Buck O’Neil former player in the Negro Baseball league is honored at a Brooklyn Cyclones baseball game.
Credit: © Bruce Cotler, Globe Photos/ZUMA/Alamy Images

February is Black History Month, an annual observance of the achievements and culture of Black Americans. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature Black pioneers in a variety of areas. 

Baseball legend Buck O’Neil was the thread that connected Josh Gibson and Babe Ruth with Lionel Hampton and Ichiro Suzuki. He remains among the most celebrated and important figures in the history of baseball. O’Neil left a lasting impact on the sport as a skilled player, a knowledgeable manager, a shrewd judge of talent, a passionate promoter, and a gifted storyteller.

Major League Baseball (MLB) failed to appreciate Buck O’Neil in a timely fashion. It denied him the chance to play or manage in the league because he was Black. But the sport’s ultimate recognition is finally coming to him, albeit too late for him to enjoy it. In December of last year, the Early Baseball Committee voted to admit O’Neil into the Hall of Fame. He will be formally inducted in July.

John Jordan O’Neil, Jr., was born Nov. 13, 1911, in Carrabelle, Florida, on the Gulf Coast. His father played baseball and introduced him to the game. Around 1920, the family moved to Sarasota, near the spring training facilities of several MLB teams. As a youth, O’Neil watched such players as Babe Ruth prepare for the season. His family would also take him to Negro league games. Negro leagues were professional baseball leagues formed for Black players, who were barred from playing alongside white players because of racial segregation.

As a teenager, O’Neil worked in the fields harvesting celery. He was prohibited from attending the segregated high school in Sarasota. He received high school and college instruction from Edward Waters College (now Edward Waters University), a historically Black college in Jacksonville.

In 1934, O’Neil began playing for small Negro league teams. O’Neil got the nickname “Buck” after being mistaken for a Negro league team owner named Buck O’Neal. O’Neil joined the Kansas City Monarchs in 1938. His sure fielding at first base and high batting average helped the Monarchs to win four consecutive Negro American League pennants from 1939 to 1942.

At the time, Kansas City, Missouri, was one of the hubs of Black culture. O’Neil and many of his teammates were obsessed with jazz. They rubbed elbows with such jazz greats as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Lionel Hampton.

In 1943, O’Neil was drafted into the United States Navy to serve in World War II (1939-1945). He returned to the Monarchs after the war and was named player-manager in 1948. A player-manager manages a baseball team while also playing for the team.

Jackie Robinson had broken MLB’s color barrier the year before, and MLB clubs were signing star players away from Negro leagues teams. The loss of talent caused many Black baseball fans to lose interest in the Negro leagues. To keep the Monarchs in business, O’Neil sought out talented young Black players, signed them, and sold their contracts to MLB teams. He signed a young Ernie Banks on the recommendation of fellow Negro leagues legend Cool Papa Bell.

In 1955, O’Neil was hired as a scout by the MLB Chicago Cubs. He specialized in signing players from the remaining Negro leagues teams and Black players from the South. He scouted future Hall-of-Famers Lou Brock, Lee Smith, and Billy Williams.

In 1962, the Cubs named O’Neil a coach, making him the first Black coach in MLB history. At the time, the Cubs were utilizing a “college of coaches” approach, in which a group of men shared coaching duties throughout the season. O’Neil was given the impression that he might get a chance to manage the team.

During a game that season, a series of ejections of coaches made O’Neil the logical choice to fill in as the third-base coach. He would have become the first Black on-field coach in MLB history. But another coach came in to coach third instead. Years later, O’Neil learned that Cubs coach Charlie Grimm had told the other coaches that O’Neil was never to coach in the field or manage. O’Neil was certain that this exclusion was racially motivated. O’Neil returned to scouting in 1964. In 1988, he became a scout for the Kansas City Royals.

Later in life, O’Neil campaigned to raise public awareness of the Negro leagues. In 1990, he helped establish the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. O’Neil was featured prominently in the documentary miniseries “Baseball” (1994) by the American filmmaker Ken Burns. He regaled audiences with stories of such Black baseball stars as Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson. The work served to introduce younger generations of baseball fans to the players of the Negro leagues.

O’Neil’s warmth, love of baseball, and gift for storytelling won him friends and admirers wherever he went. Star hitter Ichiro Suzuki met O’Neil early in his MLB career and sought him out whenever he traveled to Kansas City. After O’Neil’s death, Suzuki donated a large sum to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

O’Neil lobbied to get Negro leagues players elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. But in 2006, when 17 Negro leagues players and executives were inducted, O’Neil was not selected. The Hall of Fame asked O’Neil to speak during the induction anyway, since none of the 17 honorees were still living. O’Neil agreed and gave a speech praising the new Hall-of-Famers during the induction ceremony.

Despite O’Neil’s magnanimity, those close to him speculated that the snub broke his heart. O’Neil died on Oct. 6, 2006, just two months after the ceremony. It took 15 more years before O’Neil was finally inducted.

In July, O’Neil will take his rightful place next to the other legends of the game, many of whom he met, played against, or mentored. One of his own sayings fits this belated honoring of one of baseball’s greatest treasures: “Waste no tears for me. I didn’t come along too early—I was right on time.”

Former United States President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama (both center) pose next to their portraits at their unveiling at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., in 2018. Barack’s portrait was painted by Kehinde Wiley (far left). Michelle’s was painted by Amy Sherald (far right).
Credit: © Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images

February is Black History Month, an annual observance of the achievements and culture of Black Americans. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature Black pioneers in a variety of areas. 

Until recently, tracksuits, flatbill hats, jeans, Nike T-shirts, and puffer jackets did not appear in many portraits in museums. Now in the National Portrait Gallery and galleries across the world, American painter Kehinde Wiley has livened up modern-day portraits. Wiley is known for his large, highly detailed, brightly colored portraits. His style has been called urban Baroque, a reference to the Baroque art movement of the 1500′s and 1600′s. Baroque art is large in scale and filled with dramatic details.

In 2017, Wiley was selected to paint the presidential portrait of former United States President Barack Obama. Wiley became the first Black American artist to paint an official presidential portrait. Wiley’s portrait of Obama was unveiled in 2018. It hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Wiley was born on Feb. 28, 1977, in Los Angeles, California. He was interested in painting from a young age. Wiley received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1999. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in 2001.

Wiley served as artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York City from 2001 to 2002. It was in Harlem that Wiley developed his unique approach to portraiture. He approached strangers on the street, asking them to pose for him. He photographed the subjects in their street clothes and then painted them in a classical European style. He called this process “street casting.” Wiley continued this process in such places as Morocco, Haiti, and India. Wiley’s signature background depicts flowers and foliage or abstract shapes. The bright, detailed backgrounds are reminiscent of the Baroque style.

Canadian hockey player Willie O’Ree
Credit: © Len Lahman, Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

February is Black History Month, an annual observance of the achievements and culture of Black Americans. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature Black pioneers in a variety of areas. 

In January 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the Willie O’Ree Congressional Gold Medal Act. O’Ree became the first National Hockey League (NHL) player to receive the Congressional Gold Medal. This happened shortly after the Boston Bruins retired his jersey number, 22. The city of Boston also declared January 18 “Willie O’Ree Day.”

O’Ree was the first Black hockey player in the NHL. O’Ree played right wing for the Quebec Aces, a minor league affiliate of the NHL Boston Bruins, before being called up to play for the Bruins in January 1958.

William Eldon O’Ree was born on Oct. 15, 1935, in Fredericton, Canada. He grew up the youngest of 13 children, in an area with few Black families. He began skating at the age of 3. For most of his youth, he played hockey and baseball. In 1955, O’Ree was invited to try out for the Milwaukee (now Atlanta) Braves of Major League Baseball (MLB). He instead chose to join the Kitchener Canucks of the Ontario Hockey Association. An injury on the rink caused O’Ree to lose sight in his right eye. Despite this, he was invited to play right wing for the Quebec Aces. O’Ree scored 22 goals that season, and the Quebec Aces won the Quebec Senior Hockey League championship.

The following season, the Boston Bruins called up O’Ree as a temporary replacement. On Jan. 18, 1958, O’Ree became the first Black hockey player to play for an NHL team. O’Ree spent the next few seasons playing on a few different teams, before being invited back to play for the Bruins in 1961. That year, he played 43 games for the Bruins, scoring a total of 14 points. O’Ree spent the last 18 years of his career playing on minor league teams, including the Los Angeles Blades and the San Diego Gulls, before retiring in 1979. In 1998, O’Ree became the director of youth development for the NHL’s Diversity Task Force. In 2018, O’Ree was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, Canada. If you want to learn more about O’Ree, the award-winning documentary Willie (2019) tells his life story.

Author Jason Reynolds visits the Build Series to discuss his novel “Look Both Ways” at Build Studio on October 08, 2019 in New York City.
Credit: © Gary Gershoff, Getty Images

February is Black History Month, an annual observance of the achievements and culture of Black Americans. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature Black pioneers in a variety of areas. 

When you check out the new releases section of your library or bookstore, you are bound to see several colorful and eye-catching books by Jason Reynolds. Reynolds is an American author of novels and poetry for young adult and middle-grade readers. His works explore a variety of topics from a young person’s perspective. Such topics include the Black American experience, as well as such issues as gun and gang violence.

In 2020, the librarian of Congress appointed Reynolds National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. The position involves traveling and speaking to groups of children, parents, and teachers to promote the joy of reading. Although normally a two-year position, the term was extended to three years for Reynolds because the COVID-19 pandemic (worldwide epidemic) interrupted his speaking schedule.

Reynolds was born on Dec. 6, 1983, in Washington, D.C. He grew up in neighboring Oxon Hill, Maryland. Reynolds graduated from the University of Maryland in 2005 with a degree in English.

Reynolds became interested in poetry at a young age. An interest in rap music inspired him to explore literature. He advocates using rap and comic books as nontraditional ways to reach young readers. Reynolds’s first book, When I Was the Greatest, was published in 2014. It tells the story of three Black teenage boys growing up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, in New York City. Reynolds often chooses Black teenagers—particularly teenage boys—as his subjects. He portrays the uncertainty or fear many of the boys feel, to encourage young male readers to express their own emotions.

Reynolds is best known for such books as Miles Morales: Spider-Man and Long Way Down (both 2017) and the “Track” series, which began with Ghost (2016). His other books include The Boy in the Black Suit (2015); All American Boys (2015, with Brendan Kiely); As Brave as You (2016); Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks (2019); Stuntboy, in the Meantime (2021); and Ain’t Burned All the Bright (2022).

Reynolds also wrote Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (2020). The book is an adaptation, for middle-grade and teen readers, of the award-winning book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016), written by the historian and activist Ibram X. Kendi. The books show ways in which past ideas and practices have embedded assumptions about race into modern thinking, and how people can identify racist thinking in their own lives in order to change it.

Reynolds has won many awards for his works, including the 2015 Coretta Scott King John Steptoe New Talent Award for When I Was the Greatest. Pick up one of Reynold’s award-winning books today, you may not be able to put it down!

Sculptor Augusta Savage
Credit: National Archives

February is Black History Month, an annual observance of the achievements and culture of Black Americans. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature Black pioneers in a variety of areas. 

The Harlem Renaissance was a movement in Black American literature and arts during the 1920’s and early 1930’s, when writers and artists tried to explore Black life in the United States in a fresh way. This artistic “renaissance,” which means rebirth, was set in Harlem, an area in New York City that was the center of Black American cultural life during the period. Writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston built on Black American folk culture and addressed such themes as politics, gender, and heritage. Jazz musicians Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington transformed music. One sculptor of the Harlem Renaissance who cast the reality of the Black experience into sculptures was Augusta Savage.

Augusta Savage was a Black American sculptor and influential art teacher. Savage typically worked in plaster, creating sculptures meant to be cast in bronze. However, Savage could not afford bronze. As a result, most of her sculptures went uncast, and the plaster originals have been destroyed or damaged. Savage’s talent has been recognized after her death, but most of her artwork remains missing.

Savage’s sculptures take their subjects from the Black American experience. Her most successful work was The Harp (Lift Every Voice and Sing), a tribute to the musical contributions of Black Americans. The Harp was a 16-foot (5-meter) tall painted plaster statue. Twelve singers stand in for the strings of the harp, with a man kneeling in front holding sheet music. The base of the harp, supporting the strings, was a large arm and hand. The sculpture was commissioned for and displayed at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Augusta Christine Fells was born Feb. 29, 1892, in Green Cove Springs, Florida, near Jacksonville. Her father, a Methodist minister, disapproved of her early creativity in art. The principal at her high school, in West Palm Beach, recognized Savage’s talent and asked her to teach a clay modeling class. She married James Savage in 1915, but they soon divorced. After winning an award at the West Palm Beach County Fair in 1919, Savage moved to New York City.

Savage was accepted into many renowned art programs and schools, but her lifelong struggle with poverty kept her from many opportunities. She worked at a steam laundry, an industrial laundromat, to provide for her family. Savage received a scholarship to the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City and graduated from the four-year program in three years. She was accepted to the Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts in France. However, her acceptance was rescinded (taken back) when the committee found out she was Black.

Savage was commissioned by New York City’s Harlem Library to make busts of W. E. B. Du Bois, the American sociologist and civil rights activist, and other notable civil rights leaders. In 1929, Savage was given funds and awarded a fellowship to study in France. There, Savage exhibited her work at the Grand Palais. In 1934, Savage became the first Black American elected to the National Association of Woman Painters and Sculptors. She started her own studio, where she gave free art classes. Savage died of cancer on March 26, 1962.

Marion Motley
Credit: © Bettmann/Getty Images

February is Black History Month, an annual observance of the achievements and culture of Black Americans. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature Black pioneers in a variety of areas. 

Today, many Black football players are in the National Football League (NFL). But, this was not always the case. Black players had played in the early history of professional football, but all had been forced out by 1934. This changed in 1946, when the Cleveland Browns teammates Marion Motley (1920-1999) and Bill Willis (1921-2007) became two of a handful of players who permanently broke football’s color barrier, opening professional football to Black players.

Marion Motley was born June 5, 1920, near Albany, Georgia. He grew up in Canton, Ohio, where he attended Canton McKinley High School. Motley attended South Carolina State College, a historically Black college, in 1939. He then played for the University of Nevada, Reno, from 1940 to 1942. In Reno, Motley played fullback on offense, linebacker on defense, and kick returner. According to local accounts, he was also a skilled kicker and passer.

Motley joined the U.S. Navy in 1944 and was stationed at Naval Station Great Lakes near Chicago, Illinois. There, he played football under head coach Paul Brown.

In 1946, the Cleveland Browns began play as part of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC), a rival to the NFL. Paul Brown, Motley’s coach at Great Lakes, was named head coach and general manager. Brown recruited Motley to the new team. Motley anchored the powerful offense alongside quarterback Otto Graham. The Browns dominated the AAFC, winning championships all four years of the league’s existence.

Motley played fullback during his professional career. He was agile enough to dodge defenders, but he was also strong enough to break tackles. He did not shy away from hits and often ran defenders over.

In 1950, the Browns and two other teams from the AAFC joined the NFL. That year, Motley led the NFL with 810 rushing yards and was named to the Pro-Bowl team. The Browns went on to win the 1950 NFL championship game.

Motley was plagued by injuries in his later career, likely the result of his aggressive style of play. Motley left the Browns before the 1954 season and was later traded to the NFL Pittsburgh Steelers. He appeared with the Steelers in a few games in 1955 before retiring. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1968. Motley died on June 27, 1999, in Cleveland.

Bill Willis
Credit: © Bettmann/Getty Images

William Karnet Willis was born on Oct. 5, 1921, in Columbus, Ohio. He attended East High School. He then enrolled at Ohio State University, where he played under head coach Paul Brown. The Buckeyes won their first national championship in 1942. Willis was named to the All-American team in 1943 and 1944, his senior year.

In 1946, when the Cleveland Browns began play as part of the AAFC, Willis’s college coach Paul Brown recruited Willis to the new team. With Willis anchoring the defense, the Browns won all four AAFC championships.

Willis played middle guard, a position similar to middle linebacker in modern defensive play. He chose to play this position despite being relatively small for a defensive player, at 6 feet 2 inches (1.9 meters) and 213 pounds (96 kilograms). Despite his size, he became one of the most feared defensive players due to his exceptional quickness and strong tackling ability.

When the Browns and two other teams from the AAFC joined the NFL in 1950, Willis’s speed saved the Brown’s season during a playoff game against the New York Giants. On a play in which the Giants running back had broken away from the defense and was heading for the end zone, Willis chased him down and tackled him at the 4 yard-line. The play preserved Cleveland’s victory, and the Browns went on to win the 1950 NFL championship game.

Willis was named to three NFL Pro-Bowl teams. He retired after the 1953 season and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1977. Willis died Nov. 27, 2007, in Columbus.

Ibram X. Kendi
Credit: © Stephen Voss

February is Black History Month, an annual observance of the achievements and culture of Black Americans. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature Black pioneers in a variety of areas.

You have probably heard of racism—and many of you have even experienced it—but have you heard of antiracism? A central idea of antiracism is that it is not enough for people to simply avoid racism. Rather, people must actively look for and work to eradicate racism in their own beliefs and in society’s institutions. Ibram X. Kendi (1982-…), an American author, historian, and activist, is a major advocate for antiracism. Kendi is known for his groundbreaking work as a scholar of race studies and Black history. His writings explore the idea of antiracism and the history of racism in America.

Ibram Henry Rogers was born in New York City on Aug. 13, 1982. He staged his first antiracist protest as a child in the third grade. He noticed that his teacher called on white students while ignoring non-white students. He witnessed her treating Black students disrespectfully. He protested his teacher’s racist behavior by refusing to return to class.

In 2004, he received a bachelor’s degree in journalism and African American studies from Florida A&M University. He received a Ph.D. degree in African American studies from Temple University in 2010. He married the American physician Sadiqa Edmonds in 2013. That year, the couple changed their last name to Kendi, and Ibram changed his middle name to Xolani. Kendi is a humanities professor at Boston University. He is also the founding director of the university’s Center for Antiracist Research.

Kendi has written several books focusing on racism, antiracism, and the Black American experience. His first book, The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972, was published in 2012. In 2016, Kendi became the youngest person ever to receive the National Book Award for nonfiction for his book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016). He went on to write the popular How to Be an Antiracist (2019) and Antiracist Baby (2020), a children’s picture book.

Kendi also wrote the introduction for an adaption of the book Stamped for middle school and teen readers written by Jason Reynolds (1983-…), a popular American author of books for young people. The adaptation is called Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (2020). Reynolds writes novels and poetry for young adult and middle-grade readers. His works explore a variety of topics from a young person’s perspective. Such topics include the Black experience. They also include such issues as gun and gang violence.

Jason Reynolds
Credit: © Gary Gershoff, Getty Images

Reynolds became interested in poetry at a young age. An interest in rap music inspired him to explore literature. He advocates using rap and comic books as nontraditional ways to reach young readers. Reynolds’s first book, When I Was the Greatest, was published in 2014. It tells the story of three Black teenage boys growing up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, in New York City. Reynolds often chooses Black teenagers—particularly teenage boys—as his subjects. He portrays the uncertainty or fear many of the boys feel, to encourage young male readers to express their own emotions.

Wally Amos, cookie entrepreneur
Credit: © David L Ryan, The Boston Globe/Getty Images

February is Black History Month, an annual observance of the achievements and culture of Black Americans. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature Black pioneers in a variety of areas.

No matter where you eat a bag of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies, you are home. Well, it might not be your home. But in a way, it is the home of a woman named Aunt Della. She is the woman who inspired the American businessman and cookie entrepreneur Wally Amos to found the Famous Amos cookie company in the 1970’s. Amos worked as a talent agent before founding the company. After selling Famous Amos, he went on to found other cookie companies, write books, and eventually return as the spokesperson for his original brand.

Wallace Amos, Jr., was born on July 1, 1936, in Tallahassee, Florida. It was after his parents separated that he moved to New York City to live with his Aunt Della. She often baked chocolate chip and pecan cookies. Amos studied the culinary (cooking) arts for two years at the Food and Maritime Trades Vocational High School in New York City. He served four years in the United States Air Force. In 1957, Amos returned to New York. He worked at the department store Saks Fifth Avenue before getting a job in the mail room at the William Morris Agency, a talent agency.

Amos worked his way up at the William Morris Agency. In 1962, he became the company’s first Black talent agent. Amos signed the singing duo Simon and Garfunkel. He eventually became the head of the agency’s rock music department. There, he worked with such famous Black singers as Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, and Diana Ross.

In 1967, Amos moved to Los Angeles, California, to open his own management company. Without much business, he began baking chocolate chip cookies. He set out to open a cookie store using a version of his Aunt Della’s recipe. Amos got a loan from Gaye and the singer Helen Reddy. He staged a large advertising campaign and grand opening gala to launch his cookie business. In 1975, he opened the first Famous Amos cookie store in Los Angeles. Soon after, he opened two more stores on the West Coast and one in the Bloomingdale’s department store in New York City.

In 1985, Amos began selling off parts of Famous Amos. In 1988, an investment group purchased the company and repositioned the cookie as a lower-priced snack food. In 1991, Amos launched the Wally Amos Presents Chip & Cookie company. He was sued by the owners of Famous Amos for infringing on the brand and forbidden to use his own likeness to sell food products. In 1998, the Keebler Company purchased Famous Amos. Amos returned to the brand as a spokesperson.

In 1993, Amos and the distributor Lou Avignone launched the Uncle Noname Cookie Company. In 1999, it became Uncle Wally’s Muffin Company. In 2005, Amos started Chip & Cookie. In 2016, another Amos business, the Hawaii-based Cookie Kahuna, was featured on the television investment show “Shark Tank.”

Amos wrote many books, including the memoir The Famous Amos Story: The Face That Launched a Thousand Chips (1983, with Leroy Robinson). His other works include two inspirational books written with Stu Glauberman, Watermelon Magic: Seeds of Wisdom, Slices of Life (1996) and Watermelon Credo: The Book (2010).

Wally Amos was far from the first Black inventor to be obsessed with food. George Washington Carver (1864?-1943) won international fame for his agricultural research. He was especially noted for his work with peanuts. Carver made more than 300 products from peanuts, including a milk substitute, face powder, printer’s ink, and soap. He also created more than 75 products from pecans and more than 100 products from sweet potatoes, including flour, shoe polish, and candy.

February 26, 2020

In the waning days of February, Black History Month in the United States, today World Book looks back at the career of the African American mathematician and computer programmer Dorothy Vaughan. Vaughan was the first African American to hold a managerial position for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the agency that preceded the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Vaughan’s work at NACA and NASA helped break down gender and racial barriers in the sciences. In 2016, her story was among those told in the Hollywood feature film Hidden Figures.

Dorothy Vaughan helped pave the way for women and African Americans to excel in mathematics and science careers. Credit:NASA

Vaughan was born Dorothy Johnson on Sept. 20, 1910, in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1929, she earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Wilberforce University in Ohio. In 1931, Johnson was hired as a mathematics teacher at Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. There, she met Howard Vaughan, a hotel bellhop. Johnson and Vaughan were married in 1932.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan attacked the American military base at Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into World War II (1939-1945). Millions of American men left the workforce to fight in the war, and many jobs were left vacant. In an effort to fill these vacancies, NACA’s Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory began hiring women for positions that had previously been available only to men. Vaughan was hired in 1943. She was assigned to a racially segregated, all-black unit of women mathematicians called West Area Computing. In 1949, Vaughan was promoted to section head, making her NACA’s first black supervisor, and one of the agency’s few female supervisors. Under Vaughan’s supervision, the West Area Computing unit mathematically analyzed the aerodynamic properties of aircraft.

February is African American History Month in the United States. Credit: © African American History Month

When NACA transitioned to NASA in 1958, segregated facilities were outlawed. This marked the end of West Area Computing, and Vaughan was transferred to the new Analysis and Computation Division. There, she became an expert in FORTRAN (Formula Translation), an early high-level computer language. A high-level language is a computer programming language that allows the user to write programs that are independent of the computer’s hardware. As a FORTRAN programmer, Vaughan had an important role in the development of space vehicles. She also contributed to the Scout Launch Vehicle Program, which launched over 100 satellites and probes into outer space.

Vaughan retired from NASA in 1971. Her work at NACA and NASA helped pave the way for women and African Americans to excel in mathematics and science careers. She died on Nov. 10, 2008. The American author Margot Lee Shetterly’s book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016) chronicles Vaughan’s life and career, along with those of other members of the West Area Computing unit. The American actress Octavia Spencer depicted Vaughan in the film based on the book.

The former NASA mathematician Katherine Goble Johnson died at age 101 on Feb. 24, 2020. Credit: NASA/LRC

Another prominent African American mathematician of West Area Computing, Katherine Goble Johnson, died at age 101 on Monday, Feb. 24, 2020. Read her Behind the Headlines feature from last year’s Women’s History Month here.

February 19, 2020

In honor of Black History Month, today World Book remembers the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African Americans who served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II (1939-1945). The name Tuskegee Airmen is used most often to refer to combat pilots, but the group also included bombardiers, navigators, maintenance crews, and support staff. Members of the Tuskegee Airmen were the first African Americans to qualify as military aviators in any branch of the armed forces. Many became decorated war heroes. In 2007, the United States awarded the Tuskegee Airmen the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award given by Congress.

The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of African American pilots, crew, and support staff that served in the Army Air Corps during World War II (1939-1945). This photograph, taken in Ramitelli, Italy, in 1945, shows airmen at a tactical meeting. Credit: Library of Congress

Last February, the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., hosted an event called “African American Pioneers in Aviation and Space.” Among the special guests at the event was the Tuskegee Airman Charles McGee, who turned 100 years old in December 2019. McGee flew 409 aerial combat missions during World War II, the Korean War (1950-1953), and the Vietnam War (1957-1975). His military honors include the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and two Presidential Unit Citations. McGee was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2011.

Daniel “Chappie” James, one of the famous Tuskegee Airmen, poses with his P-51 Mustang fighter plane during the Korean War. Credit: U.S. Air Force

At the time of World War II, the U.S. War Department had a policy of racial segregation. Black soldiers were trained separately from white soldiers and served in separate units. They were not allowed into elite military units. In 1941, under pressure from African American organizations and Congress, the Army Air Corps began accepting black men and admitting them into flight training. The men were trained at Tuskegee Army Air Base, near Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), a college for black students in rural Alabama.

Credit: © African American History Month

The training program began in 1941. One of the first men to earn the wings of an Army Air Corps pilot was Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., who later became the first black general in the U.S. Air Force. Davis commanded the 99th Pursuit Squadron, the nation’s first all-black squadron, which trained at Tuskegee. The 99th operated in northern Africa. Davis later commanded the 332nd Fighter Group, which also trained at Tuskegee. The 332nd became known for its success escorting bombers on missions over Europe.