MaVynee Betsch was a celebrated opera singer who toured internationally. But after performing around the world, she decided to give it all up and instead devote her life to protecting America Beach – A beach located in Amelia Island, Florida that her grandfather A. L. Lewis (Florida’s first Black millionaire) had created during the Jim Crow era to be a place of rest and relaxation for African American people who were otherwise banned from most beaches. She spent her life keeping the beach clean, educating people about its history, and ultimately donated her large inheritance to environmental causes.

Captain Charles Young

Captain Charles Young was born to parents in Kentucky who had escaped enslavement, and shortly after his birth moved north to Ohio. An exceptional student, Charles became only the third African American to graduate from West Point, where despite facing racial discrimination and animosity, was able to rise in the ranks and become a captain in the U.S. Military. Eventually, he became the nation’s first ever Black National Park Supervisor, where he managed Sequoia National Park in California, once writing “Indeed, a journey through this park and the Sierra Forest Reserve to the Mount Whitney country will convince even the least thoughtful man of the needfulness of preserving these mountains just as they are, with their clothing of trees, shrubs, rocks, and vines, and of their importance to the valleys below as reservoirs for storage of water for agricultural and domestic purposes.”