2000s

Barack Obama delivered his presidential election victory speech before 240,000 people at Grant Park in Chicago, watched by an estimated 70 million television viewers in the US, one of the most watched political events in broadcasting history.

Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States, the first African American to hold the office. An estimated 1.8 million people attended the ceremony on the National Mall, the largest audience for any event in Washington DC history.

Barack Obama won re-election over Mitt Romney with 332 electoral votes, becoming the first Black president to win a second term. His coalition depended heavily on Black voter turnout, which exceeded white voter turnout as a percentage for the first time in recorded American history.

The day George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, Alicia Garza wrote a Facebook post she called a love letter to Black people. Patrisse Cullors shared it with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, and with Opal Tometi they co-founded a movement that would become one of the most significant civil rights organizations of the twenty-first century.

The police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, triggered weeks of sustained protest and a militarized police response broadcast globally. The uprising catalyzed Black Lives Matter from a hashtag into a national decentralized movement, forced public discourse on police violence against Black Americans to an unprecedented level, and spurred the Obama administration to convene a task force on 21st-century policing.

Black virologist Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett of the NIH Vaccine Research Center was the scientific lead on the team that developed the Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, one of the most consequential scientific achievements of the 21st century and a cornerstone of the global pandemic response.

Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for over nine minutes. The murder, captured on video, sparked the largest protest movement in American history, with demonstrations in all 50 states and dozens of countries, reigniting global conversations about anti-Black police violence.

The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020 triggered protests in all 50 states and more than 60 countries, with estimates of 15 to 26 million participants making it potentially the largest movement in American history. The uprising accelerated corporate diversity commitments, toppled Confederate monuments, and drove lasting conversations about policing, race, and justice.

Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, a Black immunologist at the NIH's Vaccine Research Center, was a lead scientist in developing the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine used by Moderna and contributed critical research that informed the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Her work, conducted before many people had heard of mRNA vaccines, helped protect hundreds of millions of lives worldwide.

Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed by the Senate as an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, becoming the first Black woman ever to serve on the nation's highest court. Her confirmation was a landmark moment in American legal and political history.

The U.S. Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, making her the first Black woman and first public defender in the Court's history. Her confirmation hearing drew massive viewership and her composed responses to hostile questioning became widely shared.

Vice President Kamala Harris was officially nominated as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate after President Biden withdrew from the race, becoming the first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to be nominated for President by a major American political party.

The sale of BET Holdings to Viacom for $3 billion was completed, making founder Robert L. Johnson the first Black billionaire in American history in the largest acquisition of a Black-owned business ever at that time.

The sale of BET Holdings to Viacom for $3 billion was completed, making founder Robert L. Johnson the first Black billionaire in American history. The deal was the largest acquisition of a Black-owned business ever at the time.