America250 — 250 years since 1776. Explore two and a half centuries of American history. Start the tour

People

176 entries

Featured

First Lady, political advisor, and the founding era's most insistent voice for women's rights

Abraham Lincoln

16th President of the United States, who held the Union together through civil war

Alexander Hamilton

Founding Father, first Secretary of the Treasury, and architect of American capitalism

Frontier general, champion of the common white man, and 7th President of the United States

Browse by Subcategory

Men who served as President of the United States, the office that defines the executive branch and the American political tradition.

Military Leaders

Generals, admirals, and battlefield commanders whose tactics and decisions shaped the outcome of America's wars.

Founding Fathers

The statesmen, soldiers, and thinkers who declared independence from Britain and drafted the Constitution that followed.

Scientists & Inventors

Researchers, engineers, and inventors whose discoveries and machines transformed American industry, medicine, and daily life.

Civil Rights Leaders

Activists, organizers, and reformers who led the long American struggle to extend equal rights to all citizens.

Pathfinders, surveyors, and adventurers who mapped the continent and opened the American interior to settlement.

Artists & Writers

Novelists, poets, painters, and performers whose work defined America's artistic voice and recorded its self-image.

Business Leaders

Industrialists, financiers, and entrepreneurs whose enterprises built and reshaped the American economy.

Outlaws & Lawmen

Frontier criminals and the marshals, sheriffs, and Pinkertons who chased them — the violent edge of American expansion.

Statesmen & Politicians

Influential senators, congressmen, diplomats, and political figures who shaped American policy without serving as president.

Supreme Court Justices

Justices of the United States Supreme Court whose decisions defined constitutional law and American society.

Indigenous Leaders

Native American leaders — political, military, and diplomatic — who shaped the course of Indigenous and American history.

Wives of U.S. presidents who left their own mark on American politics, culture, and public life.

Sports figures whose achievements shaped American culture

All People (A–Z) A–Z By date

A B C D E F G H I J L M N O P R S T U W Z

A

Third Vice President of the United States — and Alexander Hamilton's killer

First Lady, political advisor, and the founding era's most insistent voice for women's rights

Abraham Lincoln

16th President of the United States, who held the Union together through civil war

Alexander Graham Bell

Scottish-American inventor of the telephone, 1847–1922

Alexander Hamilton

Founding Father, first Secretary of the Treasury, and architect of American capitalism

Andrew Carnegie

Scottish-born steel magnate and America's greatest philanthropist

Frontier general, champion of the common white man, and 7th President of the United States

17th President of the United States and the first to be impeached

B

The slugger who remade baseball and became America's first sports superstar

44th President of the United States, 2009–2017

Benedict Arnold

Revolutionary War hero turned traitor, 1741–1801

Benjamin Banneker

Self-taught astronomer, mathematician, and the first Black man to receive a presidential appointment

Benjamin Franklin

Printer, diplomat, and scientist who helped engineer American independence

Benjamin Harrison

23rd President of the United States, 1889–1893

Author of The Feminine Mystique and Founder of Second-Wave Feminism, 1921–2006

42nd President of the United States, 1993–2001

Billie Jean King

The tennis champion who won the "Battle of the Sexes" and equal pay

Sauk leader whose 1832 return to Illinois became the last armed Native resistance east of the Mississippi

Bonnie and Clyde

The Depression-era couple whose two-year crime spree ended in a Louisiana ambush

Booker T. Washington

Educator, founder of Tuskegee Institute, and architect of the Atlanta Compromise

Mormon prophet and colonizer who led 70,000 people into the desert and built a civilization

C

Calvin Coolidge

30th President of the United States, 1923–1929

Labor organizer who won rights for America's farmworkers

The Kaw Nation senator who rose to the vice presidency

Abolitionist Senator Beaten on the Senate Floor, 1811–1874

Chester A. Arthur

21st President of the United States, the machine politician who became an unlikely reformer

Nez Perce leader whose 1877 flight became a symbol of Native resistance

Civil War nurse and founder of the American Red Cross

Cornelius Vanderbilt

The railroad and shipping baron who built the template for American monopoly capitalism

The Lakota war leader who defended the Plains and never surrendered to the reservation

D

Senator, Orator, and Champion of American Union

The First Lady who saved Washington's portrait and defined the social power of the presidency

45th and 47th President of the United States

Reformer who transformed the treatment of the mentally ill in America

Documentary Photographer Who Gave the Depression a Human Face, 1895–1965

Enslaved man whose lawsuit for freedom produced the Supreme Court's most condemned decision

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Supreme Allied Commander, 34th President, and the man who warned America about itself

E

Chief Justice whose Court transformed American civil rights, 1953–1969

Eleanor Roosevelt

First Lady, diplomat, and the human rights conscience of the 20th century

Inventor of the cotton gin who accidentally expanded slavery and deliberately built American mass production

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Suffragist, abolitionist, and primary architect of the American women's rights movement

Emily Dickinson

Reclusive genius whose poetry redefined American literature — mostly after her death

The poet whose words gave the Statue of Liberty its voice

Ernest Hemingway

Nobel laureate whose spare prose remade American fiction

Labor Leader, Socialist Presidential Candidate, and Prisoner of Conscience, 1855–1926

F

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Chronicler of the Jazz Age and author of the Great American Novel

Fannie Lou Hamer

Sharecropper, Voting Rights Activist, and Voice of the Mississippi Freedom Movement, 1917–1977

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Four-term president who led America through the Great Depression and World War II

Franklin Pierce

14th President of the United States, 1853–1857

Frederick Douglass

Abolitionist, orator, and the 19th century's most powerful voice against American slavery

G

George H.W. Bush

41st President of the United States, 1989–1993

Author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the conscience of the Constitutional Convention

George S. Patton

America's most aggressive — and most controversial — World War II commander

43rd President of the United States, 2001–2009

George Washington

Commander of the Continental Army and First President of the United States

38th President of the United States, 1974–1977

The Apache leader whose final surrender in 1886 ended the last armed Native resistance in the American Southwest

Journalist and activist who became the defining public voice of second-wave American feminism

Pioneer of computer programming and inventor of the first compiler

Grover Cleveland

22nd and 24th President of the United States

H

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the novelist who sharpened the nation's conscience on slavery

Abolitionist, Union spy, and conductor of the Underground Railroad

Harry S. Truman

The haberdasher from Missouri who dropped the bomb, integrated the military, and contained the Soviets

Deaf-blind author and activist whose radicalism the 20th century spent decades trying to forget

The Great Compromiser who held the Union together — and delayed its reckoning

Industrialist who put the automobile within reach of ordinary Americans

31st President of the United States, 1929–1933

Co-founder of the Black Panther Party and Revolutionary of the Black Power Era, 1942–1989

I

Journalist, anti-lynching crusader, and one of the founders of the NAACP

Investigative Journalist Who Broke Standard Oil, 1857–1944

J

J. Edgar Hoover

The director who ruled the FBI for half a century — and amassed unrivaled power

J. Robert Oppenheimer

Director of the Manhattan Project and father of the atomic bomb

Banker, Financier, and Architect of American Industrial Power

First Lady whose grace under catastrophe defined a generation's image of the American presidency

Jackie Robinson

The Man Who Broke Baseball's Color Line, 1919–1972

Novelist and essayist who bore witness to race in America with unmatched clarity

15th President of the United States, 1857–1861

20th President of the United States, who was killed not by a bullet but by his doctors

11th President of the United States and the architect of continental expansion

Father of the Constitution and fourth President of the United States

5th President of the United States and the last of the Founding Fathers to hold the office

Social reformer, Nobel laureate, and founder of Hull House

Jefferson Davis

President of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865

Four Gold Medals at Hitler's Olympics, 1913–1980

The Native American athlete often called the greatest of the 20th century

39th President of the United States, whose post-presidency eclipsed his time in office

46th President of the United States, 2021–2025

The heavyweight champion whose 1938 fight became a battle of nations

Second President of the United States, 1797–1801

Militant abolitionist who brought the war over slavery to a boil

John C. Calhoun

Senator, Vice President, and the intellectual architect of Southern secessionism

John C. Frémont

The Pathfinder of the West whose maps drew settlers into California and Oregon

John D. Rockefeller

Founder of Standard Oil and the wealthiest private citizen in American history

John F. Kennedy

35th President of the United States, 1961–1963

President of the Continental Congress and the bold first signer of the Declaration

First Chief Justice of the United States and co-author of The Federalist Papers

Chief Justice who forged the Supreme Court into a coequal branch of government

Naturalist, Writer, and Father of the American Conservation Movement

John Quincy Adams

6th President of the United States, diplomat, and antislavery congressman

10th President of the United States, 1841–1845

John Wesley Powell

The one-armed Civil War veteran who ran the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon

Developer of the first effective polio vaccine, 1955

Joseph McCarthy

U.S. Senator whose anti-Communist crusade defined — and disgraced — an era

L

Langston Hughes

Poet, Playwright, and Voice of the Harlem Renaissance

Lyndon B. Johnson

The Texas dealmaker who built the Great Society and broke himself on Vietnam

M

Madam C.J. Walker

The washerwoman who built a beauty empire and a Black fortune

The civil rights era's most uncompromising voice for Black self-determination and human dignity

Margaret Sanger

Birth control pioneer whose crusade for reproductive rights is inseparable from her eugenicist ideology

The Mississippi River humorist who became America's sharpest social critic

The Marquis de Lafayette

The young French aristocrat who became a hero of the American Revolution

Martha Washington

The first First Lady — a wealthy widow who built the presidency alongside her husband

Martin Luther King Jr.

Baptist minister who led the American civil rights movement

Martin Van Buren

8th President of the United States, 1837–1841

NAACP Field Secretary in Mississippi, Assassinated June 12, 1963

Millard Fillmore

13th President of the United States, whose compromise bought a decade and cost a nation

The fearless organizer once called "the most dangerous woman in America"

The champion who refused the draft and became a global symbol of conscience

N

Continental Army Spy and American Martyr, 1776

Nathanael Greene

Self-taught general who drove the British from the American South

The first human to set foot on the moon

Serbian-American inventor who built the modern electrical world

Norman Rockwell

America's most beloved illustrator — and a more complicated artist than his reputation suggests

O

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

The Great Dissenter — Supreme Court Justice and philosopher of American law, 1902–1932

P

The orator whose words gave the American Revolution its voice

Boston silversmith and the most famous midnight rider of the American Revolution

Phyllis Schlafly

The conservative organizer who stopped the Equal Rights Amendment

R

Marine Biologist and Author Whose Silent Spring Launched the Environmental Movement, 1907–1964

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Father of American Transcendentalism and prophet of self-reliance

Richard Henry Lee

The Virginian who moved the resolution for independence in 1776

The 37th President who opened China, ended the draft — and became the only president to resign

Confederate general and the South's most celebrated — and most contested — military commander

Robert F. Kennedy

Attorney General, Senator, and presidential candidate assassinated in 1968

Pioneer of modern rocketry who launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket in 1926

Robert R. Livingston

The Committee of Five member who helped draft the Declaration — and later bought Louisiana

The only person to sign all four of the great founding documents

Chief Justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision — the worst ruling in the Court's history

Puritan exile who founded Rhode Island and first argued that church and state must be separate

40th President of the United States, 1981–1989

Civil rights activist whose 1955 arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Supreme Court Justice and architect of American gender equality law, 1993–2020

Rutherford B. Hayes

19th President of the United States, whose disputed election ended Reconstruction

S

Shoshone guide and interpreter whose knowledge made the Corps of Discovery possible

The first American woman in space

President of Texas, U.S. Senator, and the man who refused to take the Confederacy's oath

Founding Father, master agitator, and the man who made revolution seem inevitable

Founder of the American Federation of Labor and father of the U.S. labor movement

Sandra Day O'Connor

First woman to serve on the Supreme Court, 1981–2006

Cherokee polymath who invented a writing system and made his nation literate in a single generation

Hunkpapa Lakota chief who united the Plains nations against American expansion

Sojourner Truth

Abolitionist, suffragist, and orator who escaped slavery to become its most forceful living refutation

Stephen A. Douglas

The "Little Giant" Whose Kansas-Nebraska Act Fractured the Union, 1813–1861

Susan B. Anthony

The suffragist whose half-century of organizing made the 19th Amendment possible

T

Shawnee leader who built the most powerful Indigenous confederacy in American history

Thaddeus Stevens

Radical Republican Congressman and Architect of Reconstruction

Theodore Roosevelt

26th President who broke trusts, conserved millions of acres, and remade American power

Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson

Confederate General, Army of Northern Virginia, 1861–1863

Inventor of the phonograph, the practical light bulb, and the modern research laboratory

Thomas Jefferson

Author of the Declaration of Independence and Third President of the United States

The radical pamphleteer who talked a continent into revolution

Thurgood Marshall

The lawyer who dismantled segregation in court and became the first Black Supreme Court Justice

U

Ulysses S. Grant

Commanding general of the Union Army and 18th President of the United States

Muckraking Author of The Jungle Who Accidentally Reformed the Food Supply, 1878–1968

W

Sociologist, co-founder of the NAACP, and theorist of Black identity in America

The poet who gave America a democratic literature and witnessed its bloodiest war

Warren G. Harding

29th President of the United States, 1921–1923

William Henry Harrison

9th President of the United States, 1841

William Howard Taft

27th President and 10th Chief Justice of the United States

William Jennings Bryan

The Great Commoner — three-time presidential candidate and prairie populist

William Lloyd Garrison

Publisher, abolitionist, and the loudest moral voice against American slavery

William McKinley

25th President of the United States, who led America into empire and was killed for it

William Tecumseh Sherman

Union general whose March to the Sea broke the Confederacy's will to fight

General-in-Chief of the U.S. Army and the Soldier Who Defined an Era, 1786–1866

Progressive reformer, World War I president, and architect of the modern international order

Wright Brothers

Wilbur and Orville Wright, pioneers of powered flight

Z

12th President of the United States, a war hero who died before the crisis could break

The Army officer who explored the southern Louisiana Purchase and never climbed Pikes Peak