Celebrating the Unsung Heroes of Black History

Benjamin Todd Jealous is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change. Mr Jealous is the 17th President and Chief Executive Officer of the NAACP.

Every February, we celebrate the triumphs and accomplishments of African Americans, as families, classrooms and libraries across the nation commemorate Black History Month. It is a time to recognize the giants of our struggle, from Harriet Tubman to Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass to Barack Obama.

But history is more than just a collection of famous people and major dates. Indeed, it is a multi-layered narrative in which individual decisions lead to collective movements, where context, timing and personalities combine to create the space for social change to occur.

Without question, the Montgomery Bus Boycott needed a Rosa Parks to take her legendary stand, but it also depended on the thousands of individuals making the courageous decision morning after morning to risk their jobs, their health and their safety to bring a measure of justice to the Jim Crow South. Each of these participants deserves our recognition too. Examples are as varied as our community itself. Here are just a few examples recognized by NAACP members:

• Mary Shaw was the first African-American principal in Queens, NY, and served as a teacher and principal from 1890 to 1896 of the successful Colored School in Flushing. In her will, she bequeathed monies to the Flushing Library and Tuskegee Institute, helping to establish the Flushing Free Library.

• In 1960, J. Rayfield Vines led sit-in protests at lunch counters in his hometown Suffolk, Virginia. He was arrested and charged with any number of wild charges -- including inciting riot -- but his actions helped integrate the Suffolk Woolworths that year.

• A deacon in his Cleveland, Ohio Church and CEO of the Cleveland Chapter of the Red Cross, Steve Bullock became the first African American president of the American Red Cross in 1999. Today he continues to share his knowledge of selfless leadership to non-profit organizations around the world.

Every organizer who fought against workplace inequality, every neighbor who registered his or her block to vote, every volunteer who works with at-risk youth today, is an unsung hero of black history.

This month, the NAACP has launched a new interactive web feature celebrating these little-known black history heroes.  NAACP members and supporters around the country will have the opportunity to upload a photo and tell the story of their favorite unsung hero to be published on our website. Viewers will be able to read, learn and share their stories.

The world-changing advances made by African Americans were neither pre-ordained nor inevitable. They are the product of thousands of individuals who changed the world with small decisions every day. With your help, we can expand our understanding of the narrative of black history, one hero at a time.

Photo credit: Matt Lemmon