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First Howard University Dean of Religion, he was credited with laying the intellectual foundations of the American civil rights movement. Mays taught and mentored Martin Luther King , Jr.

First African American to receive a Doctor of Medical Science degree from Columbia University, he pioneered the field of blood transfusions and blood storage.

First African American to travel into space, he was a decorated Air Force fighter pilot serving as a NASA mission specialist aboard the space shuttle Challenger.

First African American section head, office chief, division chief and deputy director at NASA . He wrote NASA’s first health physics guides.

First African American Supreme Court Justice, known as a lawyer for both his high success rate in arguing before the court and his victorious decision in Brown vs. BOE, that desegregated public schools.