The Diamonds of West Virginia Project©

Tamia Hardy

In 2017 Tamia Hardy became the first African-American to be crowned Miss West Virginia as part of the Miss America Beauty Pageant, a pageant which originated in 1921. She accomplished in her first year of pageantry what no other African-American female from West Virginia had been able to do.

Vicky Bullett

Vicky Bullet was a 2-Time Olympian and an early member of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) which was founded in 1996. She played on the women’s Olympic basketball team in 1988 and 1992 that won gold and bronze medals respectively in Seoul, South Korea and Barcelona, Spain.

Carl Lee

Carl Lee III was a small skinny kid from Charleston, West Virginia who through determination and hard work climbed from a Marshall University team that won no more than 4 games in each of his 4 college years to the pinnacle of the National Football League (NFL). His NFL career spanned 12 years—11 years with the Minnesota Vikings and 1 year with the New Orleans Saints.

Ivin Lee

Prior to becoming the first African-American female to lead a city police department in West Virginia, Ivin Lee became Charleston’s first African-American female police officer, their first female detective, and then Dunbar, West Virginia’s first female police chief.

William "Mickey" Jackson

Mickey Jackson was a member of the coaching staff for the Marshall University Thundering Herd football team from 1970-1973. He was part of the same football team that on November 14, 1970 lost nearly its entire team and several coaches to a fateful plane crash in Wayne County, West Virginia.

Clifton Brooks

Clifton Eugene Brooks, Sr. valiantly served his country in World War II as a cryptographer with the famous African-American Tuskegee Airmen. While stationed in Italy, it was his duty to deliver bombing missions for the black military pilots via secure communication.

Crystal Good

Crystal Good is an Affrilachian (African-American + Appalachian) Poet who has deep roots in West Virginia. She is an Irene McKinney Scholar who wields her pen like the legendary steel driver John Henry wielded his mighty hammer at the entrance of the Great Bend Tunnel in Talcott, West Virginia.

Joseph "Joe" Turner

Retired (2-Star) Major General Joseph “Joe” Turner serves as the first and only African-American general officer inducted into the West Virginia Aviation Wall of Valor. Turner's face has been captured in bronze on West Virginia State University’s (WVSU’s) Wall of Stars. In front of it stands a bronze bust of another African-American Major General Charles Roger, a 1951 graduate of WVSU who received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism during Vietnam.

Kenneth Gray

Retired Major General (2-Star) Kenneth Gray is part of the illustrious group of African-American general officers that hail from West Virginia State University (then College), a historically black college whose first president was recommended by Booker T. Washington. Gray served as Deputy Judge Advocate General (JAG) of the Army from 1993-1997, and he stands as the first and only African-American general officer in the history of the active Army JAG Corps.

William "Bill" Norris

William “Bill” Norris is currently serving as Magistrate for Berkeley County, the second-most populous county in West Virginia and the former homeland of Barack Obama’s great-great-great-great grandfather Jacob Dunham.

Eric Carter

There is the old saying that “A man’s gift will make room for him and bring him before great men.” Well, Eric Carter is a self-taught painter from Martinsburg, West Virginia whose gift—though discovered late in his life—has made room for him and is bringing his work before great men and women who are true art lovers.