All
of the following figres were influential figures in American history.
This list was edited from The Atlantic Online. You may choose from any
of these people, or from some historical figure from your Social Studies
book.
Some influential
figures in American history.
Famous
American Women
Famous
African Americans
Famous Hispanic
Americans
More
Famous Women in history
Other famous Americans
Abraham
Lincoln
He saved the Union, freed the slaves, and presided over America’s
second founding.
George
Washington
He made the United States possible—not only by defeating a king,
but by declining to become one himself.
Thomas
Jefferson
The author of the five most important words in American history: “All
men are created equal.”
Franklin
Delano Roosevelt
He said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,”
and then he proved it.
Alexander
Hamilton
Soldier, banker, and political scientist, he set in motion an agrarian
nation’s transformation into an industrial power.
Benjamin
Franklin
The Founder-of-all-trades— scientist, printer, writer, diplomat,
inventor, and more; like his country, he contained multitudes.
John
Marshall
The defining chief justice, he established the Supreme Court as the
equal of the other two federal branches.
Martin
Luther King Jr.
His dream of racial equality is still elusive, but no one did more
to make it real.
Thomas
Edison
It wasn’t just the lightbulb; the Wizard of Menlo Park was the
most prolific inventor in American history.
Woodrow
Wilson
He made the world safe for U.S. interventionism, if not for democracy.
John D. Rockefeller
The man behind Standard Oil set the mold for our tycoons—first
by making money, then by giving it away.
Ulysses S. Grant
He was a poor president, but he was the general Lincoln needed; he
also wrote the greatest political memoir in American history.
James
Madison
He fathered the Constitution and wrote the Bill of Rights.
Henry
Ford
He gave us the assembly line and the Model T, and sparked America’s
love affair with the automobile.
Theodore
Roosevelt
Whether busting trusts or building canals, he embodied the “strenuous
life” and blazed a trail for twentieth-century America.
Mark
Twain
Author of our national epic, he was the most unsentimental observer
of our national life.
Ronald
Reagan
The amiable architect of both the conservative realignment and the
Cold War’s end.
Andrew Jackson
The first great populist: he found America a republic and left it
a democracy.
Thomas Paine
The voice of the American Revolution, and our first great radical.
Andrew Carnegie
The original self-made man forged America’s industrial might
and became one of the nation’s greatest philanthropists.
Harry
Truman
An accidental president, this machine politician ushered in the Atomic
Age and then the Cold War.
Wright Brothers
They got us all off the ground.
Alexander Graham Bell
By inventing the telephone, he opened the age of telecommunications
and shrank the world.
John Adams
His leadership made the American Revolution possible; his devotion
to republicanism made it succeed.
Eli Whitney
His gin made cotton king and sustained an empire for slavery.
Dwight Eisenhower
He won a war and two elections, and made everybody like Ike.
Earl Warren
His Supreme Court transformed American society and bequeathed to us
the culture wars.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
One of the first great American feminists, she fought for social reform
and women’s right to vote.
Henry Clay
One of America’s greatest legislators and orators, he forged
compromises that held off civil war for decades.
Albert Einstein
His greatest scientific work was done in Europe, but his humanity
earned him undying fame in America.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The bard of individualism, he relied on himself—and told us
all to do the same.
Jonas Salk
His vaccine for polio eradicated one of the world’s worst plagues.
Jackie Robinson
He broke baseball’s color barrier and embodied integration’s
promise.
William Jennings Bryan
“The Great Commoner” lost three presidential elections,
but his populism transformed the country.
J. P. Morgan
The great financier and banker was the prototype for all the Wall
Street barons who followed.
Susan B. Anthony
She was the country’s most eloquent voice for women’s
equality under the law.
Rachel Carson
The author of Silent Spring was godmother to the environmental movement.
John Dewey
He sought to make the public school a training ground for democratic
life.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Her Uncle Tom’s Cabin inspired a generation of abolitionists
and set the stage for civil war.
Eleanor
Roosevelt
She used the first lady’s office and the mass media to become
“first lady of the world.”
W. E. B. DuBois
One of America’s great intellectuals, he made the “problem
of the color line” his life’s work.
Lyndon Baines Johnson
His brilliance gave us civil-rights laws; his stubbornness gave us
Vietnam.
Samuel
F. B. Morse
Before the Internet, there was Morse code.
William
Lloyd Garrison
Through his newspaper, The Liberator, he became the voice of abolition.
Frederick
Douglass
After escaping from slavery, he pricked the nation’s conscience
with an eloquent accounting of its crimes.
Robert
Oppenheimer
The father of the atomic bomb and the regretful creator of the nuclear
era.
Frederick
Law Olmsted
The genius behind New York’s Central Park, he inspired the greening
of America’s cities.
James K. Polk
This one-term president’s Mexican War landgrab gave us California,
Texas, and the Southwest.
Joseph
Smith
The founder of Mormonism, America’s most famous homegrown faith.
Oliver
Wendell Holmes Jr.
Known as “The Great Dissenter,” he wrote Supreme Court
opinions that continue to shape American
jurisprudence.
Bill
Gates
The Rockefeller of the Information Age, in business and philanthropy
alike.
John
Quincy Adams
The Monroe Doctrine’s real author, he set nineteenth-century
America’s diplomatic course.
Horace
Mann
His tireless advocacy of universal public schooling earned him the
title “The Father of American Education.”
Robert
E. Lee
He was a good general but a better symbol, embodying conciliation
in defeat.
John
C. Calhoun
The voice of the antebellum South, he was slavery’s most ardent
defender.
Louis
Sullivan
The father of architectural modernism, he shaped the defining American
building: the skyscraper.
William
Faulkner
The most gifted chronicler of America’s tormented and fascinating
South.
Samuel
Gompers
The country’s greatest labor organizer, he made the golden age
of unions possible.
William
James
The mind behind Pragmatism, America’s most important philosophical
school.
George
Marshall
As a general, he organized the American effort in World War II; as
a statesman, he rebuilt Western Europe.
Jane
Addams
The founder of Hull House, she became the secular saint of social
work.
Henry
David Thoreau
The original American dropout, he has inspired seekers of authenticity
for years.
P.
T. Barnum
The circus impresario’s taste for spectacle paved the way for
blockbuster movies and reality TV.
James
D. Watson
He codiscovered DNA’s double helix, revealing the code of life
to scientists and entrepreneurs alike.
James Gordon Bennett
As the founding publisher of The New York Herald, he invented the
modern American newspaper.
Lewis and Clark
They went west to explore, and millions followed in their wake.
Noah Webster
He didn’t create American English, but his dictionary defined
it.
Sam
Walton
He promised us “Every Day Low Prices,” and we took him
up on the offer.
Cyrus McCormick
His mechanical reaper spelled the end of traditional farming, and
the beginning of industrial agriculture.
Brigham
Young
What Joseph Smith founded, Young preserved, leading the Mormons to
their promised land.
George
Herman “Babe” Ruth
He saved the national pastime in the wake of the Black Sox scandal—and
permanently linked sports and celebrity.
Frank Lloyd Wright
America’s most significant architect, he was the archetype of
the visionary artist at odds with capitalism.
Betty
Friedan
She spoke to the discontent of housewives everywhere—and inspired
a revolution in gender roles.
John
Brown
Whether a hero, a fanatic, or both, he provided the spark for the
Civil War.
William
Randolph Hearst
The press baron who perfected yellow journalism and helped start the
Spanish-American War.
Margaret
Mead
With Coming of Age in Samoa, she made anthropology relevant—and
controversial.
George Gallup
He asked Americans what they thought, and the politicians listened.
James
Fenimore Cooper
The novels are unreadable, but he was the first great mythologizer
of the frontier.
Thurgood Marshall
As a lawyer and a Supreme Court justice, he was the legal architect
of the civil-rights revolution.
Ernest Hemingway
His spare style defined American modernism, and his life made machismo
a cliché.
Mary Baker Eddy
She got off her sickbed and founded Christian Science, which promised
spiritual healing to all.
Benjamin Spock
With a single book—and a singular approach—he changed
American parenting.
Enrico
Fermi
A giant of physics, he helped develop quantum theory and was instrumental
in building the atomic bomb.
Walter Lippmann
The last man who could swing an election with a newspaper column.
Lyman
Beecher
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s clergyman father earned fame as an abolitionist
and an evangelist.
John
Steinbeck
As the creator of Tom Joad, he chronicled Depression-era misery.
Nat Turner
He was the most successful rebel slave; his specter would stalk the
white South for a century.
George
Eastman
The founder of Kodak democratized photography with his handy rolls
of film.
Ralph Nader
He made the cars we drive safer; thirty years later, he made George
W. Bush the president.
Booker T. Washington
As an educator and a champion of self-help, he tried to lead black
America up from slavery.
Richard
Nixon
He broke the New Deal majority, and then broke his presidency on a
scandal that still haunts America.
Herman Melville
Moby Dick was a flop at the time, but Melville is remembered as the
American Shakespeare.
Rosa
Parks
An important figure in the civil rights movement.
