African Americans From Maryland

Born to parents who were bonded slaves, Harriet Tubman life was a difficult one from the very beginning. Yet with her remarkable courage and determination, she not only escaped slavery herself, but also led other enslaved people to freedom. The prominent political activist and abolitionist was also the first woman to lead an armed expedition during the American Civil War.

Muggsy Bogues is a former basketball player. Standing at 5 feet 3 inches tall, Bogues is the shortest player in the history of the National Basketball Association (NBA). When his 14-season NBA career came to an end, Bogues served as the head coach for Charlotte Sting, which participated in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) from 1997 to 2007. 

Professional basketball player Victor Oladipo currently plays for the Indiana Pacers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He started playing basketball in high school and went to Indiana University Bloomington, where he played for the Indiana Hoosiers. He began his professional playing career in 2013 and has been going strong since then. He is also a singer.

Lance Reddick is an American musician and actor. Over the years, Reddick has contributed immensely to the success of several TV series, such as Oz, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, The Wire, Fringe, and Bosch. He has also been entertaining children and adults alike by providing his likeness and voice for video games like Quantum Break and Destiny series.

Emmy-winning puppeteer and voice-actor Kevin Clash is best known for performing as and voicing Elmo on Sesame Street. He has also performed with puppets for Dinosaurs and Labyrinth, and was a regular on productions of the Muppet franchise. He has authored a memoir and has inspired a documentary, too.

Author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates gained international prominence while serving as the national correspondent at The Atlantic. His writings on socio-political issues related to African Americans and white supremacy garnered him much appreciation. He is a recipient of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center Prize for Writing to Advance Social Justice. He also writes fiction and comics.

Benjamin Banneker was born to a free African-American mother and a former slave father, and was largely self-educated. While he showed immense talent in both mathematics and astronomy, having predicted a solar eclipse with precision, he also wrote essays on civil rights and rallied against slavery.

Known as Awesome Dawesome, Dominique Dawes is a retired star gymnast from the U.S. who was part of the gold-winning team at the Atlanta Olympics. She also became the first African-American to earn an individual Olympic medal, with her bronze. She is also part of the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.

African-American religious leader George Baker, better known as Father Divine, founded Peace Mission, a movement that is now considered the basis of the civil rights movement. Father Divine claimed that divine intervention had caused the death of the judge who had sentenced him to prison for arranging meetings in Sayville.