells Brown, then living in London.
• First African American to build and serve as captain of his own ship: Joseph P. Taylor of Portland, Maine

1854

• First African-American Catholic priest: James Augustine Healy
• First institute of higher learning created to educate African-Americans: Ashmun Institute in Pennsylvania, renamed Lincoln University in 1866.
• First African-American physician to be admitted as a member of a medical society in the United States : John van Salee de Grasse

1858

• First published play by an African American: The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom by William Wells Brown
• First African-American woman college instructor: Sarah Jane Woodson Early, Wilberforce University
• First African-American woman to graduate from a medical course of study at an American university: Sarah Mapps Douglass
• First African-American Missionary Bishop of Liberia: Francis Burns of Windham, New York; of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

1860s

1861

• First North American military unit with African-American officers: 1st Louisiana Native Guard of the Confederate Army
• First African-American US federal government civil servant: William Cooper Nell

1862

• First African-American woman to earn a B.A.: Mary Jane Patterson, Oberlin College
• First recognized U.S. Army African-American combat unit: 1st South Carolina Volunteers

1863

• First college owned and operated by African Americans: Wilberforce University in Ohio
• First African-American president of a college: Bishop Daniel Payne
• First African-American physician to hold a commission in the U.S. Army and the first African-American hospital administrator when appointed to lead Freedman's Hospital in Washington D.C.: Alexander Thomas Augusta
• First African-American chaplain in the United States Colored Troops: Henry McNeal Turner
• First African American to earn the Medal of Honor: William Harvey Carney

1864

• First African-American woman in the United States to earn an M.D.: Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler

1865

• First African-American field officer in the U.S. Army: Martin Delany
• First African-American attorney admitted to the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court: John Stewart Rock
• First African American to be commissioned as captain in the Regular U.S. Army: Orindatus Simon Bolivar Wall, known as OSB Wall

1866

• First African American to earn a Ph.D.: Father Patrick Francis Healy from University of Leuven, Belgium
• First African-American woman enlistee in the U.S. Army: Cathay Williams
• First African-American woman to serve as a professor: Sarah Jane Woodson Early; Xenia, Ohio's Wilberforce University hired her to teach Latin and English

1868

• First elected African-American Lieutenant Governor: Oscar Dunn.
• First African-American mayor: Pierre Caliste Landry, Donaldsonville, Louisiana
• First African-American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives: John Willis Menard. His opponent contested his election, and opposition to his election prevented him from being seated in Congress.
• First African-American medical professor in the United States : Alexander Thomas Augusta
• First African American in the United States elected to statewide office (Secretary of State of South Carolina: Francis Lewis Cardozo

1869

• First African-American U.S. diplomat: Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett, minister to Haiti
• First African-American woman school principal: Fanny Jackson Coppin
• First African American to receive a dental degree and become a dentist: Robert Tanner Freeman

1870s

1870

• First African American to vote in an election under the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution, granting voting rights regardless of race: Thomas Mundy Peterson
• First African American to graduate from Harvard College: Richard Theodore Greener.
• First African American elected to the U.S. Senate, and first to serve in the U.S. Congress: Hiram Rhodes Revels.
• First African American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives: Joseph Rainey.

1871

• First African-American page in the United States House of Representatives: Alfred Q. Powell, who was appointed in 1871 by Charles H. Porter (R-VA), with recommendations from William Henry Harrison Stowell (R-VA) and James H. Platt Jr. (R-VA).
• First non-elected African-American governor : Oscar Dunn
• First African-American faculty member at Harvard Dental School: George Franklin Grant

1872

• First African-American midshipman admitted to the United States Naval Academy: John H. Conyers.
• First African-American nominee for Vice President of the United States: Frederick Douglass by the Equal Rights Party.
• First non-elected African-American governor : P.B.S. Pinchback

1873

• First African-American speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives, and of any state legislature: John R. Lynch
• First African American to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago: Lottie Wilson Jackson

1874

• First African-American president of a major college/university: Father Patrick Francis Healy, S.J. of Georgetown College.
• First African American to preside over the House of Representatives as Speaker pro tempore: Joseph Rainey

1875

• First African-American Roman Catholic bishop: Bishop James Augustine Healy, of Portland, Maine.
• First African-American elected member of the American Philological Association : Richard Theodore Greener

1876

• First African American to earn a doctorate degree from an American university: Edward Alexander Bouchet.

1877

• First African-American graduate of West Point and first African-American commissioned officer in the U.S. military: Henry Ossian Flipper.
• First African-American elected to Phi Beta Kappa: Washington Henderson">Washington (state)">Washington Henderson.

1878

• First African-American police officer in Boston, Massachusetts: Sergeant Horatio J. Homer.
• First African-American baseball player in organized professional baseball: John W. "Bud" Fowler.

1879

• First African American to serve as a sheriff or chief of police in Vermont: Stephen Bates, Vergennes, Vermont.
• First African American to graduate from a formal nursing school: Mary Eliza Mahoney, Boston, Massachusetts.
• First African American to play major league baseball: Possibly William Edward White; he played as a substitute in one professional baseball game for the Providence Grays of the National League, on June 21, 1879. Work by the Society for American Baseball Research suggests that he may have been the first African American to play major league baseball, predating the longer careers of Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Weldy Walker by five years; and Jackie Robinson by 68 years.
• First African American to preside over the United States Senate: Blanche K. Bruce

1880s

1880

• First African American to command a U.S. ship: Captain Michael Healy.
• First African-American world champion in pedestrianism, a 19th-century forerunner to racewalking and ultramarathons: Frank Hart.

1881

• First African American whose signature appeared on U.S. paper currency: Blanche K. Bruce, Register of the Treasury.

1882

• First fully state-supported four-year institution of higher learning for African Americans: Virginia State University

1883

• First known African-American woman to graduate from one of the Seven Sisters colleges: Hortense Parker
• First African-American woman to earn a PhD: Nettie Craig-Asberry June 12, 1883, earns her doctoral degree in music from the University of Kansas one month shy of her 18th birthday.
• First African American to receive the Medal of Honor twice, both for peace-time actions: Robert Augustus Sweeney

1884

• First African American to play professional baseball at the major-league level: Possibly Moses Fleetwood Walker, but see also William Edward White in 1879.
• First African-American woman to hold a patent: Judy W. Reed, for an improved dough kneader, Washington, D.C.
• First African American to enlist in the U.S. Signal Corps: William Hallett Greene
• First African American to lead a political party's National Convention: John R. Lynch, Republican National Convention.
• First African American to deliver a keynote address at a political party's National Convention: John R. Lynch, Republican National Convention.

1886

• First Roman Catholic priest publicly known at the time to be African American: Augustine Tolton, Quincy and Chicago, Illinois

1888

• Second African-American woman to receive a patent: Miriam Benjamin
• First African-American women to earn a master's degree : Anna J. Cooper and Mary Church Terrell

1889

• First African American to earn a Ph.D. in a field of the biological sciences : Alfred Oscar Coffin

1890s

1890

• First African-American woman to earn a dental degree in the United States: Ida Rollins, University of Michigan.
• First African American to record a best-selling phonograph record: George Washington Johnson, "The Laughing Song" and "The Whistling Coon."
• First woman and African American to earn a military pension for her own military service: Ann Bradford Stokes.
• First African-American woman in the U.S. to earn a degree in botany: Jane Eleanor Datcher

1891

• First African-American police officer in present-day New York City: Wiley Overton, hired by the Brooklyn Police Department prior to 1898 incorporation of the five boroughs into the City of New York.

1892

• First African American to sing at Carnegie Hall: Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones
• First African American named to a College Football All-America Team: William H. Lewis, Harvard University

1893

• First African American to obtain degrees from both Harvard College and Harvard Law School: Clement G. Morgan
• First African American accepted into the League of American Wheelmen : Kittie Knox

1895

• First African-American woman to work for the United States Postal Service: Mary Fields
• First African American to earn a doctorate degree from Harvard University: W.E.B. Du Bois
• First president and co-founder of the National Medical Association: Robert F. Boyd

1896

• First African-American female dentist to graduate from Howard University's dental school: Marie Imogene Williams.
• First African American to be elected alderman in New England: Clement G. Morgan

1897

• First African-American to graduate from Vassar College by passing for white: Anita Florence Hemmings.
• First African American to graduate from Yale Medical School: William F. Penn
• First African American on record to have successfully performed pericardium surgery to repair a wound: Daniel Hale Williams

1898

• First African American appointed to serve as U.S. Army Paymaster: Richard R. Wright
• First African-American diplomat to represent the United States in a white majority country when appointed to Russia: Richard Theodore Greener
• First African-American graduate of Radcliffe college: Alberta [Virginia Scott]

1899

• First African American to achieve world championship in any sport: Major Taylor, for one-mile track cycling
• First African-American woman elected to Phi Beta Kappa : Mary Annette Anderson

20th century

1900s

1901

• First African American invited to dine at the White House: Booker T. Washington

1902

• First African-American professional basketball player: Harry Lew
• First African-American professional American football player: Charles Follis
• First African-American boxing champion: Joe Gans, a lightweight
• First African-American artist whose work became a part of the White House collection: Lottie Wilson Jackson

1903

• First Broadway musical written by African Americans, and the first to star African Americans: In Dahomey
• First African-American woman to found and become president of a bank: Maggie L. Walker, St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, Richmond, Virginia
• First African American to be appointed as an Assistant United States Attorney: William H. Lewis

1904

• First Greek-letter fraternal organization founded by African Americans: Sigma Pi Phi
• First African American to participate in the Olympic Games, and first to win a medal: George Poage

1905

• First African-American to earn a doctorate degree in educational psychology : Charles Henry Thompson

1906

• First intercollegiate Greek-letter organization founded by African Americans: Alpha Phi Alpha, at Cornell University
• First academically trained African-American forester: Ralph E. Brock at the Pennsylvania State Forest Academy

1907

• First African-American Greek Orthodox priest and missionary in America: Very Rev. Fr. Robert Josias Morgan
• First African-American Rhodes Scholar: Alain LeRoy Locke

1908

• First African-American heavyweight boxing champion: Jack Johnson
• First African-American Olympic gold medal winner: John Taylor.
• First intercollegiate Greek-letter sorority established by African Americans: Alpha Kappa Alpha at Howard University

1909

• First African American to reach the north pole: Matthew Henson

1910s

1910

• First African-American female millionaire: Madam C. J. Walker
• First African-American woman to be recorded commercially: Daisy Tapley
• First African American to be appointed as one of the five United States Assistant Attorneys General: William H. Lewis

1911

• First intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity founded by African-Americans at a historically black college: Omega Psi Phi, at Howard University
• First African-American police officer in New York City: Samuel J. Battle, following the 1898 incorporation of the five boroughs into the City of New York, and the hiring of three African-American officers in the Brooklyn Police Department. Battle was also the NYPD's first African-American sergeant, lieutenant, and parole commissioner.
• First African-American attorney admitted to the American Bar Association: Butler R. Wilson, William Henry Lewis, and William R. Morris
• First African American elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly: Harry W. Bass.
• Established first Black Parent-Teacher Association in the country : Selena Sloan Butler

1913

• First African American inducted into the American College of Surgeons: Daniel Hale Williams

1914

• First African-American military pilot: Eugene Jacques Bullard
• First African American to attend the University of Connecticut, earning his bachelor's degree with honors in 1918: Alan Thacker Busby.

1915

• First African-American alderman of Chicago: Oscar Stanton De Priest
• First African American and first woman to graduate from the University of Hawaiʻi : Alice Ball
• One of the first African Americans to graduate from Suffolk Law School: Thomas Vreeland Jones
• First African American to earn a Ph.D. in physiology : Julian Herman Lewis
• Possibly the first U.S. Navy Master Diver: John Henry Turpin
• First African American municipal architect in the United States: Clarence W. Wigington
• First African-American actress to sign a film contract and be a featured performer: Madame Sul-Te-Wan

1916

• First African American to play in a Rose Bowl game: Fritz Pollard, Brown University
• First African American to become a colonel in the U.S. Army: Charles Young
• First African-American woman to become a licensed pharmacist: Ella P. Stewart
• First African American to be named a fellow in the Royal Society of London: George Washington Carver
• First African American to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States : St. Elmo Brady

1917

• First African-American woman to win a major sports title: Lucy Diggs Slowe, American Tennis Association
• First African American to earn both a Doctor of Medicine and a Ph.D. : Julian Herman Lewis

1918

• First American, Black or white, to receive the French award Croix de Guerre with palm: Henry Johnson
• First African-American woman to receive a wartime medical commission when she joined the Red Cross in 1918 during World War I: Mary Louise Brown
• First African-American woman to earn a master's degree in music : Nora Holt

1919

• First African-American special agent for the FBI: James Wormley Jones
• First African-American women appointed as police officers: Cora I. Parchment at the New York Police Department and Georgia Ann Robinson, by the Los Angeles Police Department
• First African American to direct a feature film: Oscar Micheaux
• First African American on the surgical staff of Harlem Hospital: Louis T. Wright

1920s

1920

• First African-American NFL football players: Fritz Pollard and Bobby Marshall
• First African-American bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church: Robert Elijah Jones and Matthew Wesley Clair.
• First African American admitted into the American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists: William Samuel Quinland
• First African American to earn an unlimited mariner's license: Hugh Mulzac
• First African American to earn a Ph.D. in psychology : Francis Sumner

1921

• First African-American woman to become an aviation pilot, and first American to hold an international pilot license: Bessie Coleman
• First African-American NFL football coach: Fritz Pollard, co-head coach, Akron Pros, while continuing to play running back
• First African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in the U.S.: Georgiana Rose Simpson, from the University of Chicago
• First African American to earn a Ph.D. in botany in the United States, and the first to earn a doctorate in any field from Cornell University: Thomas Wyatt Turner
• First African American to found a record label: Harry Pace
• First African American to be licensed as a certified public accountant : John Wesley Cromwell Jr.
• First African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. and the first one to receive one in economics in the United States: Sadie T. M. Alexander
• First African-American student to graduate with a doctorate from Radcliffe College and the first African-American woman in America to receive a PhD in English Philology: Eva Beatrice Dykes

1923

• First African-American woman to earn a degree in library science: Virginia Proctor Powell Florence. She earned the degree from what is now part of the University of Pittsburgh.
• First African-American woman film producer for the silent crime drama The Flames of Wrath: Maria P. Williams

1924

• First African American to win individual Olympic gold medal: DeHart Hubbard.
• First African American to head a U.S. Veterans Administration hospital : Joseph H. Ward
• First African American woman elected to the national board of the Young Women's Christian Association : Elizabeth Ross Haynes

1925

• First African-American Foreign Service Officer: Clifton R. Wharton Sr.
• First African American to earn a Ph.D. in civil engineering : George Maceo Jones
• First African American to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics : Elbert Frank Cox
• First African American to perform with a major European opera company: Lillian Evanti

1926

• First African-American woman to practice law before the United States Supreme Court: Violette Neatley Anderson
• First African American to become a member of the American Institute of Architects: Paul R. Williams

1927

• First African American to become an officer in the New York Fire Department in New York City: Wesley Augustus Williams.
• First African-American woman to star in a foreign motion picture: Josephine Baker in La Sirène des tropiques.
• First African American certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology: William Harry Barnes

1928

• First post-Reconstruction African-American elected to U.S. House of Representatives and first African American to be elected to Congress from a Northern state: Oscar Stanton De Priest
• First African-American woman to serve in a state legislature: Minnie Buckingham Harper, West Virginia

1929

• First African-American sportscaster: Sherman "Jocko" Maxwell
• First African-American woman in the United States to earn a PhD in education: Jane Ellen McAllister
• First African-American police surgeon with the New York Police Department: Louis T. Wright

1930s

1930

• First African American to win a state high school basketball championship: David "Big Dave" DeJernett, star center on an integrated Washington, Indiana team.
• First African-American woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship: Nella Larsen

1931

• First African-American composer to have their symphony performed by a leading orchestra: William Grant Still, Symphony No. 1, by Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra
• First African-American woman to graduate from Yale Law School: Jane Matilda Bolin
• First African-American physician to becoma a certified Diplomate of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology: Peter Marshall Murray
• First African-American nurse to earn an M.A. in nursing education: Estelle Massey Osborne
• First African-American professor of pharmacology in the United States : Arnold Hamilton Maloney Jr.

1932

• First African American on a presidential ticket in the 20th century: James W. Ford
• First African-American Ph.D. in anthropology: William Montague Cobb
• First African-American woman to receive a law degree from Fordham University in New York City: Eunice Carter
• First African American to earn a Ph.D. in pathology: Robert Stuart Jason
• First African Americans to successfully complete a transcontinental flight: James Herman Banning and Thomas C. Allen

1933

• First African-American woman to earn a doctorate in psychology : Inez Prosser
• First African-American ophthalmologist certified by the American Board of Ophthalmology: Chester W. Chinn

1934

• First African American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat: Arthur W. Mitchell
• First trade union set up for African-American domestic workers by Dora Lee Jones
• First African American elected as a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons : Louis T. Wright
• First African American elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors: Augusta Savage

1935

• First African American certified by the American Board of Dermatology and Syphilology : Theodore K. Lawless
• First African American certified by the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology: Julian Waldo Ross
• First African American certified in roentgenology by the American Board of Radiology: William E. Allen Jr.
• First African American to earn a Ph.D. in agronomy : Major Franklin Spaulding

1936

• First African American to conduct a major U.S. orchestra: William Grant Still
• First African-American women selected for the Olympic Games: Tidye Pickett and Louise Stokes. Stokes did not compete; Picket competed in the 80-meter hurdles
• First African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Home Economics, and the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. from Cornell University: Flemmie Pansy Kittrell
• First African-American physician to be elected a diplomate of the American Board of Urology: Richard Francis Jones

1937

• First African-American federal magistrate: William H. Hastie
• First African-American woman cartoonist and creator of the Torchy Brown comic strip: Jackie Ormes
• First African American to be admitted to the level of diplomate by the American Board of Pathology: William Samuel Quinland
• First African-American radiologist certified by the American Board of Radiology: Jesse Jerome Peters
• First African American to become a thoracic surgeon: Frederick Douglass Stubbs
• First African American elected to The Explorers Club: Matthew Henson

1938

• First African-American woman federal agency head: Mary McLeod Bethune
• First African-American woman elected to a state legislature: Crystal Bird Fauset
• First African-American woman to earn a pilot's license in the United States: Willa Brown
• First African-American pilot to fly airmail in the United States: Grover C. Nash

1939

• First African American to star in her own television program: Ethel Waters, The Ethel Waters Show, on NBC

1940s

1940

• First African-American woman to win an Oscar: Hattie McDaniel
• First African American to be portrayed on a U.S. postage stamp: Booker T. Washington
• First African-American flag officer: BG Benjamin O. Davis Sr., U.S. Army
• First African American to earn a doctorate in library science: Eliza Atkins Gleason, from the University of Chicago
• First African-American woman to earn a PhD in Zoology: Roger Arliner Young
• First African-American woman in the United States to earn her Ph.D. in history: Marion Thompson Wright
• First African American selected to be a diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine: Henry Arthur Callis

1941

• First African American to give a White House Command Performance: Josh White
• First African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in anatomy : Ruth Smith Lloyd
• First medical research presentation by an African-American physician given at an American Medical Association convention: Leonidas Berry
• First African American air traffic controller for the Civil Aeronautics Administration: Oscar Holmes
• First African American to serve as an Acting Field Director for the Red Cross: Bess Bolden Walcott

1942

• First African American to be awarded the Navy Cross: Doris Miller
• First African-American member of the U.S. Marine Corps: Alfred Masters
• First African-American inadvertently commissioned in the U.S. Navy as a Limited duty Flight instructor: Oscar Holmes
• First African American to captain a U.S. Merchant Marine ship, the : Hugh Mulzac
• First African American to become an officer in the Civil Air Patrol: Willa Brown
• First African American to earn a doctorate in geology in the United States: Marguerite Williams
• First African American to become a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy: Bernard W. Robinson
• First African American woman to sign a long-term contract with a major film studio: Lena Horne
• First African-American Women's Army Auxiliary Corps assigned as a commanding officer of what was otherwise an all-white unit: Anna Mac Clarke

1943

• Martin A. Martin, first African American to become a member of the Trial Bureau of the United States Department of Justice, was sworn in on May 31, 1943.
• First African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics: Euphemia Haynes, from Catholic University of America
• First African-American woman to perform a successful open-heart surgery: Myra Adele Logan
• First African American to earn a Ph.D. in chemical engineering in the United States : Harry James Green Jr.
• First African-American combat fighter pilot to shoot down an enemy aircraft: Charles B. Hall
• First African-American man to have a US warship, the, named after him: Leonard Roy Harmon

1944

• First African-American commissioned Line officers in the U.S. Navy: The "Golden Thirteen"
• First African-American commissioned as a U.S. Navy officer from the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps: Samuel Gravely
• First female African-American commissioned Navy officers: Harriet Ida Pickens and Frances Wills
• First African American to receive a contract with a major U.S. opera company: Camilla Williams
• First known African-American comic book artist: Matt Baker in Jumbo Comics #69 for Fiction House
• First African-American reporter to attend a U.S. presidential news conference: Harry McAlpin
• First African American to be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross: Charles B. Hall
• First African American to win the Walter Naumburg Award: Carol Brice
• First African-American woman to be certified as an overseas war correspondent in World War II: Elizabeth Murphy Moss
• First African American to graduate from the United States Merchant Marine Academy: Joseph Banks Williams

1945

• First African-American member of the New York City Opera: Todd Duncan
• First African-American U.S. Marine Corps officer: Frederick C. Branch
• First African American sworn in as a Navy nurse: Phyllis Mae Dailey
• First African-American woman to enter the Coast Guard: Olivia Hooker

1946

• First African American to sign a contract with an NFL team in the modern era: Kenny Washington
• First African-American radiologist to be elected a member of the Society for Pediatric Radiology: John E. Moseley

1947

• First African-American Major League Baseball player of the modern era: Jackie Robinson.
• First African-American Major League Baseball player in the American League: Larry Doby.
• First African-American consensus college All-American basketball player: Don Barksdale
• First African American to play in a major college football game at an all-white university south of the Mason-Dixon Line, at the University of Virginia: Chester Middlebrook Pierce
• First comic book produced entirely by African Americans: All-Negro Comics
• First African-American full-time faculty member at a predominantly white law school: William Robert Ming
• First African-American female member of the U.S. House and Senate press galleries: Alice Allison Dunnigan
• First African American faculty member of Springfield College: Harold Amos
• First African American resident at St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago: James E. Bowman
• First African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States: Marie Maynard Daly
• First African-American professor to win tenure at a top-ranked, predominantly white university in the country : Allison Davis
• First African American selected to become a member of the American College of Chest Physicians : J. Edmond Bryant
• First African American certified by the American Board of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation: Harvey F. Davis

1948

• First African-American man to receive an Oscar: James Baskett
• First African American on an Olympic basketball team and first African-American Olympic gold medal basketball winner: Don Barksdale, in the 1948 Summer Olympics
• First African Americans to play in the Cotton Bowl Classic: Wallace Triplett and Dennis Hoggard
• First African American to design and construct a professional golf course: Bill Powell
• First African American knowingly trained and commissioned as a U.S. Naval aviator: Jesse L. Brown
• First African-American composer to have an opera performed by a major U.S. company: William Grant Still
• First African-American woman to win an Olympic medal : Audrey Patterson
• First African-American woman to win an Olympic gold medal : Alice Coachman
• First African American since Reconstruction to enroll at a traditionally white university of the South: Silas Hunt
• First known African-American star of a regularly scheduled network television series: Bob Howard, The Bob Howard Show
• First African-American man to graduate from Oregon State College: William Tebeau
• First African-American female reporter to travel with a U.S. president : Alice Allison Dunnigan
• First African American in the regular United States Army Nurse Corps after it was desegregated: Nancy Leftenant-Colon
• First clinician to investigate the treatment of humans with Aureomycin: Louis T. Wright
• First African American to serve as a Supreme Court law clerk: William Thaddeus Coleman Jr.
• First African-American nurse elected to the board of directors of a state nursing association : Mary Elizabeth Carnegie
• First African American to play with a major American orchestra : Henry Lewis
• First African-American enlisted woman to be sworn into the regular Navy: Edna Young

1949

• First African-American graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy: Wesley Brown
• First African American to chair a committee of the United States Congress: Representative William Dawson.
• First African American to hold the rank of Ambassador of the United States: Edward R. Dudley, ambassador, and previously minister, to Liberia
• First African American to win an MVP award in Major League Baseball: Jackie Robinson
• First African-American-owned and -operated radio station: WERD, established October 3, 1949, in Atlanta, Georgia by Jesse B. Blayton Sr.
• First African-American woman president of an NAACP chapter nationwide: Florence LeSueur of Boston's NAACP chapter.
• First African-American women to earn a doctor of veterinary medicine degree: Jane Hinton and Alfreda Johnson Webb
• First African American to sing at a U.S. presidential inauguration : Dorothy Maynor
• First African-American woman entomologist to earn a Ph.D.: Margaret S. Collins
• First African American to sit in the House of Delegates of the American Medical Association, representing the Medical Society of the County of New York: Peter Marshall Murray
• First African American certified by the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery: J. Robert Gladden
• First African American United States circuit judge to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit: William H. Hastie
• First African American jet pilot instructor : John L. Whitehead Jr.

1950s

1950

• First African American to win a Tony Award: Juanita Hall
• First African American to win a Pulitzer Prize: Gwendolyn Brooks
• First African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize: Ralph Bunche
• First African American to receive a "lifetime" appointment as federal judge: William H. Hastie, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
• First African-American woman to compete on the world tennis tour: Althea Gibson
• First African-American solo singer to have a #1 hit on the Billboard charts: Nat King Cole, topped "Best Sellers in Stores" chart on July 15
• First African-American delegate to the United Nations: Edith S. Sampson
• First African-American NBA basketball players: Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton, Chuck Cooper, and Earl Lloyd. Note: Harold Hunter was the first to sign an NBA contract, signing with the Washington Capitols on April 26, 1950. However, he was cut from the team during training camp and did not play professionally.
• First African American elected a Fellow in the American College of Physicians: Edward E. Holloway
• First African-American woman certified by the American Board of Dermatology and Syphilology : Hilda G. Straker
• First African-American woman admitted to the American College of Surgeons: Helen Octavia Dickens
• First African American to earn a PhD in metallurgical engineering: Frank Crossley

1951

• First African-American named to the College Football Hall of Fame: Duke Slater, University of Iowa
• First African-American quarterback to become a regular starter for a professional football team: Bernie Custis

1952

• First African-American driver in NASCAR: Wendell Scott
• First African-American woman elected to a U.S. state senate: Cora Brown
• First African-American U.S. Marine Corps aviator: Frank E. Petersen
• First African-American woman to be nominated for a national political office: Charlotta Bass, Vice President
• First African-American baseball player to appear in or win a College World Series: Don Eaddy
• First African American to earn a doctoral degree from Harvard's Division of Medical Sciences: Harold Amos
• First African-American woman to receive a Ford Foundation science fellowship to study abroad: Mary Logan Reddick
• First African-American tenured professor in the University of California system and the first tenured African-American faculty member in a STEM field at a top-ranked, predominantly white institution in the United States: Joseph Thomas Gier

1953

• First African-American basketball player to play in the NBA All-Star Game: Don Barksdale in the 1953 NBA All-Star Game
• First African-American quarterback to play in the National Football League during the modern era: Willie Thrower
• First African American elected president of the National Health Council: Albert Walker Dent
• First African-American physician elected a diplomate of the American Board of Neurosurgery: Clarence Sumner Greene
• One of the first two African-American women on the faculty at a southern medical school and the first African American on the staff of the Louisville Children's Hospital and on the faculty at the University of Louisville School of Medicine: Grace Marilynn James
• First African American to sing at La Scala, Milan, Italy: Mattiwilda Dobbs

1954

• First African-American U.S. Navy Diver: Carl Brashear
• First individual African-American woman as subject on the cover of Life magazine: Dorothy Dandridge, November 1, 1954
• First African-American page for the U.S. Supreme Court, and first to be enrolled in the Capitol Page School: Charles V. Bush
• First African American enrolled in the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock: Samuel L. Kountz
• First African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. degree in political science: Jewel Prestage

1955

• First African-American member of the Metropolitan Opera: Marian Anderson
• First African-American male dancer in a major ballet company: Arthur Mitchell ; also first African-American principal dancer of a major ballet company, 1956.
• First African-American female dancer in a major ballet company : Raven Wilkinson
• First African-American pilot of a scheduled U.S. airline: August Martin
• First African American to serve as a presidential executive assistant: E. Frederic Morrow, appointed by President Eisenhower as Administrative Officer for Special Projects.
• First African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics education : Angie Turner King
• First African American certified by the American Board of Cardiovascular Diseases: Edward E. Holloway
• First African-American woman to earn a doctorate in pharmacology: Dolores Cooper Shockley
• First African American elected to the national board of the American Institute of Chemists : Lloyd Hall
• First African American nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress: Dorothy Dandridge

1956

• First African-American star of a nationwide network TV show: Nat King Cole of The Nat King Cole Show, NBC
• First African American to break the color barrier in a bowl game in the Deep South: Bobby Grier
• First African-American Wimbledon tennis champion: Althea Gibson ; also first African American to win a Grand Slam event.
• First African-American U.S. Secret Service agent: Charles Gittens
• First African American to win the Cy Young Award as the top pitcher in Major League Baseball, in the award's inaugural year: Don Newcombe
• First African-American woman to become president of a four-year, fully accredited liberal arts college: Willa Beatrice Player
• First African American to earn a Ph.D. in dairy technology : Emmett Bassett
• First African-American member of the United States Army Chorus: George Shirley
• First African American be named head coach of the U.S. Olympic Women's Track and Field Team: Nell Jackson
• First African American to serve as assistant editor of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse: Margaret Danner
• First African-American woman to play in a national championship conducted by the United States Golf Association : Ann Gregory

1957

• First African-American female Wimbledon Tennis Champion: Althea Gibson
• First African-American assistant coach in the NFL: Lowell W. Perry
• First African American to win Major League Baseball's Gold Glove, in the award's inaugural year: Willie Mays
• First African American to work as a botanist at the United States National Arboretum: Roland Jefferson
• First African-American woman to play professional roller derby: Darlene Anderson
• First African American to be elected to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows : Paul R. Williams
• First African-American pilot of a regularly scheduled commercial airline in the United States : Perry H. Young Jr.

1958

• First African-American flight attendant: Ruth Carol Taylor
• First African American to reach number-one on the Billboard Hot 100: Tommy Edwards
• NASA’s first African-American woman engineer: Mary Jackson
• First African American to become a member of the International Skeletal Society: Gadson Jack Tarlton, Jr.
• First African American to graduate from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School: John L. Whitehead Jr.
• First Black player in the National Hockey League (NHL) :Willie O'Ree

1959

• First African-American Grammy Award winners, in the award's inaugural year: Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie

• First African-American television journalist: Louis Lomax
• First African American to win a major national player of the year award in college basketball: Oscar Robertson, USBWA Player of the Year
• First African-American woman to become a member of the American Institute of Architects : Norma Merrick Sklarek
• First African-American woman surgeon to become a fellow of the American College of Surgeons: Dorothy Lavinia Brown
• First African American named as an examiner for the American Board of Ophthalmology: Howard Phillip Venable
• First African American to appear on television with what is believed to be a natural African hair style : Cicely Tyson
• First African American elected president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists : William Montague Cobb

1960s

1960

• First African American to work as a flight attendant on a commercial airline for a southern carrier for Capital Airlines: Patricia Banks Edmiston
• First African American to earn a Ph.D. in meteorology : Charles E. Anderson
• First African American to attend a whites-only elementary school in the Deep South : Ruby Bridges

1961

• First African American to win the Heisman Trophy: Ernie Davis
• First African American to serve on a U.S. district court: James Benton Parsons, appointed by President John F. Kennedy to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
• First African-American delegate to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization: Edith S. Sampson
• First African American to go over Niagara Falls: Nathan Boya a.k.a. William FitzGerald
• First African American to join the PGA Tour: Charlie Sifford
• First African-American singer to maintain a sustained relationship with the Metropolitan Opera: Leontyne Price
• First African American to perform a kidney transplant and made medical history by performing the first kidney transplant using a non-twin donor: Samuel L. Kountz
• First African American to be appointed as the U.S. representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency: George W. Reed
• First African American to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy : Harvey Washington Banks
• First African-American officer to command a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Theodore E. Chandler : Samuel L. Gravely Jr.

1962

• First African American to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame: Jackie Robinson
• First African-American coach in Major League Baseball: John Jordan "Buck" O'Neil
• First African-American attorney general of a state: Edward Brooke
• First African-American student admitted to the University of Mississippi: James Meredith
• First African-American Navy Seal: William Goines
• First African-American woman certified by the American Board of Radiology: Sarah Ewell Payton
• First African American and youngest person appointed as commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission: A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.
• First African American to work as a news correspondent for an American television network as a United Nations reporter: Malvin Russell Goode

1963

• First African-American bank examiner for the United States Department of the Treasury: Roland Burris
• First African American to graduate from the University of Mississippi: James Meredith
• First African-American named as Time magazine's Man of the Year: Martin Luther King Jr.
• First African American to win a NASCAR Grand National event: Wendell Scott
• First African-American police officer of the NYPD to be named a precinct commander: Lloyd Sealy, commander of the NYPD's 28th Precinct in Harlem.
• First African American to be named American League MVP: Elston Howard
• First African-American chess master: Walter Harris
• First African American to appear as a series regular on a primetime dramatic television series: Cicely Tyson, East Side/West Side.
• First African American to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award: Diahann Carroll, for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Lead Role, for the episode "A Horse Has a Big Head, Let Him Worry" of Naked City
• First African Americans inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame: New York Renaissance, inducted as a team
• First African American to graduate from the U.S. Air Force Academy: Charles V. Bush
• First African-American man to obtain a Ph.D. in geology: Mack Gipson
• First African-American woman chemist hired by the National Bureau of Standards: Reatha Clark King

1964

• First African American to join the Ladies Professional Golf Association: Althea Gibson
• First African-American pilot for a major commercial airline: David E. Harris, American Airlines
• First African-American man to win an Oscar: Sidney Poitier
• First movie with African-American interracial marriage: One Potato, Two Potato, actors Bernie Hamilton and Barbara Barrie, written by Orville H. Hampton, Raphael Hayes, directed by Larry Peerce
• First African-American baseball player to be named the Major League Baseball World Series MVP: Bob Gibson, St. Louis Cardinals
• First African American to graduate from the University of San Francisco: Dr. Mary Edna Davidson
• First African American promoted to lieutenant colonel in the Army Nurse Corps: Margaret E. Bailey
• First African-American woman to earn a contract with an American national symphony – with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra as principal keyboardist: Patricia Prattis Jennings
• First African-American woman to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom: Lena Frances Edwards
• First African-American president of the Actors' Equity Association: Frederick O'Neal
• First African American to win a PGA Tour event : Pete Brown

1965

• First African-American nationally syndicated cartoonist: Morrie Turner
• First African-American title character of a comic book series: Lobo.
• First African-American star of a network television drama: Bill Cosby, I Spy
• First African-American cast member of a daytime soap opera: Micki Grant who played Peggy Nolan Harris on Another World until 1972.
• First African-American Playboy Playmate centerfold: Jennifer Jackson
• First African-American U.S. Air Force General: Benjamin Oliver Davis Jr.
• First African-American woman Ambassador of the United States: Patricia Roberts Harris, ambassador to Luxembourg
• First African-American NFL official: Burl Toler, field judge/head linesman
• First African American to win a national chess championship: Frank Street Jr.
• First African-American United States Solicitor General: Thurgood Marshall
• First African-American woman to receive a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from Yale Law School: Pauli Murray
• First African American to broadcast from the United Nations: Bea Moten-Foster
• First African-American actress to portray a lead role at the American Shakespeare Festival: Ruby Dee
• First African American inducted into the National Academy of Sciences: David Blackwell
• First director of Health Services for the Head Start (program) was the African-American physician: Gertrude Hunter

1966

• First African-American man to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award and first African American to win a Primetime Emmy Award: Bill Cosby, I Spy
• First team with five African-American starters to win the NCAA basketball tournament: 1965–66 Texas Western Miners basketball team
• First African-American coach in the National Basketball Association: Bill Russell
• First African-American model on the cover of a Vogue magazine: Donyale Luna
• First post-Reconstruction African-American elected to the U.S. Senate : Edward Brooke
• First African-American Cabinet secretary: Robert C. Weaver
• First African-American Major League Baseball umpire: Emmett Ashford
• First African-American NFL broadcaster: Lowell W. Perry
• First African-American fire commissioner of a major U.S. city: Robert O. Lowery of the New York City Fire Department
• First African-American mayor in Ohio: Robert C. Henry of Springfield, Ohio.
• First African-American woman to earn a contract with an American national symphony – with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra as principal keyboardist, playing piano, harpsichord, organ and celesta: Patricia Prattis Jennings
• First African American doctor in the U.S. Submarine Service when commissioned and assigned to the USS George C. Marshall: William A. Ross
• First African American appointed as faculty member of the United States Naval Academy : Samuel P. Massie
• First African American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft pilot: James T. Whitehead
• First African-American woman to become a federal judge : Constance Baker Motley
• First African American to graduate from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy: Merle Smith

1967

• First African-American elected mayor of a large U.S. city: Carl B. Stokes
• First African American appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States: Thurgood Marshall
• First African American selected for astronaut training: Robert Henry Lawrence Jr.
• First African-American woman, and first woman, to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine: Tina Turner
• First African American to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame: Emlen Tunnell
• First African-American interracial kiss on network television: entertainers Nancy Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. on Sinatra's variety special Movin' With Nancy, airing December 11 on NBC
• First tenured African-American professor in the University of Chicago's Biological Sciences Division: James E. Bowman
• Two African Americans became Duke University's first Ph.D. graduates: Ida Stephens Owens and James Roland Law
• First African-American woman to be head of a Catholic hospital: Mary Antona Ebo
• First African-American woman to serve as associate dean of a major medical school : Jane C. Wright
• First African American to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry from North Carolina State University: Steve B. Latimer
• First African-American mayor of a major American city, and the first mayor in Washington, D.C. since 1871 when President Lyndon Johnson appointed him: Walter Washington
• First African-American officer in the U.S. Marine Corps to lead an infantry company into combat while serving during the Vietnam War: J. Gary Cooper

1968

• First African-American interracial kiss on a network television drama: Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols and Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner : Star Trek: "Plato's Stepchildren"
• First African-American man to win a Grand Slam tennis event: Arthur Ashe
• First African-American coach to win an NBA Championship: Bill Russell
• First African American to serve as an executive of the United Methodist Publishing House: W. T. Handy Jr.
• First African-American woman elected to U.S. House of Representatives: Shirley Chisholm
• First African American appointed as a United States Assistant Secretary of State: Barbara M. Watson
• First African American to start at quarterback in the modern era of professional football: Marlin Briscoe
• First African-American commissioned officer awarded the Medal of Honor: Riley L. Pitts
• First fine-arts museum devoted to African-American work: Studio Museum in Harlem
• First African-American actress to star in her own television series where she did not play a domestic worker: Diahann Carroll in Julia
• First African-American woman as a presidential candidate: Charlene Mitchell
• First African-American woman reporter for The New York Times: Nancy Hicks Maynard
• First African-American starring character of a comic strip: Danny Raven in Dateline: Danger! by Al McWilliams and John Saunders.
• First African-American woman to win an Olympic 800m title: Madeline Manning
• First African-American woman to work as an epidemiologist at the Food and Drug Administration : Theresa Greene Reed
• First African-American woman to be promoted to the rank of full colonel in the United States Air Force: Ruth A. Lucas
• First African American to chair a department at Harvard Medical School : Harold Amos
• First African American certified in radiologic physics by the American Board of Radiology: Louis B. Levy
• First African-American woman to be certified by the American Board of Surgery : Hughenna L. Gauntlett
• First African American certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery: Vincent Porter
• First African American from the southern United States to host a daily prime time talk show: Xernona Clayton
• First African-American woman to serve with the Connecticut State Police : Louise Smith

1969

• First African-American superhero: The Falcon, Marvel Comics' Captain America #117.
• First African-American graduate of Harvard Business School: Lillian Lincoln
• First African-American director of a major Hollywood motion picture: Gordon Parks
• First African-American founder of a classical training school and the company of ballet: Arthur Mitchell, Dance Theatre of Harlem
• First African-American woman to appear on the Grand Ole Opry: Linda Martell
• First African American to own a commercial airliner: Warren Wheeler
• First African American to become a member of the San Diego City Council: Leon Williams
• First African American to earn a PhD in computer science: Clarence Ellis
• First African-American man to win the Pulitzer Prize, and the first African American awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography: Moneta Sleet Jr.
• First African American United States Postal Service Assistant Postmaster General: Ronald B. Lee

1970s

1970

• First African American to head an Episcopal diocese: John Melville Burgess, diocesan bishop of Massachusetts
• Possibly the first African-American U.S. Navy Master Diver: Carl Brashear
• First African-American member of the New York Stock Exchange: Joseph L. Searles III
• First African-American NCAA Division I basketball coach: Will Robinson
• First African-American contestant in the Miss America pageant: Cheryl Browne
• First African-American woman to become a physician's assistant: Joyce Nichols
• First African-American actress to win a Emmy Award: Gail Fisher for Mannix
• First African-American basketball player to win the NBA All-Star MVP, the NBA Finals MVP, and the NBA MVP all in the same season: Willis Reed
• First African American to initiate the concept of free agency. He refused to accept a trade following the 1969 season, ultimately appealing his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The trend of free agency expanded across the entire landscape of professional sports for all races and all cultures: Curt Flood
• First African American to become director of a major library system in America: Clara Stanton Jones, as director of the Detroit Public Library
• First African American to perform at a List of [Super Bowl halftime shows|Super Bowl halftime show]: Lionel Hampton
• First African-American woman to attain the rank of colonel: Margaret E. Bailey
• First African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama : Charles Gordone
• First African American to become a member of the American Academy of Dermatology : John A. Kenney Jr.
• First African American selected to be president of the American Public Health Association: Paul Cornely
• First African-American woman to work as an administrator at the American Medical Association: Effie O'Neal Ellis
• First African-American woman to be a high fashion model and the first to appear in a television commercial: Naomi Sims
• First African American to have a weekly prime-time television show under his own name : Flip Wilson
• First person credited with creating a computer-generated rough draft of a U.S. naval ship: Raye Montague
• First African-American woman commentator to appear on a national network as a radio and television commentator: Ethel L. Payne

1971

• First African-American pitcher to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame: Satchel Paige
• First African-American president of the New York City Board of Education: Isaiah Edward Robinson Jr.
• First African-American woman to win a Golden Globe Award: Gail Fisher for Mannix
• First African-American female jockey in the United States: Cheryl White
• First African American to appear by herself on the cover of Playboy: Darine Stern
• First African American to become president of the Public Library Association: Effie Lee Morris*1971 DAV Scholarship First African American to receive scholarship to Art Institute of Chicago Mary J. Weatherspoon
• First African-American president of the American Psychological Association : Kenneth B. Clark
• First African American governor of the American Board of Internal Medicine: W. Lester Henry Jr.
• First African-American physician to be certified in colorectal surgery: Bobby J. Harris
• First African American to become a board member of the American Academy of Dermatology : John A. Kenney Jr.
• First African-American to become a member of the Radio-Television News Directors Association: Malvin Russell Goode
• First African-American woman to head a major teaching hospital in the United States (executive director of Sydenham Hospital in New York City: Florence S. Gaynor

1972

• First African American to campaign for the U.S. presidency in a major political party: Shirley Chisholm
• First African-American superhero to star in own comic-book series: Luke Cage, Marvel Comics' Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1.
• First African-American National Basketball Association general manager : Wayne Embry
• First African-American interracial romantic kiss in a mainstream comics magazine: "The Men Who Called Him Monster", by writer Don McGregor and artist Luis Garcia, in Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror-comics magazine Creepy #43
• First African-American interracial male kiss on network television: Sammy Davis Jr. and Carroll O'Connor in All in the Family
• First African American inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame: Team-owner and coach Bob Douglas, in the category of "contributor"
• First African-American female Broadway director: Vinnette Justine Carroll
• First African-American comic-book creator to receive a "created by" cover-credit: Wayne Howard
• First black valedictorian of the National Cathedral School Fath Davis Ruffins
• First African American to be awarded the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the "Theme from Shaft" and third African American to be awarded an Oscar in any category: Isaac Hayes
• First African-American woman to earn a PhD in physics: Willie Hobbs Moore
• First blind African-American psychiatrist in the United States: Edwin Nii Adom
• First U.S. naval ship, the USS Jesse L. Brown, that was named for an African-American officer who was the first African American naval officer killed in action during the Korean War was launched: Jesse L. Brown
• First African American principal player in a major American orchestra : Elayne Jones
• First African-American member of the Federal Communications Commission : Benjamin Hooks

1973

• First African-American artistic director of a professional regional theater: Harold Scott
• First African-American List of [James Bond villains|Bond villain] in a James Bond movie: Yaphet Kotto, playing Mr. Big/Dr. Kananga, Live and Let Die.
• First African-American Bond Girl in a James Bond movie: Gloria Hendry, Live and Let Die.
• First African-American elected mayor of Los Angeles: Tom Bradley
• First African-American psychologist in the U.S. Air Force: John D. Robinson
• First African-American woman mayor of a U.S. metropolitan city: Doris A. Davis, Compton, California
• First African-American woman adult film star, Desiree West.
• First African-American woman to earn a doctorate degree from MIT: Shirley Ann Jackson
• First African American to join the American Chemical Society: Dorothy J. Phillips
• First African-American chemist inducted into the National Academy of Sciences: Percy Lavon Julian
• First African American member of the National Task Force on Organ Procurement and Transplantation: Clive Orville Callender
• First U.S. destroyer, USS Miller (FF-1091), named after an African-American: Doris Miller
• First African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in biophysics : Anna Coble

1974

• First African-American model on the cover of U.S. Vogue magazine: Beverly Johnson
• First African-American NBA Coach of the Year: Ray Scott
• First African-American woman to serve as a United States Secret Service agent: Zandra Flemister
• First African American to become a board member of the Society for Investigative Dermatology: John A. Kenney Jr.
• First African American pilot selected to join the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds: Lloyd W. Newton

1975

• First African-American elected mayor, and first mayor, of Washington, D.C.: Walter Washington
• First African-American game show host: Adam Wade
• First African-American four-star general: Daniel James Jr.
• First African-American inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player: Bill Russell
• First African-American interracial couple in a TV-show cast: The Jeffersons, actors Franklin Cover and Roxie Roker as Tom and Helen Willis, respectively; the show's creator: Norman Lear
• First African-American interracial romantic kiss in a full-color comic book: Amazing Adventures #31, feature "Killraven: Warrior of the Worlds", characters M'Shulla Scott and Carmilla Frost, by writer Don McGregor and artist P. Craig Russell
• First African-American manager in Major League Baseball: Frank Robinson
• First African-American model on the cover of Elle magazine: Beverly Johnson
• First African-American psychologist in the U.S. Navy: John D. Robinson
• First African American to play in a men's major golf championship: Lee Elder
• First African American to be named Super Bowl MVP in NFL: Franco Harris. Of mixed ancestry, Harris was also the first Italian American to win the award.
• First African-American women named as Time magazine's Person of the Year: Barbara Jordan and Addie L. Wyatt
• First African-American woman to anchor a major United States network newscast: Carole Simpson
• First African-American woman to be appointed to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, which is the court of last resort for the District of Columbia, and first to serve on any court of last resort in the United States: Julia Cooper Mack
• First African American to serve as United States Secretary of Transportation and the second African American to serve in the United States Cabinet: William Thaddeus Coleman Jr.
• First partial artificial heart implantation in a human was completed by an African-American cardiac surgeon: John C. Norman
• First African American to be certified in pediatric surgery: Samuel Blanton Rosser
• First African American to serve on the House Committee on Ways and Means: Charles Rangel
• First African American to play in the Masters Tournament: Lee Elder

1976

• First African-American female elected officer of an international labor union: Addie L. Wyatt
• First African American to become president of the American Library Association: Clara Stanton Jones, who served as its acting president from April 11 to July 22, 1976, and then its president from July 22, 1976, to 1977
• First African American to win a major party nomination for statewide office in the Southern United States since the Reconstruction era: Asa T. Spaulding Jr.
• First African-American lawyer from the Deep South to be appointed to the federal judiciary – the United States Military Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.: Matthew J. Perry
• First African-American artist to win Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards: Natalie Cole
• First African-American woman to deliver the keynote address at a Democratic National Convention: Barbara Jordan
• First woman to graduate from the United States Army Command and General Staff College with a degree in military arts and sciences: Clara Adams-Ender
• First African-American to serve as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a role today known as U.S. Poet Laureate: Robert Hayden
• First African-American woman inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters: Gwendolyn Brooks

1977

• First African-American, appointed director of the Peace Corps: Carolyn R. Payton
• First African American drafted to play professional basketball, first woman to dunk in a professional women's game: Cardte Hicks
• First African-American woman in the U.S. Cabinet: Patricia Roberts Harris, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
• First African-American woman to have her signature appear on U.S. currency: Azie Taylor Morton, the 36th Treasurer of the United States
• First African-American publisher of mainstream gay publication: Alan Bell
• First African-American woman to join the Daughters of the American Revolution: Karen Batchelor
• First African-American Major League Baseball general manager: Bill Lucas
• First African-American woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest: Pauli Murray.
• First African-American woman to work as a registrar for a major scientific museum: Margaret Santiago.
• First African American and the third woman to be appointed Assistant Secretary for Administration of the United States Department of Agriculture: Joan Scott Wallace
• First African American elected president of the American Chemical Society : Henry Aaron Hill
• First African American appointed director of the National Earthquake Information Center: Waverly Person
• First African-American woman to be appointed president of American Women in Radio and Television: Phoebe Beasley
• First African-American woman invited to train with the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory as a handwriting expert and went on to make a career as a forgery expert: Bessie Blount Griffin

1978

• First African-American broadcast network news anchor: Max Robinson
• First African-American woman pilot for a major commercial airline: Jill E. Brown, Texas International Airlines
• First African-American woman to advance to the rank of captain in the Navy: Joan C. Bynum
• First African American president of the Special Libraries Association : Vivian Davidson Hewitt
• First African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction : James Alan McPherson
• First African American otolaryngologist: James Herman Mabrie III
• First African-American physician elected president of the Society of Surgical Oncology: LaSalle D. Leffall Jr.
• First African American and first woman to be named Democratic whip-at-large in the United States House of Representatives: Cardiss Collins

1979

• First African-American U.S. Marine Corps general officer: Frank E. Petersen
• First African American to win a Daytime Emmy Award for lead actor in a soap opera: Al Freeman Jr.
• First African-American woman ordained in the Lutheran Church in America, the largest of three denominations that later combined to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: Earlean Miller
• First African-American head coach of an NCAA Division I-A football program: Willie Jeffries.
• First African American to play professional basketball behind the "Iron Curtain", Kent Washington played for KS Start Lublin, Poland.
• First African American to serve as the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services: Patricia Roberts Harris
• First African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in chemical engineering : Jennie Patrick
• First African-American woman promoted to brigadier general in the United States Army and the first African-American chief of the United States Army Nurse Corps: Hazel Johnson-Brown
• First African-American woman judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit: Amalya Kearse

1980s

1980

• First African-American woman to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy: Janie L. Mines, graduated in 1980
• First African-American woman to join the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live: Yvonne Hudson
• First African-American-oriented cable television network: BET
• First woman to be elected to the Fellow of the American Institute of Architects : Norma Merrick Sklarek
• First African-American appointed as judge to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, located in Birmingham, Alabama: U. W. Clemon
• First African-American director of the National Science Foundation : John Brooks Slaughter
• First African-American woman on the Board of Governors of the Mathematical Association of America: Gloria Ford Gilmer
• First African American promoted to the rank of brigadier general of the United States Army Medical Corps: Guthrie Turner
• First African-American physician elected as chancellor of the American College of Radiology: Leslie L. Alexander
• First surgeon to implant the automatic implantable defibrillator in a human: Levi Watkins

1981

• First African American to play in the NHL: Val James
• First African-American woman Curator of the National Museum of American History Fath Davis Ruffins
• First African-American woman to become board-certified in maternal-fetal medicine. Yvonne Thornton

1982

• First African-American inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach: Clarence Gaines
• First African-American U.S. Army four-star General: Roscoe Robinson Jr.
• First African American elected to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors: Leon Williams
• First African-American woman editor of the Harvard Law Review: Annette Gordon-Reed
• First African-American Nurse Corps officer in the Army to graduate from the United States Army War College: Clara Adams-Ender
• First African American and first woman to complete a neurosurgery residency at Case Western University, and the second African-American woman certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery: M. Deborrah Hyde
• First African American to win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor: Louis Gossett Jr.
• First African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in computer science: Marsha Rhea Williams
• First African-American governor of the American College of Surgeons, the first African-American president of the Association of Children's Prosthetic and Orthotic Clinics, and the first African-American member of the AMA House of Delegates representing the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons: Charles H. Epps Jr.
• First board-certified African-American woman orthopaedic surgeon in the United States: Claudia L. Thomas
• First African-American anchor on a major network : Bryant Gumbel

1983

• First African-American astronaut: Guion Bluford.
• First African-American mayor of Chicago: Harold Washington
• First African-American Miss America: Vanessa L. Williams
• First African-American owners of a major metropolitan newspaper: Robert C. and Nancy Hicks Maynard
• First African American admitted on the national level as a member-at-large of the Daughters of the American Revolution: Lena Santos Ferguson
• First African-American artist to have a music video shown in heavy rotation on MTV: Michael Jackson
• First African American to be elected president of the National Association of Women Lawyers: Mahala Ashley Dickerson
• First African-American physician member of the governing body of the American Board of Pediatrics: Melvin Earl Jenkins
• First African American to command a U.S. submarine when assigned as the Commanding Officer of the USS Houston (SSN-713): C. A. Tzomes
• First African-American actress to replace a white actress on Broadway in a leading role : Diahann Carroll

1984

• First African American to win a delegate-awarding U.S. presidential primary/caucus: Jesse Jackson.
• First African-American New York City Police Commissioner: Benjamin Ward
• First African-American coach to win the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship: John Thompson
• First African-American woman board-certified in neurosurgery: Alexa Canady
• First African-American woman elevated to the position of bishop within the United Methodist Church: Leontine T. Kelly

1985

• First African American to become a member of the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels precision flying team: Donnie Cochran. Also, first African American to command the team.
• First African-American female general: Sherian Cadoria
• First African-American woman to win an MTV Video Music Award: Tina Turner
• First African-American winner of the Academy Award for Best Original Song Score : Prince
• First African American selected president of the American Orthopedic Association: Charles H. Epps Jr.
• First woman president of the National Medical Association : Edith Irby Jones

1986

• First African-American Formula One racecar driver: Willy T. Ribbs
• First African-American musicians inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in the inaugural class: Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, and Little Richard
• First African-American woman to be regularly featured in heavy rotation on MTV with multiple videos: Whitney Houston
• First African-American woman certified by the American Board of Thoracic Surgery: Rosalyn Sterling
• First director and first African-American director for the Office of Minority Health: Herbert W. Nickens

1987

• First African-American woman, and first woman of any race, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Aretha Franklin
• First African-American Radio City Music Hall Rockette: Jennifer Jones
• First African-American man to sail around the world solo: Teddy Seymour
• First African-American CEO of a Fortune 500 company: Clifton R. Wharton Jr.
• First African-American woman, and first woman of any race, to have an album debut at number one on the Billboard 200: Whitney Houston
• First African-American woman president of Spelman College: Johnnetta Cole
• First African-American winner of the Academy Award for Best Original Score: Herbie Hancock

1988

• First African-American woman, and first woman of any race, to set a Guinness World Record for the then-largest paying audience for a concert : Tina Turner
• First African American to win a medal at the Winter Olympics : Debi Thomas
• First African-American woman elected to a U.S. judgeship, and first appointed to a state supreme court: Juanita Kidd Stout
• First African-American candidate for President of the United States to obtain ballot access in all 50 states: Lenora Fulani
• First African-American NFL referee: Johnny Grier
• First African-American quarterback to start a Super Bowl: Doug Williams
• First African-American Olympic gold medalist in wrestling: Kenny Monday
• First African-American man to manage a financial institution: Richard Parsons
• First African American to participate in the International Culinary Olympics in Frankfurt, Germany: Darryl Evans

1989

• First African-American NFL coach of the modern era: Art Shell, Los Angeles Raiders
• First African-American mayor of New York City: David Dinkins
• First African-American mayor of Seattle, Washington: Norm Rice
• First African-American Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Colin Powell
• First African-American woman, ordained bishop in the Episcopal Church: Barbara Clementine Harris
• First African-American Chairman of the Democratic National Committee: Ron Brown
• First African-American woman transplant surgeon: Velma Scantlebury
• First African-American president of the Society for Adolescent Medicine: Renee Jenkins
• First African-American winner of the Academy Award for Best Sound: Willie D. Burton
• First woman officer to command a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship and the first African-American woman to command a ship for an extended period within the nation's uniformed services: Evelyn J. Fields
• First African-American president of the Society of Adolescent Medicine: Renee Jenkins
• First African-American president of the Society of Nuclear Medicine: Richard A. Holmes
• First African American elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: Walter E. Massey
• First African American to be elected President of the National League (baseball): Bill White (first baseman)
• First African American to command a spaceflight when he led the STS-33 mission of Space Shuttle Discovery: Frederick D. Gregory

1990s

1990

• First elected African-American governor: Douglas Wilder
• First African-American elected president of the Harvard Law Review: Barack Obama
• First African-American Miss USA: Carole Gist
• First African-American Playboy Playmate of the Year: Renee Tenison
• First African-American president of the American Medical Women's Association: Roselyn Payne Epps
• First African-American physician elected president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists: Ezra C. Davidson Jr.
• First African American commissioned in the U.S. Navy's music program: George N. Thompson Jr.

1991

• First African American to qualify for the Indianapolis 500 auto race: Willy T. Ribbs
• First African-American female mayor of Washington, D.C.: Sharon Pratt Kelly
• First African-American woman to perform a back flip on the ice while figure skating: Rory Flack
• First African-American woman to dive to the ocean floor in the deep submersible ALVIN: Dawn Wright
• First African-American woman to earn a PhD in theoretical astrophysics: Reva Williams
• First African-American physician elected chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine: Gerald E. Thomson
• First African-American woman general officer of the United States Air Force : Marcelite J. Harris
• First African American appointed to the National Cancer Advisory Board: Zora Kramer Brown

1992

• First African-American female astronaut: Dr. Mae Jemison
• First African-American woman elected to U.S. Senate: Carol Moseley Braun
• First African-American woman to moderate a Presidential debate: Carole Simpson
• First African American to sail solo around the world following the Age of Sail route around the southern tips of South America and Africa, avoiding the Panama and Suez Canals: Bill Pinkney
• First African-American Major League Baseball manager to reach the World Series: Cito Gaston 1992 World Series
• First African American to direct an animated film: Bruce W. Smith
• First African-American physician appointed to the Board of Trustees of the American College of Cardiology: Charles L. Curry
• First African-American president of the American Heart Association: Edward Sawyer Cooper
• First African American nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director : John Singleton
• First African-American and deaf woman to earn a doctoral degree: Shirley J. Allen

1993

• First African American to serve as the U.S. secretary of commerce: Ron Brown
• First African American to serve as the U.S. secretary of agriculture: Mike Espy
• First African American to serve as the U.S. secretary of veteran affairs: Jesse Brown
• First African American and first woman to serve as the U.S. secretary of energy: Hazel R. O'Leary
• First African American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature: Toni Morrison
• First African-American woman named Poet Laureate of the United States since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position : Rita Dove; also the youngest person named to that position
• First African-American appointed Director of the National Drug Control Policy: Lee P. Brown
• First African-American Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: David Satcher
• First African-American appointed Surgeon General of the United States: Joycelyn Elders
• First African American to serve as home plate umpire for World Series game: Charlie Williams for Game 4 of the 1993 World Series
• First African American to be inducted as a member of the Grand Ole Opry: Charley Pride
• First African-American woman dean of a United States medical school : Barbara Ross-Lee
• First African-American woman appointed to the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation : Lottie Shackelford
• First African-American Director of the Federal Highway Administration: Rodney E. Slater
• First African-American physician appointed national medical director of the United States Postal Service: David H. Reid III
• First African American elected president of the American Meteorological Society : Warren M. Washington
• Only artist commissioned to do the inaugural artwork for two U.S. presidents; first, in 1989, for the inauguration of President George H. W. Bush; and, in 1993, for the inauguration of President Bill Clinton: Phoebe Beasley
• First African-American woman and first woman U.S. attorney in Oklahoma: Vicki Miles-LaGrange

1994

• First African-American female director of a major-studio movie: Darnell Martin
• First African-American to win the United States Amateur Championship: Tiger Woods
• First African-American woman to win the US Open Professional Figure Skating Championships: Rory Flack
• First African-American president of the American Osteopathic Association : William G. Anderson
• First African American woman chair of a university department of ophthalmology : Eve Higginbotham
• First African American and first woman crew chief of the NASA Space Shuttle Crew Escape Equipment processing department: Sharon Caples McDougle
• First African-American woman to be a police chief of any major city in the United States : Beverly Harvard

1995

• First African-American inductee to the National Radio Hall of Fame: Hal Jackson
• First African-American Sergeant Major of the Army: Gene C. McKinney
• First African-American Miss Universe: Chelsi Smith
• First African-American personal diarist to a U.S. president : Janis F. Kearney
• First African American and first woman to serve as chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission : Shirley Ann Jackson
• First African-American woman to be elected to the American Medical Association Board of Trustees: Regina Benjamin
• First African American and first woman to be assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ): Carolyn G. Morris
• First African American elected president of the American Medical Association : Lonnie R. Bristow
• First African American to perform an extra-vehicular activity, during the second of his two Space Shuttle flights: Bernard A. Harris Jr.
• First woman chairperson of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): Myrlie Evers-Williams
• First African-American president of the Associated Press Managing Editors: Robert G. McGruder
• First African-American dean of the University of [Illinois College of Education]: Mildred Barnes Griggs.

1996

• First African-American U.S. Navy four-star admiral: J. Paul Reason
• First African-American MLB general manager to win the World Series: Bob Watson, 1996 World Series
• First African American elected president of the Society of Automotive Engineers: Claude A. Verbal
• First African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music: George Walker
• First African American appointed the chief of engineers for the United States Army Corps of Engineers: Joe N. Ballard

1997

• First African American to win a men's major golf championship: Tiger Woods
• First African-American model to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition: Tyra Banks
• First African-American UFC champion: Maurice Smith
• First African-American Director of the National Park Service: Robert Stanton
• First African American to be elected a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery : Clarence Ellis
• First African American to serve as the U.S. secretary of labor: Alexis Herman
• First African-American woman and first woman to serve as chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia: Norma Holloway Johnson
• First African-American physician elected president of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine: Robert Shaw Rhodes
• First African-American woman tomb guard for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (Arlington): Danyell E. Wilson

1998

• First African-American female rear admiral in the U.S. Navy: Lillian Fishburne
• First African American promoted to flag rank in the Coast Guard: Erroll M. Brown
• First African-American Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard: Vincent W. Patton III
• First African American to play in the Presidents Cup: Tiger Woods
• First African American to lie in honor at the U.S. Capitol: Jacob Chestnut
• First African-American Space Shuttle Commander Frederick D. Gregory
• First African-American to earn a Ph.D. in paper science: Chavonda Jacobs-Young
• First African-American woman to serve as a director of an institute of the NIH, acting in that capacity for the National Institute of Neorological Disorders and Stroke : Audrey S. Penn
• First African-American man appointed to the position of Surgeon General of the United States: David Satcher
• First African American to be inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in Chicago, Illinois: Tom Joyner
• First African-American woman awarded the Henry Johnson Fisher award by the Magazine Publishers of America: Susan L. Taylor
• First African-American woman elected to serve as a State Treasurer in the United States and the first African-American woman elected to a statewide office in Connecticut: Denise Nappier
• First African-American woman judge on the United States District Court for the District of Nevada: Johnnie B. Rawlinson
• First African American president of the National Conference of State Legislatures : Dan Blue

1999

• First African American to be awarded the Grandmaster title in chess: Maurice Ashley
• First African-American Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps: Alford L. McMichael
• First African-American woman to lead a top-ranked research university when named the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: Shirley Ann Jackson
• First African-American woman to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit: Ann Claire Williams
• First African-American woman to head a publicly traded corporation when media company Radio One, which she founded, went public: Cathy Hughes
• First African American and first woman to be promoted to Director of White House Photography: Sharon Farmer
• First African-American president of the Society of Women Engineers : Sherita Ceasar
• First African American to become an instructor at the U.S. Coast Guard's Chief Petty Officers’ Academy: Angela McShan
• First African American to become director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Corps and NOAA's Office of Marine and Aviation Operations as well as the first woman to become a NOAA Corps rear admiral: Evelyn J. Fields

21st century

2000s

2000

• First African-American nominated for Vice President of the United States by a Federal Election Commission-recognized and federally funded political party: Ezola B. Foster
• First African American to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame: Charley Pride
• First African American to be elected Republican state party chair in the United States: Michael Steele
• First woman to serve as president of the Association of Black Cardiologists: Elizabeth Ofili
• First African-American woman to be promoted to Master Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Coast Guard: Angela McShan
• First African-American woman to be elected bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church: Vashti Murphy McKenzie
• First African-American woman judge appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit: Johnnie B. Rawlinson

2001

• First African American to serve as the U.S. secretary of state: Colin Powell
• First African American to serve as the U.S. secretary of education: Rod Paige
• First African-American president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: The Most Reverend Wilton Daniel Gregory
• First African-American president of the Unitarian Universalist Association: Rev. William G. Sinkford
• First African-American president of an Ivy League university: Ruth J. Simmons at Brown University
• First African-American woman and first woman National Security Advisor: Condoleezza Rice
• First African-American billionaire: Robert L. Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television
• First African-American woman billionaire: Sheila Johnson
• First African-American broadcaster to call a Super Bowl: Greg Gumbel
• First African American to win the Academy Award for Best Actress: Halle Berry

2002

• First African American to become majority owner of a U.S. major sports league team: Robert L. Johnson
• First African-American Winter Olympic gold medal winner: Vonetta Flowers
• First African-American woman combat pilot in the U.S. Armed Forces: Captain Vernice Armour, USMC
• First African-American to win an Oscar: Halle Berry
• First African-American to receive the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards): Whoopi Goldberg
• First African-American woman to be ranked #1 in tennis: Venus Williams
• First African American to be named year-end world champion by the International Tennis Federation: Serena Williams
• First African-American Arena Football League head coach to win ArenaBowl: Darren Arbet, ArenaBowl XVI
• First African-American general manager in the National Football League: Ozzie Newsome
• First African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama : Suzan-Lori Parks

2003

• First African-American woman to be elected District Attorney in the United States: Kamala Harris
• First African-American woman to be ordained in the Church of the Brethren: Belita D. Mitchell
• First African American to win a Career Grand Slam in tennis: Serena Williams
• First African-American American Bar Association president: Dennis Archer
• First African American elected to statewide office in Maryland. : Michael Steele
• First African-American woman to serve as a lieutenant governor in the United States: Jennette Bradley
• First African-American woman to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit: Allyson K. Duncan

2004

• First African-American inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame: Charlie Sifford
• First African-American NBA general manager to win the NBA Finals: Joe Dumars, 2004 NBA Finals
• First African-American Canadian Football League head coach to reach the Grey Cup: Pinball Clemons, 92nd Grey Cup
• First and only African-American woman to fly the United States Air Force's U-2 spy plane: Merryl Tengesdal
• First African-American woman to earn a place on the U.S. Olympic Swim Team, where she won a silver medal on the 4×100 freestyle relay: Maritza Correia
• First African American to earn the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, for a revival of A Raisin in the Sun: Phylicia Rashad

2005

• First African-American woman Secretary of State: Condoleezza Rice
• First African-American women to lead a major transportation agency in the U.S. serving on the BART Board of Directors: Carole Ward Allen and Lynette Sweet
• First African-American woman U.S. Coast Guard aviator: Jeanine Menze
• First African-American woman, to lie in honor at the U.S. Capitol: Rosa Parks
• First African-American woman chief justice of a state supreme court in the United States when she became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia: Leah Ward Sears

2006

• First African American to command a United States Marine Corps division: Major General Walter E. Gaskin
• First African-American individual Winter Olympic gold medal winner: Shani Davis
• First African American to reach the peak of Mount Everest: Sophia Danenberg
• First African-American woman to receive Dharma transmission in Zen Buddhism: Merle Kodo Boyd
• First African-American quarterback inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame: Warren Moon
• First African-American Lady of Turks and Caicos Islands: LisaRaye McCoy
• First African-American woman to obtain a web-based software patent: Janet Emerson Bashen

2007

• First known African-American woman to reach the North Pole: Barbara Hillary
• First African-American White House Chief Usher: Stephen Rochon
• First African-American NFL head coaches to reach the Super Bowl: Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy, Super Bowl XLI
• First African-American NFL coach to win a Super Bowl: Tony Dungy
• First African-American president of the American Academy of Pediatrics: Renee Jenkins
• First African American to serve as the clerk of the United States House of Representatives: Lorraine Miller

2008

• First African American to be nominated as a major-party U.S. presidential candidate: Barack Obama, Democratic Party
• First African-American elected President of the United States: Barack Obama
• First African American First Lady: Michelle Obama
• First African American to referee a Super Bowl game: Mike Carey
• First African-American woman elected Speaker of a state House of Representatives: California Rep. Karen Bass
• First African American to be appointed to the United States Senate by a state governor: Roland Burris
• First African-American woman combat pilot in the United States Air Force: Major Shawna Rochelle Kimbrell
• First African-American NFL general manager to win the Super Bowl: Jerry Reese, Super Bowl XLII
• First African American and the first woman to be appointed dean of Harvard College: Evelynn M. Hammonds
• Developed the first orthotropic xenograft model of metastatic Ewing's sarcoma while simultaneously completing the first cytoreductive surgery and hyper-thermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy HIPEC for children with sarcomatosis, which improved the survival rate from 15 percent to over 60 percent: Andrea Hayes-Jordan
• First African American to be elected president of the American Sociological Association : Patricia Hill Collins

2009

• First African-American President of the United States: Barack Obama
• First African-American First Lady of the United States: Michelle Obama
• First African-American chair of the Republican National Committee: Michael Steele
• First African-American United States Attorney General: Eric Holder
• First African-American woman United States Ambassador to the United Nations: Susan Rice
• First African-American United States Trade Representative: Ron Kirk
• First African-American woman Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: Lisa P. Jackson
• First African-American White House Social Secretary: Desirée Rogers
• First African American to appear by himself on a circulating U.S. coin: Duke Ellington.
• First African-American Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration: Charles F. Bolden Jr.
• First African-American woman rabbi: Alysa Stanton
• First African-American woman CEO of a Fortune 500 company: Ursula Burns, Xerox Corporation.
• First African-American doubles team to be named year-end world champion by the International Tennis Federation: Serena and Venus Williams
• First African-American recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in History: Annette Gordon-Reed
• First African American to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject): Roger Ross Williams
• First African-American woman judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit: O. Rogeriee Thompson
• First African American appointed to serve as a United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama: Kenyen R. Brown

2010s

2010

• First African American to win the Stanley Cup: Dustin Byfuglien with the Chicago Blackhawks
• First African-American winner of the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay: Geoffrey S. Fletcher

2011

• First African-American Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons: Charles E. Samuels Jr.
• First African-American admitted to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College: Sandra Lawson
• First African-American woman to serve as acting chair of the Democratic National Committee: Donna Brazile
• First African-American woman to reach the South Pole: Barbara Hillary
• First African American and the first woman to hold the post of United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom in the State Department: Suzan Johnson Cook
• First African-American woman to achieve the rank of major general in the U.S. Army Reserves: Marcia Anderson
• First African-American woman to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit: Bernice B. Donald

2012

• First African American to be re-elected President of the United States: Barack Obama
• First African-American Combatant Commander of United States Central Command: Lloyd Austin
• First African-American elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention : Fred Luter
• First African-American woman to take command of a navy missile destroyer: Monika Washington Stoker
• First African-American woman to win the Best Director award in the U.S. dramatic competition at the Sundance Film Festival: Ava DuVernay
• First African-American woman to qualify in submarines : Tabitha Strobel
• First African-American woman to win the artistic gymnastics Olympic individual all-around title: Gabby Douglas
• First African American to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature: T. J. Martin

2013

• First African-American U.S. senator from the former Confederacy since Reconstruction: Tim Scott
• First African-American president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: Cheryl Boone Isaacs
• First African-American United States Secretary of Homeland Security: Jeh Johnson
• First African-American to receive a full-length statue in the United States Capitol: Rosa Parks
• First African-American woman selected to be interim president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People : Lorraine Miller

2014

• First African-American woman four-star admiral: Michelle J. Howard
• First African-American senator to be elected in the South since Reconstruction: Tim Scott, elected in South Carolina
• First African-American player named to the USA Curtis Cup Team: Mariah Stackhouse
• First African-American transgender woman to appear on the cover of Time magazine: Laverne Cox
• First African-American woman to be included in the White House's permanent art collection: Alma Thomas
• First African-American woman to be nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director for her work on Selma: Ava DuVernay
• First woman and the first African American to lead Trinity College (Connecticut): Joanne Berger-Sweeney
• First African American and first woman to lead the Agricultural Research Service : Chavonda Jacobs-Young
• First African-American winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture: Steve McQueen
• First African-American woman to serve on a federal district court in North Carolina : Loretta Copeland Biggs

2015

• First African American to lead a major intelligence agency: Vincent R. Stewart, Defense Intelligence Agency
• First African-American commissioner of a major North American sports league: Jeffrey Orridge, Canadian Football League
• First African-American woman Attorney General of the United States: Loretta Lynch
• First African-American female principal dancer for the American Ballet Theatre: Misty Copeland
• First African American to be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame: Wendell Scott
• First African-American sole anchor of a network evening newscast: Lester Holt
• First African-American elected as presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church: Bishop Michael Curry
• First African-American female American Bar Association president: Paulette Brown
• First African American to be appointed Surgeon General of the United States Army and the first African-American woman to be promoted to Lieutenant General: Nadja West
• First female medical oncologist to serve as president of the National Medical Association, the nation's oldest professional society for black physicians: Edith Mitchell
• First African-American winner of the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film: James Lucas

2016

• First African-American president of a major broadcast TV network: Channing Dungey
• First African-American Librarian of Congress: Dr. Carla Hayden
• First African-American woman to be elected a diocesan bishop in the Episcopal Church: Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows
• First African American to serve as president of Wellesley College: Paula Johnson

2017

• First African-American CEO of a Major League Baseball team: Derek Jeter
• First African-American to win the University of Mary Washington Historic Preservation Book Prize: Catherine Fleming Bruce
• First African-American woman to earn the role of First Captain, leader of the West Point Corps of Cadets: Simone Askew
• First African-American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for a feature-length documentary at the 89th Oscars: Ava DuVernay
• First African-American woman to direct a live-action film with a budget of over $100 million: Ava DuVernay
• First woman goalkeeper and first African-American woman to be elected to the National Soccer Hall of Fame: Briana Scurry
• First African-American woman to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series: Lena Waithe
• First African-American woman president of the American Society for Engineering Education : Bevlee Watford
• First African-American woman in a NASCAR Cup Series pit crew: Brehanna Daniels
• First African-American woman inducted into the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame: Carol H. Williams

2018

• First African-American woman to headline Coachella: Beyoncé, giving rise to the nickname Beychella
• First African American to play for Team USA Hockey in the Olympic Games: Jordan Greenway
• First African-American artist commissioned for U.S. president portrait to be displayed in the Smithsonian: Kehinde Wiley
• First African-American artist commissioned for U.S. first lady portrait to be displayed in the Smithsonian: Amy Sherald
• First African-American elected to a state office of the Maryland Society Daughters of the American Revolution: Reisha Raney
• First African American to be the artistic or creative director of a French fashion house: Virgil Abloh
• First African-American president of the American Psychiatric Association: Altha Stewart
• First African-American woman to be major party nominee for state governor: Stacey Abrams
• First African-American superintendent of the [United States Military Academy]: Darryl A. Williams
• First African-American woman U.S. Marine Corps general officer: Lorna Mahlock
• First African-American winner of the Academy Award for Screenwriting: Jordan Peele
• First African-American winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film: Kobe Bryant
• First African-American woman nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay: Dee Rees
• First African-American woman to serve as president of the American Psychological Association : Jessica Henderson Daniel

2019

• First African-American woman to be the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health: Dr. Ngozi Ezike
• First African-American general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Peter M. Johnson
• First African-American secretary of the Smithsonian Institution: Lonnie Bunch
• First African-American female director of an Association of Zoos and Aquariums-accredited institution: Denise Verret
• First African-American elected official to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol: Representative Elijah Cummings
• First African-American elected to the National Board of Management of the Daughters of the American Revolution: Wilhelmena Rhodes Kelly
• First African-American woman to win the Academy Award for Best Costume Design: Ruth E. Carter
• First African American to be nominated for and win an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature: Peter Ramsey
• First African American to be nominated for and win an Academy Award for Best Production Design: Hannah Beachler
• First African-American woman to serve as floor director: Shuwanza Goff
• First African American woman to be awarded a Michelin star: Mariya Russell

2020s

2020

• First African-American to be nominated as a major party U.S. vice-presidential candidate: Kamala Harris, Democratic Party
• First African-American and first female elected Vice President of the United States: Kamala Harris
• First African American to be appointed as a military Chief of Staff and first African American to lead any branch of the United States Armed Forces: Charles Q. Brown Jr.
• First African-American woman elected to the Raleigh City Council: Stormie Forte
• First African-American president of an NFL team: Jason Wright
• First African-American Professor of Poetry, first African-American woman Professor and first Distinguished Visiting Poetry Professor of the Iowa Writers' Workshop: Tracie Morris
• First African-American elected official to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda: John Lewis
• First African-American Catholic cardinal: Wilton Gregory
• First African-American recording artist to have three albums certified diamond in the United States: Whitney Houston
• Remoshay Nelson became the first Black female officer to join the United States Air Force Thunderbirds.
• First African-American woman to lead the American Library Association : Tracie D. Hall

2021

• First African-American and first female Vice President of the United States: Kamala Harris
• First African-American and first female President of the United States Senate: Kamala Harris
• First African-American and first female to serve as Acting President of the United States: Kamala Harris
• First African-American Democratic U.S. senator to represent a former Confederate state in the United States Senate: Raphael Warnock, elected in Georgia.
• First African-American United States Secretary of Defense: Lloyd Austin
• First full-time female African-American NFL coach: Jennifer King.
• First African-American president of the American Civil Liberties Union: Deborah Archer
• First African-American woman to serve on the Supreme Court of Missouri: Robin Ransom
• First African-American woman to appear on the Maxim magazine and became "Sexiest Woman Alive": Teyana Taylor
• First African American to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee: Zaila Avant-garde
• First African-American U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York: Damian Williams
• First African-American NCAA ice hockey coach: Kelsey Koelzer
• First African-American Connecticut State Comptroller: Natalie Braswell
• First African-American woman to be elected as Lieutenant Governor of Virginia: Winsome Sears
• First African-American to be elected as Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina: Mark Robinson
• First African-American to serve as Second Lady of North Carolina: Yolanda Hill Robinson
• First African-American woman to serve as Brigade Commander at the United States Naval Academy: Sydney Barber
• First African American to Chair the Council of Economic Advisers: Cecilia Rouse
• First African American elected to the United States Congress from the state of Washington
• First African Americans to win the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Jamika Wilson and Mia Neal
• First African-American woman to serve as the Principal Deputy Spokeswoman for the United States Department of State: Jalina Porter
• First African-American woman to pilot a spacecraft and the first African-American commercial astronaut: Sian Proctor
• First African-American woman to be Deputy Secretary of Agriculture: Jewel H. Bronaugh
• First African-American woman coach in Major League Baseball : Bianca Smith
• First African American United States Forest Service chief: Randy Moore
• First African American United States Army Reserve lieutenant general: A. C. Roper

2022

• First Afro-Caribbean American woman elected Speaker of the New York City Council: Adrienne Adams
• First African-American woman and first woman to be the police commissioner of the New York Police Department: Keechant Sewell
• First African-American woman to appear on U.S. currency : Maya Angelou
• First African-American woman nominated, confirmed to, and sworn into the Supreme Court of the United States: Ketanji Brown Jackson
• First African-American represented in the National Statuary Hall Collection: Mary McLeod Bethune
• First African-American Marine Corps four-star general: Michael Langley
• First African-American elected governor of the U.S. state of Maryland: Wes Moore
• First African-American elected Attorney General of the U.S. state of Maryland: Anthony Brown
• First African-American chosen to lead a party caucus in either chamber of Congress: Hakeem Jeffries
• First African-American female Major general in the United States Marine Corps: Lorna Mahlock
• First African-American woman to join the Arkansas Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution: Sharon Fort
• First African-American transgender woman model for Victoria's Secret: Emira D'Spain
• First African-American woman elected mayor of Los Angeles: Karen Bass
• First African-American woman to win 32 Grammy Awards: Beyoncé
• First African-American woman and first woman of color to lead any of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks: Susan M. Collins
• First African-American woman appointed CEO and President of the Sinai Chicago hospital system: Ngozi Ezike
• First African-American woman and first woman of color to sit on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors: Lisa D. Cook
• First Black person to dive to Challenger Deep, the deepest point on Earth, and to successfully operate a side scan sonar at full-ocean depth: Dawn Wright
• First African American and first woman of color to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy : Alondra Nelson
• First African American, and first woman to serve as executive director and chief executive officer of the American College of Surgeons: Patricia L. Turner
• First African-American woman to earn FIFA international refereeing badge: Natalie Simon
• First African-American woman mathematician to have her papers archived in the Library of Congress: Gloria Ford Gilmer
• Second African-American woman to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit after Johnnie B. Rawlinson: Holly A. Thomas
• First African-American woman to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit: Dana Douglas
• First African-American woman to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit: Arianna J. Freeman
• First African-American general manager in the National Hockey League (NHL) : Mike Grier
• First African-American woman National Football League referee: Maia Chaka

2023

• First African-American woman elected Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives: Joanna McClinton
• First African-American woman to win two Academy Awards in any category : Ruth E. Carter
• First openly LGBT African American to serve in the United States Senate: Laphonza Butler
• First African American elected as the president of the American Academy of Dermatology: Susan C. Taylor
• First African-American woman to be awarded the Berggruen Prize, a $1 Million Prize by the Berggruen Institute awarded annually to a thinker shaping political, economic, and social institutions: Patricia Hill Collins
• First African-American woman to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit: Nancy Abudu

2024

• First African American woman and to be nominated as a major party U.S. presidential candidate: Kamala Harris, Democratic Party
• First African-American descendent of Colonel John Hazzard Carson admitted to the Daughters of the American Revolution and first African-American member of the NSDAR Greenlee Chapter: Regina Lynch-Hudson
• First African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate in the state of Maryland: Angela Alsobrooks
• First African-American women to achieve the rank of National Master after surpassing a United States Chess Federation rating of 2200: Shama Yisrael in July 2024 and Jessica Hyatt in August 2024
• First African-American woman to be appointed rear admiral lower half in U.S. Coast Guard history: Zeita Merchant
• First African-American woman president of the American Institute of Architects : Kimberly Dowdell

2025

• First American with African American roots to become a Pope of the Catholic Church: Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was elected Pope Leo XIV by the 2025 papal conclave
• First African-American to be elected Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: Yehiel Curry
• First member of Congress known to be born legally blind in both eyes : Lateefah Simon
• First African-American woman president of the American Chemical Society : Dorothy J. Phillips
• First African-American winner of the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series: Tramell Tillman
• First African-American woman as named President and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition : Renee M. Willis