Lessons · Historians Who Innovate
Historians who innovate.
When we think about innovation, we often limit our thoughts to technology and business. Seldom do we think about historians who go beyond writing books, who recognize a need, move a vision to reality, build community, and leave an enduring legacy.
Coming soon: a free, adaptable lesson plan about innovators, modifiable for any grade level.
01 · Innovator
Dr. Anna Julia Cooper
1858–1964
Dr. Cooper was a pioneer. As the first Black woman to receive a PhD in history (1925, University of Paris), she devoted her dissertation to the study of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and spent the rest of her life in education and intellectual activism. She transformed her home into a public university to educate working adults who had neither time nor money to attend traditional college — the original “by any means necessary” advocate for uplift.
02 · Innovator
Dr. W.E.B. DuBois
1868–1963
Dr. DuBois was a Renaissance historian. Through his widely acclaimed 1903 Souls of Black Folk and decades-long editorship of the NAACP Crisis magazine, his ideas transformed how Black people saw themselves. He was a leading founder of the Niagara Movement, the NAACP, and the Pan-African Congress. When it came to racial uplift, Dr. DuBois meant business.
04 · Innovator
Mary McLeod Bethune
1875–1955
When Bethune encountered a gap, she strategically galvanized resources to fill it. She created Bethune-Cookman College, founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935, helped create the United Negro College Fund, and was part of the founding delegation of the United Nations. As ASALH’s first woman president (1936–1950), she launched its Negro History Bulletin in 1937.
06 · Innovator
Dr. Quintard Taylor
1948–2025
Dr. Taylor was an influential historian who grew up in segregated schools and devoted his life to teaching and writing about Black history. He was the first African American president of the Western History Association and created BlackPast.org, the world’s largest online encyclopedia on Black history.
03 · Innovator
Dr. Carter G. Woodson
1875–1950
You may have heard of The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933), but did you know Dr. Woodson was the second African American to receive a PhD in history from Harvard? In 1915, he founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), and in 1926 helped establish Negro History Week, which evolved into Black History Month.
05 · Innovator
Dr. Charles H. Wright
1918–2002
An ob-gyn who delivered over 7,000 babies, Dr. Wright was concerned about the world those children would encounter — a world filled with what Dr. King called the triple evils: racism, poverty, and militarism. To equip people with a sense of self and history, he founded a museum in 1965, which is now the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.