Always Was

Langston was elected town clerk of Brownhelm Township, Ohio in 1855, documented as the first Black American elected to public office in the United States. He served as dean of Howard University’s law school, helped recruit Black regiments for the Union Army during the Civil War, and was elected to Congress from Virginia in 1890 - a seat he won after the Virginia legislature’s attempt to have his opponent declared the winner was overturned by the House.

He served only the final months of the term after the seating dispute delayed his entry; the structural use of post-election legal challenges to prevent Black electoral victories from taking effect was a documented feature of post-Reconstruction Southern politics.

Scott competed in NASCAR’s premier series from 1961 to 1973, the only Black driver to do so during that period. He won a race at Jacksonville in 1963 but the trophy was initially awarded to the white runner-up; NASCAR corrected the result hours later but Scott never received the trophy in victory lane. He was unable to attract sponsorship equivalent to white drivers of comparable performance, as corporate sponsors were unwilling to associate their brands with a Black driver marketing to predominantly white Southern audiences.

No Black driver has competed regularly at NASCAR’s top level since Scott’s retirement, with the exception of Bubba Wallace beginning in 2018. The structural exclusion from sponsorship, which determines team budgets, equipment quality, and competitive viability, has been the primary mechanism of exclusion in the post-Scott era.

Shonda Rhimes created “Grey’s Anatomy” (2005) for ABC, which became the longest-running primetime medical drama in American television history. She subsequently created “Scandal” (2012), “How to Get Away with Murder” (2014), and “Bridgerton” (2020), achieving a concentration of prime-time network programming - multiple concurrent series - that no Black showrunner had previously attained.

Rhimes negotiated an overall development deal with Netflix in 2017 valued at approximately $150 million, one of the largest such agreements in television history. Her influence on broadcast network programming normalized Black female leads in prime-time drama at a moment when that was not standard industry practice.