Best known for her work on gender, race, and class, University of Wisconsin graduate bell hooks was a prolific writer, speaker, and scholar.

Lorraine Hansberry's first Broadway play, A Raisin in the Sun, changed how Black people's lives were shown in American theater.

Vernice Gallimore became Milwaukee's first African American policewoman in 1946.

Ardie Clark Halyard co-founded the first African American-owned savings and loan association (S&L) and was the first woman president of the Milwaukee NAACP chapter.