Coleman Alexander Young (May 24, 1918 – November 29, 1997) served as mayor of Detroit in the U.S. state of Michigan from 1974 to 1993. Young became the first African-American mayor of Detroit in the same week that Maynard Jackson became the first African-American mayor of Atlanta.

Young was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to Coleman Young, a dry cleaner, and Ida Reese Jones. His family moved to Detroit in 1923, where he graduated from Eastern High School in 1935. He worked for Ford Motor Company, which soon blacklisted him for involvement in labor and civil rights activism. He later worked for the United States Postal Service, where with his brother George started the Postal Workers union. George later went on to become Postmaster for this same facility, which handles over ten million pieces of mail each year. During the second World War, Young served in the 477th Medium-Bomber Group (Tuskegee Airmen) of the United States Army Air Forces as a bombardier and navigator. As a lieutenant in the 477th, he played a role in the Freeman Field Mutiny in which 162 African-American officers were arrested for resisting segregation at a base near Seymour, Indiana in 1945.

Bill Bonds is an American television anchor and reporter, best known for his work at WXYZ-TV in Detroit, Michigan. Born in 1933, Bonds became an Action News anchorman beginning in the early 1970s.

A native of Detroit and a graduate of the University of Detroit, Bonds came to fame initially as a reporter for the city's Contact News on WKNR-AM, known as Keener 13. The station also featured such up-and-coming talent as Erik Smith and Frank Beckmann. He was also a reporter for several Michigan radio stations including WCAR, WPON and WQTE.

Bonds joined WXYZ in 1963 as a part-time booth announcer. He worked his way up to the anchor desk with Barney Morris. He and WXYZ first came to prominence for the station's coverage of the 1967 Detroit riots.

As a result, Bonds was tapped by ABC to become anchorman at KABC-TV in Los Angeles in 1968 to help launch its version of Eyewitness News. He returned to WXYZ-TV in 1971 just as the station was beginning a major upgrade of its news department under the Action News banner. Two years later, it became the highest-rated news broadcast in Detroit, a position it held up until 2011.

Charlie LeDuff is a Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist, writer, and media personality who left The Detroit News in October 2010 after two years and joined Detroit Fox affiliate WJBK Ch. 2 to do on-air journalism.

LeDuff is of Louisiana Creole and Ojibway descent, and was born in Portsmouth, Virginia. His parents' marriage ended in divorce, and he has a deceased sister and stepbrother. His father served in the U.S. Navy. LeDuff has four surviving siblings. He has lived in many cities around the country and the world. Before joining The New York Times, LeDuff worked as a schoolteacher and carpenter in Michigan and a cannery hand in Alaska. He has also worked as a baker in Denmark.

LeDuff currently lives with his wife in Pleasant Ridge, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. He considers himself a political independent, and is a practicing Roman Catholic. LeDuff is also a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa tribe of Michigan.

LeDuff's writing influences include Hop On Pop, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath, Treasure Island, Mickey Spillane, Raymond Carver, Joseph Mitchell, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, and Raymond Chandler. Among writers in the newspaper business who influenced him, LeDuff lists Mike Royko, Jimmy Breslin, and Pete Hamill.

Bob Berg (April 7, 1951 – December 5, 2002) was a jazz saxophonist originally from Brooklyn, New York City. He started his musical education at the age of six when he began studying classical piano. He began playing the saxophone at the age of thirteen. Bob Berg was a Juilliard graduate influenced heavily by the late 1964–67 period of John Coltrane's music. He was known for his extremely expressive playing and tone.

A student from the hard bop school, he played from 1973 to 1976 with Horace Silver and from 1977 to 1983 with Cedar Walton. Berg became more widely known through his short period in the Miles Davis band. He left Davis's band in 1987 after recording only one album with them.

After leaving Davis's band, Berg released a series of solo albums and also performed and recorded frequently in a group co-led with guitarist Mike Stern. On these albums he played a more accessible style of music, mixing funk, jazz and even country music with many other diverse compositional elements to produce albums that were always musical. He often played at the 7th Ave South NYC club. He worked with Chick Corea, Steve Gadd and Eddie Gomez in a great quartet. His tenor saxophone sound was a synthesis of rhythm and blues players like Junior Walker and Arnett Cobb with the lyricism, intellectual freedom and soul of Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson and John Coltrane.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (Xhosa pronunciation: [xoˈliːɬaɬa manˈdeːla]; born 18 July 1918) is a South African politician who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, the first ever to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before being elected President, Mandela was a militant anti-apartheid activist, and the leader and co-founder of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). In 1962 he was arrested and convicted of sabotage and other charges, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Mandela went on to serve 27 years in prison, spending many of these years on Robben Island. Following his release from prison on 11 February 1990, Mandela led his party in the negotiations that led to the establishment of democracy in 1994. As President, he frequently gave priority to reconciliation, while introducing policies aimed at combating poverty and inequality in South Africa.

In South Africa, Mandela is often known as Madiba, his Xhosa clan name; or as tata (Xhosa: father). Mandela has received more than 250 awards over four decades.