Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Lee Evans
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Lee Evans, an American runner who won two gold medals at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. His victory in the 400-metre event there set a world record that lasted for two decades.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Leon Forrest
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Leon Forrest, an African-American author of large, inventive novels that fuse myth, history, legend, and contemporary realism.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Lionel Hampton
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Lionel Hampton, an American jazz musician and bandleader, known for the rhythmic vitality of his playing and his showmanship as a performer. Best known for his work on the vibraphone,...
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Little Brother Montgomery
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Little Brother Montgomery, a major African-American blues artist who was also an outstanding jazz pianist and vocalist. He cowrote "The Forty-Fours," a complex composition for piano that...
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Little Walter
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Little Walter, an African-American blues singer and harmonica virtuoso, one of the most influential harmonica improvisers of the late 20th century.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Lloyd Price
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Lloyd Price, an American singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur. Price made his mark in rock music history with his exuberant tenor and his flair for recasting rhythm and blues as...
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Lois Mailou Jones
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Lois Mailou Jones, an American painter and educator whose works reflect a command of widely varied styles, from traditional landscape to African-themed abstraction.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Lonne Elder Iii
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Lonne Elder III, an American playwright whose critically acclaimed masterwork, Ceremonies in Dark Old Men (1965, revised 1969), depicted the dreams, frustrations, and ultimate endurance of...
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Lonnie Johnson
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Lonnie Johnson, a prolific black American musician, singer, and songwriter, one of the first major blues and jazz guitarists.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Lorna Simpson
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Lorna Simpson, an American photographer whose work explored stereotypes of race and gender, most often with an emphasis on African American women.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Louis Jordan
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Louis Jordan, an American saxophonist-singer prominent in the 1940s and '50s who was a seminal figure in the development of both rhythm and blues and rock and roll. The bouncing, rhythmic...
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Lou Rawls
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Lou Rawls, an American singer whose smooth baritone adapted easily to jazz, soul, gospel, and rhythm and blues.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Ludacris
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Ludacris, an American rapper who exemplified the Dirty South school of hip-hop, an exuberant, profanity-laden musical style popularized by artists in the southern United States. Ludacris's...
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Lugenia Burns Hope
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Lugenia Burns Hope, an American social reformer whose Neighborhood Union and other community service organizations improved the quality of life for blacks in Atlanta, Ga., and served as a...
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Mabel Keaton Staupers
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Mabel Keaton Staupers, a Caribbean-American nurse and organization executive, most noted for her role in eliminating segregation in the Armed Forces Nurse Corps during World War II.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Magic Johnson
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Magic Johnson, an American basketball player who led the National Basketball Association (NBA) Los Angeles Lakers to five championships.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Margaret Bush Wilson
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Margaret Bush Wilson, an American civil rights activist and attorney born Jan. 30, 1919, St. Louis, Mo.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Mariah Carey
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Mariah Carey, an American pop singer, noted for her remarkable vocal range. She was one of the most successful female performers of the 1990s.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Mari Evans
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Mari Evans, an African American author of poetry, children's literature, and plays.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Marion Jones
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Marion Jones, an American athlete, who, at the 2000 Olympic Games, became the first woman to win five track-and-field medals at a single Olympics. In 2007, however, she admitted to using...
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Marion Motley
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Marion Motley, an African American gridiron football player who helped desegregate professional football in the 1940s during a career that earned him induction into the Pro Football Hall...
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Marsalis Family
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Marsalis family, an American family, considered the "first family of jazz," who (particularly brothers Wynton and Branford) had a major impact on jazz in the late 20th century.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Martin Puryear
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Martin Puryear, an American sculptor whose streamlined and evocative sculptures made from materials such as wood and wire are associated with Postminimalism.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Marvin Gaye
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Marvin Gaye, an American soul singer-songwriter-producer who, to a large extent, ushered in the era of artist-controlled popular music of the 1970s. Gaye's father was a storefront...