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I live one county over from where Booker T. Washington was born and not very far from where Oscar Micheaux (film-maker) worked. The NFL Barber brothers were locals as well.
Born in Illinois to former slaves, Oscar Devereaux Micheaux (January 2, 1884–March 25, 1951) is often recognized as the country's first African American filmmaker and as a pioneer in the use of all-black casts. His first feature-length film was The Homesteaders (1919), which he wrote, directed, and produced. With more than forty films to his credit during his career, Micheaux also wrote and self-published novels, including The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913) and The Case of Mrs. Wingate (1945). In his books and films, such as Within Our Gates (1920), Micheaux sought to counter negative and demeaning portrayals of African Americans present in such films as D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915).
Seeking investors, Micheaux contacted several African American businessmen in Roanoke who expressed interest in financing his films. In 1922 he established a corporate office in the Gainsboro neighborhood's Strand Theatre, where he made at least six films over the next three years. Micheaux often filmed scenes in Roanoke, and one movie, The House behind the Cedars (1927), of which no print survives, included a brief appearance by Oliver W. Hill, who later became an important civil rights attorney. Micheaux left for New York City in 1925, where he achieved further fame as part of the Harlem Renaissance. In 2008 the city of Roanoke erected a state historical marker highlighting his work, and in 2010 the United States Post Office issued a commemorative stamp honoring Micheaux as part of its Black Heritage series.
Nominated by Peggy DeHart on behalf of the 2010–2011 first-graders at Belview Elementary School, Radford
Outside of the locals since my interests lie in science I'm tempted to go with Neil Degrasse Tyson but everyone knows who he is already so:
Benjamin Banneker (November 9, 1731 – October 9, 1806) was a free African American scientist, surveyor, almanac author and farmer. Born in Baltimore County, Maryland, to a free African American woman and a former slave, Banneker had little formal education and was largely self-taught. He is known for being part of a group led by Major Andrew Ellicott that surveyed the borders of the original District of Columbia, the federal capital district of the United States.
Banneker's knowledge of astronomy helped him author a commercially successful series of almanacs. He corresponded with Thomas Jefferson, drafter of the United States Declaration of Independence, on the topics of slavery and racial equality. Abolitionists and advocates of racial equality promoted and praised his works.
Parks, schools, streets and other tributes have commemorated Banneker throughout the years since he lived. However, many accounts of his life exaggerate or falsely attribute his works.
Peg Leg Bates was born Clayton Bates in Fountain Inn, South Carolina, the son of Rufus Bates, a laborer, and Emma Steward Bates, a sharecropper and housecleaner. He began dancing when he was five. At twelve, while working in a cotton-seed gin mill, he caught and mangled his left leg in a conveyor belt. The leg was amputated on his kitchen table at his home. Though he was left with only one leg and a wooden peg leg his uncle carved for him, Bates resolved to continue dancing. "It somehow grew in my mind that I wanted to be as good a dancer as any two-legged dancer," he called. "It hurt me that the boys pitied me. I was pretty popular before, and I still wanted to be popular. I told them not to feel sorry for me." He meant it. He began imitating the latest rhythm steps he saw dancers of metal-tap shoe dancers, adding his own novelty and acrobatic steps into the taps. He worked his way from minstrel shows and carnivals to the vaudeville circuits.
Bates made over twenty appearances on the Ed Sullivan Television Show, last appearing in a tap challenge dance with "Little Buck" on August 22, 1965. While television gave him greater notoriety than ever before, Bates continued to pursue a variety of performance venues. In1951 he invested his earnings and with his wife, Alice, purchased a large turkey farm in New York's Catskill Mountains and converted it into a resort. The Peg Leg Country Club, in Kerhonkson, New York flourished as the largest black-owned-and-operated resort in the country, catering to black clientele and featuring hundreds of jazz musicians and tap dancers.
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Pegleg Bates
