Rayna Reid Rayford

Decades before Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball, these Black musicians were fighting discrimination and segregation on the bandstand.

In the past, environmentalism has been misaligned as a cause for the wealthy, when in fact, Black leaders, and specifically Black women have long had a hand in fighting for and shaping the conservationist movement.

Doctors ignored her dangerous pregnancy complications. Now she’s developing "Pregnant and Black" to help other Black moms-to-be feel heard and supported.

“Together, we can redefine postpartum care as a beacon of empowerment and resilience,” says Princess Estocia McKinney-Kirk, who has over a decade of experience as a doula.

Meet Sha Battle, the woman behind the movement to create this holiday, which the Virginia state House and Senate and just passed.

In 1943, Martha Euphemia Lofton Haynes graduated from the Catholic University of America with her PhD in mathematics.

Bestselling author Andrea Davis Pinkney honors her former mentor Toni Morrison in a new children’s picture book, educating the younger generation about the literary legend’s iconic life.

As VP of Political Strategy for Crooked Media, Shaniqua McClendon created the Vote Save America program, which has raised millions of dollars and mobilized thousands of voters around the country.

Rep. Charles Diggs of Michigan formed the Democratic Select Committee, which became formally organized into the Congressional Black Caucus two years later in 1971.

For National Science Fiction Day, ESSENCE is paying tribute to one of the greatest sci-fi novelists of all time, Octavia Butler.