Shameless plug time.

About a year ago, I put together a web gallery of African Americans who were heroic in their own right, but that you probably have never heard of. Truth is, there are tons of people that are as easy to find as your public library that you'd never find out about in school. Really, some of these things surprised me when I was looking it up.

Then I was like: how come my teachers never told me about this stuff? So I think I'll visit all of them in their nursing homes and yell at them through their hearing aids.
From technology, to finance and from medicine to espionage, your lives would not be so easy had it not been for some of these people. You know about Elijah McCoy, but have you ever heard of Philip Emeagwali?

You know about Mary McCloud Bethune, but have you read up on Eunice Hunton Carter?

You might have wondered how your refrigerated perishable food gets to you, but the solution came from Fred Jones.

And you would never have heard note one of Rock and Roll, R&B, Hip-Hop, Crunk, Funk, House, Techno, or a host of other music styles had it not been for the strange, haunting story of Southern bluesman Robert Johnson.

So enjoy reading about these ten Unsung Black Heroes from TIME.com.