Halle Maria Berry (born Maria Halle Berry; August 14, 1966)[1] is an American actress, film producer, and former fashion model. She won anAcademy Award for Best Actress in 2002 for her performance in the romantic drama Monster's Ball (2001), which made her the only woman of color to win a Best Actress Academy Award to date, as of 2016.[2][3]
Berry was one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood during the 2000s and has been involved in the production of several of the films in which she performed. She is also a Revlon spokesmodel.[4] Before becoming an actress, she started modeling[5] and entered several beauty contests, finishing as the 1st runner-up in the Miss USA Pageant and coming in 6th place in the Miss World Pageant in 1986.[6] Her breakthrough film role was in the romantic comedy Boomerang (1992), alongside Eddie Murphy, which led to roles in ... MORE

Colin Powell becomes the first African American U.S. Secretary of State.

Colin Luther Powell (/ˈkoʊlᵻn/; born April 5, 1937)[2] is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army.[3] He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under U.S. President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, the first African American to serve in that position.[4][5][6][7] During his military career, Powell also served as National Security Advisor (1987–1989), as Commander of theU.S. Army Forces Command (1989) and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–1993), holding the latter position during the Persian Gulf War. Born in Harlem as the son of Jamaican immigrants, Powell was the first, and so far the only, African American to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the first of two consecutive black office-holders to serve as U.S. Secretary of State.  MORE

THE BLACK FAMILY: An, Unsung, Valentine

In honor of Black History Month, The Sun has featured important figures, arguable and not, in our history. This time, however, we acknowledge the, unsung, taken for granted, African-American, nuclear family.

​A committed couple, married or not, who have pledged themselves, each to the other, to battle the pratfalls, and challenges of American life.

Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African-American justice.

Before becoming a judge, Marshall was a lawyer who was best known for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education, a decision that desegregated public schools. He served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit after being appointed by President John F. Kennedy and then served as the Solicitor General after being appointed by PresidentLyndon Johnson in 1965. President Johnson nominated him to the United States Supreme Court in 1967. MORE

Stokely Carmichael (June 29, 1941 – November 15, 1998), also known as Kwame Turé, was a Trinidadian-American revolutionary active in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and later, the global Pan-African movement. Growing up in the United States from the age of eleven, he graduated from Howard University.

​He rose to prominence in the civil rights and Black Power movements, first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party, and finally as a leader of the All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party.[1]  MORE 

Malcolm X (/ˈmælkəm ˈɛks/; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), born Malcolm Little and also known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz[A] (Arabic:الحاجّ مالك الشباز‎), was an American Muslim minister and a human rights activist.

To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans; detractors accused him of preaching racism and violence. He has been called one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history.
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James Howard Meredith (born June 25, 1933) is an American Civil Rights Movement figure, writer, political adviser and Air Force veteran. In 1962, he became the first African-American student admitted to the segregated University of Mississippi,[1] after the intervention of the federal government, an event that was a flashpoint in the African American Civil Rights Movement.

​Inspired by President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, Meredith decided to exercise his constitutional rights and apply to the University of Mississippi.[2] His goal was to put pressure on the Kennedy administration to enforce civil rights for African Americans.[2]  ...MORE

Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753 – December 5, 1784) was the first published African-American female poet.[1] Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven and transported to North America. She was purchased by the Wheatley family ofBoston, who taught her to read and write, and encouraged her poetry when they saw her talent.
The publication of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) brought her fame both in England and the American colonies; figures such as George Washington praised her work. During Wheatley's visit to England with her master's son, the African-American poet Jupiter Hammon praised her work in his own poem.