Walter Payton

Walter Jerry Payton (July 25, 1954 – November 1, 1999) was an American football player, who played for the Chicago Bears of the National Football League. He is remembered as one of the most prolific running backs in the history of American football. Payton, a nine-time Pro Bowl selection, once held the League’s record for most career rushing yards, touchdowns, carries, and many other categories. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993. NFL player and coach Mike Ditka described Payton as the greatest football player he had ever seen - but even greater as a human being.
Payton began his football career in Mississippi, and went on to have an outstanding collegiate football career at Jackson State University. He started his professional career with the Bears in 1975, who selected him as the 1975 Draft’s fourth overall pick. Payton proceeded to win two NFL Player of the Year Awards, and won Super Bowl XX with the 1985 Chicago Bears. After struggling with the rare liver disease, primary sclerosing cholangitis, for several months, Payton died on November 1, 1999.

Although Payton had established himself as one of the state’s top running back prospects, he received no invitations from Southeastern Conference colleges and universities, which were accepting only a few black players at the time. He decided to pursue his collegiate career at the historically African-American, Jackson State University, where his older brother Eddie had played football.

He acquired the nickname Sweetness in college. This name was said to have stemmed from his personality.

Payton's legacy continues through the charitable Walter and Connie Payton Foundation. His own appeals for greater awareness of the need for organ donations, and after his death, his foundation's, are widely credited with bringing national attention to the problem

Chicago Metra commuters have long been witness to a simple "#34 Sweetness", painted on a bridge piling of the Air Line on the south end of the Chicago Union Station yards.

(Information from Wikipedia.)

B.B. King

B. B. King (born Riley B. King, September 16, 1925) is an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter.
He is one of the most respected and successful blues musicians, ever.
Over 52 years B. B. King played at least 15,000 performances.
He has lived with Type II Diabetes for over twenty years and is a visible spokesman in the fight against the disease, appearing in advertisements for diabetes-management products.

Wilma Rudolph.

Wilma Rudolph's life is a story of achieving against the odds. Her first accomplishments were to stay alive and get well!
In high school, she became a basketball star first, who set state records for scoring and led her team to a state championship. Then she became a track star, going to her first Olympic Games in 1956 at the age of 16. She won a bronze medal in the 4x4 relay.
On September 7th, 1960, in Rome, Wilma became the first American woman to win 3 gold medals in the Olympics. She won the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash, and ran the anchor on the 400-meter relay team.
This achievement led her to become one of the most celebrated female athletes of all time. In addition, her celebrity caused gender barriers to be broken in previously all-male track and field events

Janet Collins.

Janet Collins (born March 7, 1917 in New Orleans, Louisiana; died May 28, 2003 in Fort Wort, Texas) was a ballet dancer and choreographer.

Janet Collins was one of the few classically trained African American dancers of her generation.

At the age of fifteen, Collins successfully auditioned for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the Philharmonic, but after being told she would have to paint her face white to perform, she declined the offer. Having told her aunt what happened, she was advised, "You get back to the barre and start your City exercises. Don’t try to be good, be excellent."

In 1951 she won the Donaldson Award for best dancer on Broadway for her work in Cole Porter's Out of This World (musical). She also did Aida, Carmen, and was the first African American ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera.

This is an article about Janet Collins, from The New York Times:

Janet Collins, 86; Ballerina Was First Black Artist at Met Opera
By JENNIFER DUNNING
Published: May 31, 2003

Janet Collins, prima ballerina of the Metropolitan Opera House in the early 1950's and one of a very few black women to become prominent in American classical ballet, died on Wednesday in Fort Worth. She was 86 and lived there.
Ms. Collins taught dance, choreographed, performed on Broadway and in film and appeared frequently on television. But she was best known as the exquisitely beautiful dancer who was the first black artist to perform at the Metropolitan, four years before Marian Anderson sang there.
''She was a great inspiration to me as a child in Trinidad,'' the dancer and painter Geoffrey Holder said. ''What she did by dancing the way she did -- to be prima ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera House -- gave everybody hope.''

Jarome Iginla.

Jarome Arthur-Leigh Adekunle Tig Junior Elvis Iginla (born July 1, 1977, in Edmonton. Alberta), is a Canadian professional ice hockey player and team captain for the Calgary Flames of the National Hockey League. A first round draft pick of the Dallas Stars in 1995, Iginla was later traded to Calgary, and has played his entire professional career with the Flames. He is the Flames all-time leader in goals scored and games played. Iginla was named the Flames captain at the start of the 2003–04 season, the first black captain in NHL history.

As a junior, Iginla was a member of two Memorial Cup winning teams as Canadian major-junior champions, and was named the Western Hockey League's Player of the Year in 1996. Iginla has led the NHL in goals twice, and has scored 50 goals in a season twice. In 2002, Iginla helped Team Canada win its first gold medal at the Winter Olympics in 50 years. Iginla also won the Lester B. Pearson Award as the league's Most Valuable Player as voted by the players, and finished second in voting for the Hart Memorial Trophy. In 2004, Iginla led the Flames to the Stanley Cup Finals, leading the league in playoff scoring.

Ella Fitzgerald.

Dubbed "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald was the most popular female jazz singer in the United States for more than half a century. In her lifetime, she won 13 Grammy awards and sold over 40 million albums.Her voice was flexible, wide-ranging, accurate and ageless. She could sing sultry ballads, sweet jazz and imitate every instrument in an orchestra. She worked with all the jazz greats, from Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Nat King Cole, to Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman. (Or rather, some might say all the jazz greats had the pleasure of working with Ella.)She performed at top venues all over the world, and packed them to the hilt. Her audiences were as diverse as her vocal range. They were rich and poor, made up of all races, all religions and all nationalities. In fact, many of them had just one binding factor in common - they all loved her.

Overcoming discrimination

On the touring circuit it was well-known that Ella's manager felt very strongly about civil rights and required equal treatment for his musicians, regardless of their colour. Norman refused to accept any type of discrimination at hotels, restaurants or concert halls, even when they traveled to the Deep South. Once, while in Dallas touring for the Philharmonic, a police squad irritated by Norman's principles barged backstage to hassle the performers. They came into Ella's dressing room, where band members Dizzy Gillespie and Illinois Jacquet were shooting dice, and arrested everyone. "They took us down," Ella later recalled, "and then when we got there, they had the nerve to ask for an autograph."Norman wasn't the only one willing to stand up for Ella. She received support from numerous celebrity fans, including a zealous Marilyn Monroe."I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt," Ella later said. "It was because of her that I played the Mocambo, a very popular nightclub in the '50s. She personally called the owner of the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him - and it was true, due to Marilyn's superstar status - that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman - a little ahead of her times. And she didn't know it."

(Information from The Offical Ella Fitzgerald website.)

Jackie Robinson

Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson (January 31, 1919– October 24, 1972) became the first African-American major league baseball player of the modern era in 1947. While not the first African American professional baseball player in United States history, his Major League debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers ended approximately eighty years of baseball segregation, also known as the baseball colour line, or colour barrier.

In the United States at this time, many white people believed that blacks and whites should be segregated or kept apart in many phases of life, including sports and daily life.

The Baseball Hall of Fame inducted Robinson in 1962 and he was a member of six World Series teams. He earned six consecutive All-Star Game nominations and won several awards during his career. In 1947, Robinson won The Sporting News Rookie of the Year Award and the first Rookie of the Year Award. Two years later, he was awarded the National League MVP Award. Robinson was the first black player to win the National League Most Valuable Player Award.

(Information from Wikipedia.)