The Who We Are design features the ICONS WEB DuBois, Jacob Lawrence, James Baldwin and Gordon Parks: 
WEB DuBois: Born in February 1868, all of DuBois efforts were geared toward presenting evidence to refute the myths of racial inferiority among African-Americans. From his earliest years, Du Bois was a gifted scholar. In 1884, he graduated from high school as Valedictorian, then received his Bachelor of Arts from Fisk University.  In 1888 he entered Harvard University as a junior, took a bachelor of arts cum laude and was one of six commencement speakers. From 1892 to 1894 he pursued graduate studies in History and Economics at the University of Berlin. Du Bois then received his Master of Arts from Harvard in 1891, and, in 1895, he became the first African American to receive a Doctorate from the university. Later in 1909, Du Bois was among the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and from 1910 to 1934 served as director of publicity and research, a member of the board of directors, and founder and editor of "The Crisis", its monthly magazine. DuBoid was most active in placing the issues of African Americans before the United Nations, serving as a consultant to the UN Founding Convention and writing the famous “An Appeal to the World”. "Black Reconstruction in America", perhaps his most significant historical work, details the role of African Americans in American society, specifically during the Reconstruction period. Du Bois was also active on behalf of Pan-Africanism, concernin himself with the conditions of people of African descent worldwide. In 1900 he attended the First Pan-African Conference held in London, was elected a vice president, and wrote the “Address to the Nations of the World.” Du Bois organized a series of Pan-African congresses around the world throughout the 1920s. Du Bois’s final Pan-African gesture was to take up citizenship in Ghana in 1961, he died there on Aug. 27, 1963, on the eve of the civil rights march in Washington, D.C
Jacob Lawrence: Lawrence was born in Atlantic City on September 7, 1917. Raised for a time in Philadelphia, he came of age in 1930s New York, heavily inspired by the cultural and artistic ethos of the Harlem Renaissance. At a time when the mainstream art world wasn’t open to black artists, Lawrence immersed himself in everything his neighborhood had to offer: he trained at the Harlem Art Workshop, studied under and shared a workspace with painter Charles Alston and was mentored, among others, by sculptor Augusta Savage, who helped him gain work through the WPA Federal Art Project.
James Baldwin: Born August 2, 1924, Baldwin’s writing career began in the last years of legislated segregation; his work mirrored blacks’ aspirations, disappointments, and coping strategies in a hostile society. In his novels, plays, and essays alike, Baldwin explored the psychological implications of racism for both the oppressed and the oppressor. Best-sellers such as Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time attracted wide audiences. After the assassinations of his friends Medgar Evers, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, Baldwin returned to St. Paul de Vence, France, where he worked on a book about the disillusionment of the times, If Beale Street Could Talk. Although he spent a great deal of his life abroad, many view Baldwin’s essays as his most significant contribution to American literature. James Baldwin died December 1, 1987.
Gordon Parks: Born in Kansas in 1912, Parks was drawn to photography as a young man when he saw images of migrant workers published in a magazine. After buying a camera at a pawnshop, he taught himself how to use it and despite his lack of professional training. His 1948 photo essay on the life of a Harlem gang leader won him widespread acclaim and a position as the first African American staff photographer and writer for Life Magazine. Parks was a tireless advocate as well as a documentarian for the Civil Rights Movement, taking memorable pictures of Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and Stokely Carmichael. Parks spent much of the last three decades of his life expanding his style; winning numerous awards, including the National Medal of Arts in 1988, and over fifty honorary doctorates. He was also a noted composer and author, and in 1969, became the first African American to write and direct a Hollywood feature film based on his bestselling novel The Learning Tree. This was followed in 1971 by the hugely successful motion picture Shaft. Parks died in 2006.