Harriet's Troops Lesson 3 Key Terms & People

Laura Dixon

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Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934 - November 17, 1992)

A self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Audre Lorde dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Lorde was born in New York City to West Indian immigrant parents. She attended Catholic schools before graduating from Hunter High School and published her first poem in Seventeen magazine while still a student there. Of her poetic beginnings Lorde commented in Black Women Writers: "I used to speak in poetry. I would read poems, and I would memorize them. People would say, well what do you think, Audre. What happened to you yesterday? And I would recite a poem and somewhere in that poem would be a line or a feeling I would be sharing. In other words, I literally communicated through poetry. And when I couldn't find the poems to express the things I was feeling, that's what started me writing poetry, and that was when I was twelve or thirteen." Lorde earned her BA from Hunter College and MLS from Columbia University. She was a librarian in the New York public schools throughout the 1960s. She had two children with her husband, Edward Rollins, a white, gay man, before they divorced in 1970. In 1972, Lorde met her long-time partner, Frances Clayton. She also began teaching as poet-in-residence at Tougaloo College. Her experiences with teaching and pedagogy—as well as her place as a Black, queer woman in white academia—went on to inform her life and work. Indeed, Lorde's contributions to feminist theory, critical race studies, and queer theory intertwine her personal experiences with broader political aims. Lorde articulated early on the intersections of race, class, and gender in canonical essays such as "The Master's Tools Will Not Dismantle the Master's House." Lorde's early collections of poetry include The First Cities (1968), Cables to Rage (1970), and From a Land Where Other People Live (1972), which was nominated for a National Book Award. Later works, including New York Head Shop and Museum (1974), Coal (1976), and The Black Unicorn (1978), included powerful poems of protest. "I have a duty," Lorde once stated, "to speak the truth as I see it and to share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigating pain." Lorde's later poems were often assembled from personal journals. Explaining the genesis of "Power," a poem about the police shooting of a ten-year-old black child, Lorde discussed her feelings when she learned that the officer involved had been acquitted: "A kind of fury rose up in me; the sky turned red. I felt so sick. I felt as if I would drive this car into a wall, into the next person I saw. So I pulled over. I took out my journal just to air some of my fury, to get it out of my fingertips. Those expressed feelings are that poem." Her poetry, and "indeed all of her writing," according to contributor Joan Martin in Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation, "rings with passion, sincerity, perception, and depth of feeling." Concerned with modern society's tendency to categorize groups of people, Lorde fought the marginalization of such categories as "lesbian" and "black woman." She was central to many liberation movements and activist circles, including second-wave feminism, civil rights and Black cultural movements, and struggles for GLBQT equality. In particular, Lorde's poetry is known for the power of its call for social and racial justice, as well as its depictions of queer experience and sexuality. As she told interviewer Charles H. Rowell in Callaloo: "My sexuality is part and parcel of who I am, and my poetry comes from the intersection of me and my worlds... [White, arch-conservative senator] Jesse Helms's objection to my work is not about obscenity ... or even about sex. It is about revolution and change." Lorde was a noted prose writer as well as poet. Her account of her struggle to overcome breast cancer and mastectomy, The Cancer Journals (1980), is regarded as a major work of illness narrative. In The Cancer Journals, Lorde confronts the possibility of death. Recounting this personal transformation led Lorde to address the silence surrounding cancer, illness, and the lived experience of women. For example, Lorde explained her decision not to wear a prosthesis after undergoing a mastectomy in the Journals: "Prosthesis offers the empty comfort of 'Nobody will know the difference.' But it is that very difference which I wish to affirm, because I have lived it, and survived it, and wish to share that strength with other women. If we are to translate the silence surrounding breast cancer into language and action against this scourge, then the first step is that women with mastectomies must become visible to each other."Lorde's 1982 novel, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, was described by its publishers as a "biomythography, combining elements of history, biography and myth." Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984) collected Lorde's nonfiction prose and has become a canonical text in Black studies, women's studies, and queer theory. Another posthumous collection of essays, A Burst of Light (1988), won the National Book Award. The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde was published in 1997. In 1981 Lorde and fellow writer Barbara Smith founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, which was dedicated to furthering the writings of black feminists. Lorde would also become increasingly concerned over the plight of black women in South Africa under apartheid, creating Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa and remaining an active voice on behalf of these women throughout the remainder of her life. Lorde addressed her concerns to not only the United States but the world, encouraging a celebration of the differences that society instead used as tools of isolation. As Allison Kimmich noted in Feminist Writers, "Throughout all of Audre Lorde's writing, both nonfiction and fiction, a single theme surfaces repeatedly. The black lesbian feminist poet activist reminds her readers that they ignore differences among people at their peril ... Instead, Lorde suggests, differences in race or class must serve as a 'reason for celebration and growth.'" Lorde's honors and awards included a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A professor of English at John Jay College and Hunter College, Lorde was poet laureate of New York from 1991-1992. Warrior Poet (2006), by Alexis De Veaux, is the first full-length biography of Audre Lorde.

Sojourner Truth (1797-1883)

A former slave, Sojourner Truth became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women's rights in the nineteenth century. Her Civil War work earned her an invitation to meet President Abraham Lincoln in 1864. Truth was born Isabella Bomfree, a slave in Dutch-speaking Ulster County, New York in 1797. She was bought and sold four times, and subjected to harsh physical labor and violent punishments. In her teens, she was united with another slave with whom she had five children, beginning in 1815. In 1827—a year before New York's law freeing slaves was to take effect—Truth ran away with her infant Sophia to a nearby abolitionist family, the Van Wageners. The family bought her freedom for twenty dollars and helped Truth successfully sue for the return of her five-year-old-son Peter, who was illegally sold into slavery in Alabama. Truth moved to New York City in 1828, where she worked for a local minister. By the early 1830s, she participated in the religious revivals that were sweeping the state and became a charismatic speaker. In 1843, she declared that the Spirit called on her to preach the truth, renaming herself Sojourner Truth. As an itinerant preacher, Truth met abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. Garrison's anti-slavery organization encouraged Truth to give speeches about the evils of slavery. She never learned to read or write. In 1850, she dictated what would become her autobiography—The Narrative of Sojourner Truth—to Olive Gilbert, who assisted in its publication. Truth survived on sales of the book, which also brought her national recognition. She met women's rights activists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, as well as temperance advocates—both causes she quickly championed. In 1851, Truth began a lecture tour that included a women's rights conference in Akron, Ohio, where she delivered her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech. In it, she challenged prevailing notions of racial and gender inferiority and inequality by reminding listeners of her combined strength (Truth was nearly six feet tall) and female status. Truth ultimately split with Douglass, who believed suffrage for formerly enslaved men should come before women's suffrage; she thought both should occur simultaneously. During the 1850's, Truth settled in Battle Creek, Michigan, where three of her daughters lived. She continued speaking nationally and helped slaves escape to freedom. When the Civil War started, Truth urged young men to join the Union cause and organized supplies for black troops. After the war, she was honored with an invitation to the White House and became involved with the Freedmen's Bureau, helping freed slaves find jobs and build new lives. While in Washington, DC, she lobbied against segregation, and in the mid 1860s, when a streetcar conductor tried to violently block her from riding, she ensured his arrest and won her subsequent case. In the late 1860s, she collected thousands of signatures on a petition to provide former slaves with land, though Congress never took action. Nearly blind and deaf towards the end of her life, Truth spent her final years in Michigan.

Alice Coachman

Alice Coachman made history at the 1948 Olympics in London when she leaped to a record-breaking height of 5 feet, 6 and 1/8 inches in the high jump finals to become the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal. She went on to support young athletes and older, retired Olympic veterans through the Alice Coachman Track and Field Foundation.

Ida B. Wells (1862-1931)

An African-American woman who achieved nationwide attention as leader of the anti-lynching crusade. A writer, she became part-owner of a newspaper, the Memphis Free Speech. In May 1892, in response to an article on a local lynching, a mob ransacked her offices and threatened her life if she did not leave town. Moving to Chicago, Wells continued to write about Southern lynchings. While investigating, she would go directly to the site of a killing, sometimes despite extreme danger. In 1895, she published The Red Record, the first documented statistical report on lynching. Wells was also a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She stands as one of America's most uncompromising leaders and most ardent defenders of democracy.

Angela X

Angola is the huge country below the equator on the west coast of Africa. That's where it all started. ...ground zero for the transatlantic slave trade. White missionaries, greed, exploitative trade, tech advances that made exploration by sea possible, a massive need for labor and yes, tribal wars. It was the perfect storm for the greatest crime in human history, the capture, sale, and violent exportation of our ancestors.Yes, and we know that the first enslaved Africans arrived in America 400 years ago, in 1619. The next part is not as well known.20 or so Africans were the first to walk on American soil. They were survivors. They survived wars on the continent. They survived a 70-mile walk down the Kwanza River. They survived the humiliation of baptism and branding by Catholic traders of enslaved people. They survived the dungeons, the canoe ride to the ships, the months at sea, the sickness, filth, violence, and murder. They survived the day that their Portuguese ship was jacked by British pirates in little-ass boats. They sailed to America and were sold on the shores of Hampton, Virginia.They survived.And one of those survivors was a woman named Angela. They were the first. In Virginia, Angela X lived with Captain Whoever and his wife and two other indentured servants from England. Slavery wasn't legally codified yet. We know this because, in 2017, something amazing happened. Buried beneath her home in Jamestown, archeologists found four cowrie shells. Evidence of her journey - the most exciting archeological find in decades - or ever - if you ask us. Today, we honor Angela and every African woman whose names we will never know. Join us in a conversation about survival and the systematic destruction of Black women that began on the coast of Africa and was fortified through The Virginia Code just 50 years after Angela arrived. American fear was codified into racism with the 1705 Slave Codes. Today, we fight in the streets to reverse, dismantle, and defund centuries of white supremacy.

Barbara Smith Conrad

Barbara Smith Conrad (August 11, 1937 - May 22, 2017) was an American opera singer.[1] A mezzo-soprano, she performed with the Metropolitan Opera, Vienna State Opera, Teatro Nacional in Venezuela, and many others. She was also an educator, co-directing the Wagner Theater Program, which she co-founded, and maintaining a private studio as well as taking up multiple artist residencies. Conrad received national attention when, in 1957, her work as a student performer became central in a racial controversy. Cast in a role opposite a white performer, the African-American Conrad was removed from the role at The University of Texas at Austin as a result of pressure on school administration from the Texas Legislature. Conrad's life has been depicted in the film When I Rise (2011).[

Barbara Jordan

Barbara Charline Jordan (February 21, 1936 - January 17, 1996) was an American lawyer, educator[1] and politician who was a leader of the Civil Rights Movement. A Democrat, she was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction and the first Southern African-American woman elected to the United States House of Representatives.[2] She was best known for her eloquent opening statement[3] at the House Judiciary Committee hearings during the impeachment process against Richard Nixon, and as the first African-American as well as the first woman to deliver a keynote address at the 1976 Democratic National Convention. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous other honors. She was a member of the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors from 1978 to 1980.[4] She was the first African-American woman to be buried in the Texas State Cemetery.[5][6] Jordan's work as chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, which recommended reducing legal immigration by about one-third, is frequently cited by American immigration restrictionists.

Assata Shakur (July 16, 1947 (age 73 years) - Escaped: November 2, 1979)

Assata Olugbala Shakur—political activist, author, fugitive, and step-aunt of the famed, slain hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur—was born JoAnne Deborah Bryon on July 16, 1947 in New York City, New York. Following her parents' divorce in 1950, she moved with her mother and maternal grandparents to Wilmington, North Carolina. Shakur spent much of her adolescence alternating residences between her mother, who remarried and returned to New York, and relatives in Wilmington. Shakur enrolled in Borough of Manhattan Community College before transferring to City College of New York, where her exposure to Black Nationalist organizations profoundly impacted her activism. Shakur attended meetings held by the Golden Drums, where she met her husband, Louis Chesimard. Members of the organization familiarized her with black historical figures that resisted racial oppression and social violence. She also began interacting with other activist groups and subsequently participated in student rights, anti-Vietnam war, and black liberation movements. In 1971, she adopted a new name: Assata ("she who struggles") Olugbala ("love for the people") Shakur ("the thankful"). During a trip to Oakland, California in 1970, Shakur became acquainted with the Black Panther Party (BPP). She returned to New York City and joined the Harlem branch. Shakur worked in the BPP breakfast program but grew increasingly critical of the BPP because of their reluctance to collaborate with other black organizations. Shakur left the BPP in 1971 and joined the Black Liberation Army (BLA), which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) branded an anarchist group. In 1972, the Bureau issued a warrant for her arrest in connection with crimes allegedly committed by the BLA. On the evening of May 2, 1973, Shakur and two BLA companions were stopped by two state troopers for a traffic infraction on the New Jersey Turnpike, an encounter that ended in the deaths of Assata's friend Zayd Shakur and State Trooper Werner Foerster. Arraigned on charges that included first-degree murder, Shakur went to trial seven times and was eventually convicted of Trooper Foerster's murder regardless of her contention that the gunshot wound she sustained during the confrontation partially paralyzed her arm and rendered her incapable of firing a weapon. Despite forensic evidence that supports her assertions, she was found guilty of murder in 1977 and sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years. In 1979, Shakur escaped from the maximum security unit of the New Jersey Clinton Correctional Facility for Women. She traveled to Cuba in 1984 where she was granted political asylum and reunited with her daughter Kakuya Amala Olugbala, whom she delivered while imprisoned. In 2013, on the 40th anniversary of Trooper Foerster's death, the FBI placed Shakur on the Most Wanted Terrorists list, conferring upon her the dubious distinction of being the first woman and the second domestic terrorist to appear on the list. It also increased her bounty to two million dollars. Shakur continues to live in exile in Cuba. Since her escape, Shakur's life has been depicted in songs, documentaries and various literary works.

Barbara Ransby

Barbara Ransby is an historian, writer, and longtime political activist. Ransby has published dozens of articles and essays in popular and scholarly venues. She is most notably the author of an award-winning biography of civil rights activist Ella Baker, entitled Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision(University of North Carolina, 2003), which won no less than six major awards. Barbara's most recent book is Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson (Yale University Press, January 2013). She serves on the editorial boards of The Black Commentator (an online journal); the London-based journal, Race and Class; the Justice, Power and Politics Series at University of North Carolina Press; and the Scholar's Advisory Committee of Ms. magazine. In the summer of 2012 she became the second Editor-in-Chief of SOULS, a critical journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society published quarterly. Professor Ransby received a BA in History from Columbia University and an MA and PhD in History from the University of Michigan.

Barbara Smith

Beginning in the 1970s, she became involved in the Women's and Gay Liberation Movements and quickly realized neither were attentive to the concerns of women of color. In 1974, Smith co-founded the Combahee River Collective in Boston, Massachusetts. Unlike more mainstream black feminist groups such as the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO), Combahee explicitly integrated the concerns of black lesbians into black feminist politics and organizing.chose instead to found her own organization due to the NBFO's failure to incorporate black lesbians. The name of the collective, which met regularly from 1974 to 1980, was taken from a Civil War-era raid enacted by Harriet Tubman. Tubman worked with the Union Army to free 750 slaves during a raid that took place on the Combahee River in South Carolina. Smith chose the name because she wanted to reference black women's history and the historical roots of black feminism.Combahee is best known for their collective statement, co-authored by Smith, her sister Beverly, and Demita Frazier in 1977, which outlines the principles of black feminism and provides new ways for looking at identity-based oppressions and social justice work. the first time black women specifically discussed the politics of sexuality as essential to black feminist activism. Putting ideas articulated within the Combahee River Collective Statement into practice, Smith also transformed the emerging academic disciplines of Black and Women's Studies and the publishing industry.

Beth Richie

Beth E. Richie is a professor of African American Studies, Sociology, Gender and Women's Studies, and Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) where she currently serves as head of the Criminology, Law, and Justice Department. From 2010 to 2016, Dr. Richie served as the director of the UIC Institute of Research on Race and Public Policy. In 2014, she was named a senior adviser to the National Football League Players Association Commission on domestic violence and sexual assault.[1] Of her most notable awards, Dr. Richie has been awarded the Audre Lorde Legacy Award from the Union Institute, the Advocacy Award from the US Department of Health and Human Services, and the Visionary Award from the Violence Intervention Project. Her work has been supported by multiple foundations including Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Institute for Justice, and the National Institute of Corrections.[2] Dr. Richie is a longtime anti-violence advocate and activist who is a founding member of INCITE! Women, Gender Non-Conforming, and Trans people of Color Against Violence

Louise Thompson Patterson (September 9, 1901 - August 27, 1999)

Born in 1901, Louise Thompson Patterson was a leading and transformative figure in radical African American politics. Throughout most of the twentieth century she embodied a dedicated resistance to racial, economic, and gender exploitation. In this, the first biography of Patterson, Keith Gilyard tells her compelling story, from her childhood on the West Coast, where she suffered isolation and persecution, to her participation in the Harlem Renaissance and beyond. In the 1930s and 1940s she became central, along with Paul Robeson, to the labor movement, and later, in the 1950s, she steered proto-black-feminist activities. Patterson was also crucial to the efforts in the 1970s to free political prisoners, most notably Angela Davis. In the 1980s and 1990s she continued to work as a progressive activist and public intellectual. To read her story is to witness the courage, sacrifice, vision, and discipline of someone who spent decades working to achieve justice and liberation for all.

Harriet Tubman (1821-1913)

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles. After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Bree Newsome

Brittany Ann Byuarm "Bree" Newsome Bass [1] is an American filmmaker, musician, speaker, and activist from Charlotte, North Carolina. She is best known for her act of civil disobedience on June 27, 2015, when she was arrested for removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state house grounds in the aftermath of the Charleston Shooting. The resulting publicity put pressure on state officials to remove the flag, and it was taken down permanently on July 10, 2015.

Byllye Avery

Byllye Avery, in full Byllye Yvonne Avery, (born 1937, DeLand, Florida, U.S.), American health care activist whose efforts centred on bettering the welfare of low-income African American women through self-help groups and advocacy networks. She devoted herself to the education of emotionally disturbed children, first as a teacher and then as a consultant to the state of Florida. Her husband's sudden death at age 33 was the catalyst for Avery's commitment to improving the health of the African American community; she focused particularly on women who, like herself, had a high level of stress in their lives. Self-help groups for African American women facing poverty, crime, violence, and racism were the cornerstones of her activism. In 1974 Avery cofounded the Gainesville (Florida) Women's Health Center and later became its president and executive director. Four years later she cofounded Birthplace, an alternative birthing centre, also in Gainesville. The self-help groups she initiated served as models throughout the nation and worldwide, and they paved the way for her founding in 1983 of the National Black Women's Health Project (NBWHP; since 2003 the Black Women's Health Imperative). That year the NBWHP held its first national conference at Spelman College in Atlanta. As executive director (1982-90) of the NBWHP, Avery helped the grassroots advocacy organization grow to an international network of more than 2,000 participants in 22 states and 6 foreign countries, producing not only the first Center for Black Women's Wellness but also the first documentary film by African American women exploring their perspectives on sexuality and reproduction. For her proposals and work with the NBWHP, which enabled thousands of African American women to take charge of their health care, Avery was awarded a MacArthur fellowship in 1989. In the 1990s she wrote and lectured widely on how race, sex, and class affect women's empowerment in the women's health movement. In 2008 Avery received the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Award for a Pioneer in Women's Rights. In January 2009 she became a community host for BeWell.com, the first expert-guided online health and wellness social network. Brown finished her first year of teaching in 1979 and in the mid 1980s, worked as a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.[5] She eventually moved to upstate New York, where she taught at the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1988.[5] In Fall 2006, Elsa Barkley Brown was the only black women working in the history department at the University of Maryland, College Park. She was soon joined by another black woman, which Brown stated was the first time she had ever worked in the same department as another black woman.[5] The University of Michigan has a chair named for her, the Elsa Barkley Brown Collegiate Professor of African American Women's History.[6]

Charlene Carruthers

Charlene A. Carruthers is a Black, queer feminist community organizer and writer with over 15 years of experience in racial justice, feminist and youth leadership development movement work. As the founding national director of BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100), she has worked alongside hundreds of young Black activists to build a national base of activist member-led organization of Black 18-35 year olds dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people. Her passion for developing young leaders to build capacity within marginalized communities has led her to work on immigrant rights, economic justice and civil rights campaigns nationwide. She has led grassroots and digital strategy campaigns for national organizations including the Center for Community Change, the Women's Media Center, ColorOfChange.org and National People's Action, as well as being a member of a historic delegation of young activists in Palestine in 2015 to build solidarity between Black and Palestinian liberation movements. Charlene is the founder and executive director of the Chicago Center for Leadership and Transformation, a locally rooted and nationally connected learning community for political education, grassroots organizing, language and strategic communications capacity building. Her work has been covered in several publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Chicago Reader, The Nation, Ebony and Essence Magazines. She has appeared on CNN, Democracy Now!, BBC and MSNBC. Charlene has also written for theRoot.com, CRISIS Magazine, Teen Vogue, Truthout, Colorlines and the Boston Review. She is recognized as one of the top 10 most influential African Americans by The Root 100, one of Ebony Magazine's "Woke 100," an Emerging Power Player in Chicago Magazine and is the 2017 recipient of the YWCA's Dr. Dorothy I. Height Award. A believer in telling more complete stories about the Black Radical Tradition, Charlene provides critical analysis, political education and leadership development training for activists across the globe. Charlene has served as a featured speaker at various institutions including Wellesley College, Shaw University, Princeton University, Northwestern University and her alma mater Illinois Wesleyan University. Charlene also received a Master of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. Charlene was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago where she currently resides and continues to lead and partake in social justice movements. Her inspirations include a range of Black women, including her mother, Ella Baker, Cathy Cohen, Marsha P. Johnson and Barbara Ransby. In her free time, Charlene loves to cook and believes the best way to learn about people is through their food. Charlene is author of the bestselling book, Unapologetic: A Black, Queer and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements, available in English and Spanish languages (Beacon Press).

Ruby Doris Smith Robinson (April 25, 1942 - October 7, 1967)

Calling from the field to SNCC in Atlanta meant calling Ruby Doris. From her position as SNCC's administrative secretary, she saw to it that field secretaries got what they needed. If anybody ran SNCC, it was Ruby Doris. Moreover, no one in SNCC was tougher than Ruby Doris Smith Robinson when it came to standing up to segregation and white supremacy. She "was convinced that there was nothing that she could not do...she was a tower of strength," recalled Stokely Carmichael. Her strength and commitment manifested early in life. Born to a middle class family, Smith was relatively shielded from segregation growing up but "was conscious of my blackness." She admitted that her only direct dealing with whites was to throw rocks at them. Smith once told her sister that her mission in life was to set the Black people free. "I will never rest until it happens. I will die for that cause," she said. The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the February 1, 1960 Greensboro sit-ins showed Smith a way to fight against the many injustices she felt and saw. As a student at Spelman College, Ruby Doris Smith picketed and participated in sit-ins in Atlanta, joining the Atlanta Student Movement. That led her to SNCC's founding conference at Shaw University. Then in February 1961 at the age of eighteen, Smith volunteered to go to Rock Hill, South Carolina to support the "Rock Hill Nine," local college students who had sat in and refused bail after they were arrested. Smith, along with fellow student activists Diane Nash, Charles Sherrod, and Charles Jones, sat in and helped popularize SNCC's "Jail-No-Bail" strategy by serving out their 30-day jail. Smith's sentence included serving time on the chain gang. From there, Smith joined the Freedom Rides, serving 45 days in Parchman Penitentiary after being arrested in Jackson, Mississippi. In 1963, Smith formally became SNCC's administrative secretary. In the Atlanta office she worked closely with Jim Forman and coordinated SNCC efforts in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. Whenever staff needed anything, Stanley Wise explained, "everybody in the organization went to Ruby," She also made sure that field staff had cars, creating the Sojourner Truth Motor Fleet and incorporating it as a separate entity. "The office would not have run except for her; and then the field would not have survived," explained SNCC staffer Worth Long. She went about the business of organizing SNCC organizers in a no-nonsense fashion. At the end of one of the Freedom Singers' tours to the west coast, a member was late and missed his car ride home. Smith refused to send him money for a plane, train, or bus ticket. She maintained that he should have been responsible for getting to his ride on time and that SNCC shouldn't have to pay for his lateness. Her advice to him was, "Well, walk back." At the end of 1963, Ruby Doris Smith married Clifford Robinson. Her new husband joined SNCC as well, working as a mechanic on the Sojourner Motor Fleet cars. Not long after, they had a son they named Kenneth Toure Robinson after President Sekou Toure of Guinea. Toure spent much time in SNCC's Atlanta office. In 1966, Ruby Doris Smith Robinson was elected to replace Jim Forman-who was stepping down-as SNCC's executive secretary. She was the first and only woman to serve on SNCC's executive committee. That fact mattered little to her. Being a woman had never limited her capabilities or authority-nor would anyone have suggested that it did. Only one year later, she died of terminal cancer at the very young age of 25-a devastating loss to her movement colleagues and SNCC itself. On the headstone at her Atlanta grave site are words appropriate for both her life and SNCC: "If you think free, you are free."

Cathy Cohen

Cathy J. Cohen is the David and Mary Winton Green Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. She formerly served in numerous administrative positions, including chair of the Department of Political Science, director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture and deputy provost for Graduate Education at the University of Chicago. Cohen is the author of two books, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics (University of Chicago Press) and Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics (Oxford University Press). She is also co-editor of the anthology Women Transforming Politics: An Alternative Reader (NYU Press) with Kathleen Jones and Joan Tronto. Her articles have been published in numerous journals and edited volumes including the American Political Science Review, NOMOS, GLQ, Social Text, and the DuBois Review. Cohen created and oversees two major research and public-facing projects: the GenForward Survey and the Black Youth Project. She is the recipient of numerous awards, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and co-editor with Frederick Harris of a book series at Oxford University Press entitled "Transgressing Boundaries: Studies in Black Politics and Black Communities."

Toni Morrison

Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford;[2] February 18, 1931 - August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist, essayist, book editor, and college professor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she gained worldwide recognition when she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.[3] Born and raised in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison graduated from Howard University in 1953 with a B.A. in English.[4] In 1955, she earned a master's in American Literature from Cornell University. In 1957 she returned to Howard University, was married, and had two children before divorcing in 1964. In the late 1960s, she became the first black female editor in fiction at Random House in New York City. In the 1970s and 1980s, she developed her own reputation as an author, and her perhaps most celebrated work, Beloved, was made into a 1998 film. In 1996, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected her for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. Also that year, she was honored with the National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. On May 29, 2012, President Barack Obama presented Morrison with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2016, she received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction.

Claudia Jones (February 21, 1915 - December 24, 1964)

Claudia Jones, feminist, black nationalist, political activist, community leader, communist and journalist, has been described as the mother of the Notting Hill carnival. The diversity of her political affiliations clearly illustrated her multifaceted approach to the struggle for equal rights in the 20th century. She was born in Belmont, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad in 1915 and at the age of eight moved to Harlem, New York with her parents and three sisters. Her education was cut short by Tuberculosis and the damage to her lungs as well as severe heart disease plagued Claudia for the rest of her life. For over 30 years she lived in New York and during this time became an active member of the American Communist party, an organisation in which her journalistic and community leadership skills were maximised. By 1948 she had become the editor of Negro Affairs for the party's paper the Daily Worker and had evolved into an accomplished speaker on human and civil rights. In 1955 she was deported from the US and given asylum in England, where she spent her remaining years working with London's African-Caribbean community. She founded and edited The West Indian Gazette which despite financial problems remained crucial in her fight for equal opportunities for black people. Claudia Jones lasting legacy is undoubtedly the Notting Hill carnival, which she helped launch in 1959 as an annual showcase for Caribbean talent. These early celebrations were held in halls and were epitomised by the slogan, 'A people's art is the genesis of their freedom'.

Dovey Johnson Roundtree

Dovey Johnson Roundtree (April 17, 1914 - May 21, 2018) was an African-American civil rights activist, ordained minister, and attorney. Her 1955 victory before the Interstate Commerce Commission in the first bus desegregation case to be brought before the ICC resulted in the only explicit repudiation of the "separate but equal" doctrine in the field of interstate bus transportation by a court or federal administrative body.[1] That case, Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company (64 MCC 769 (1955)), which Dovey Roundtree brought before the ICC with her law partner and mentor Julius Winfield Robertson, was invoked by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy during the 1961 Freedom Riders' campaign in his successful battle to compel the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce its rulings and end Jim Crow laws in public transportation.[2] A protégé of black activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune, Roundtree was selected by Bethune for the first class of African-American women to be trained as officers in the newly created Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (later the Women's Army Corps)[3] during World War II. In 1961 she became one of the first women to receive full ministerial status in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which had just begun ordaining women at a level beyond mere preachers in 1960.[4] With her controversial admission to the all-white Women's Bar of the District of Columbia in 1962, she broke the color bar for minority women in the Washington legal community.[5] In one of Washington's most sensational and widely covered murder cases, United States v. Ray Crump, tried in the summer of 1965 on the eve of the Watts riots, Roundtree won acquittal for the black laborer accused of the murder of Georgetown socialite (and former wife of a CIA officer) Mary Pinchot Meyer,[6] a woman with romantic ties to President John F. Kennedy.[7] The founding partner of the Washington, D.C. law firm of Roundtree, Knox, Hunter and Parker in 1970 following the death of her first law partner Julius Robertson in 1961, Roundtree was special consultant for legal affairs to the AME Church, and General Counsel to the National Council of Negro Women.[8] She was the inspiration for actress Cicely Tyson's depiction of a maverick civil rights lawyer in the television series "Sweet Justice",[9] and the recipient, along with retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, of the American Bar Association's 2000 Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award.[10] In 2011 a scholarship fund was created in her name by the Charlotte Chapter of the National Alumnae Association of Spelman College. Roundtree also received the 2011 Torchbearer Award from the Women's Bar Association of the District of Columbia, the organization which she integrated in 1962. Following her death in 2018, the Women's Bar of DC created The Dovey Roundtree Rule to guide Washington law firms in increasing the hiring of minority women for leadership positions. In March 2013 an affordable senior living facility in the Southeast Washington DC community where she ministered was named "The Roundtree Residences" in her honor.[11] She turned 100 in April 2014[12] and died at the age of 104 in May 2018.[13] In June 2020, amid nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, a $ 40 million donation to Spelman College from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin funded a scholarship that Spelman named for Dovey Johnson Roundtree. [14] Calling the donation "a historic gift in response to the historic moment we are experiencing," Spelman president Mary Schmidt Campbell noted that Hastings' overall gift of $ 120 million to Spelman and two other institutions was the largest single donation ever made to Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

E. Frances White

E. Frances White is Professor of History and Black Studies at Gallatin and the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis in the Faculty of Arts and Science. She has served as NYU's Vice Provost for Faculty Development from 2005 to 2008 and Dean of the Gallatin School from 1998 to 2005. She has been awarded fellowships from the Danforth Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others. She has also been a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in Sierra Leone and the Gambia. Before coming to NYU, she taught at Fourah Bay College of the University of Sierra Leone and at Hampshire College. Her awards include the Catherine T. and John D. MacArthur Chair in History (1985-1988) and the 1987 Letitia Brown Memorial Publication Prize for the best book on black women. Her teaching and research interests include the history of Africa and its diaspora, history of gender and sexuality, and critical race theory. Her books include Sierra Leone's Settler Women Traders, Women in Sub-Saharan Africa, and Dark Continent of Our Bodies. She is at work on a book about Afro-British Cultural Studies. She was awarded the 2013-2014 NYU Distinguished Teaching Award.

Eartha Kitt

Eartha Kitt (born Eartha Mae Keith; January 17, 1927 - December 25, 2008) was an American singer, actress, dancer, comedian, activist, author, and songwriter known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 recordings of "C'est si bon" and the Christmas novelty song "Santa Baby", both of which reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the world".[2] Kitt began her career in 1942 and appeared in the 1945 original Broadway theatre production of the musical Carib Song. In the early 1950s, she had six US Top 30 hits, including "Uska Dara" and "I Want to Be Evil". Her other notable recordings include the UK Top 10 hit "Under the Bridges of Paris" (1954), "Just an Old Fashioned Girl" (1956) and "Where Is My Man" (1983). She starred in 1967 as Catwoman, in the third and final season of the television series Batman. In 1968, her career in the U.S. deteriorated after she made anti-Vietnam War statements at a White House luncheon. Ten years later, she made a successful return to Broadway in the 1978 original production of the musical Timbuktu!, for which she received the first of her two Tony Award nominations. Her second was for the 2000 original production of the musical The Wild Party. Kitt wrote three autobiographies.[3] Kitt found a new generation of fans through her roles in the Disney films The Emperor's New Groove (2000), in which she voiced the villainous Yzma, and Holes (2003). She reprised the role as Yzma in the direct-to-video sequel Kronk's New Groove (2005), as well as the animated series The Emperor's New School (2006-2008). Her work on the latter earned her two Daytime Emmy Awards. She posthumously won a third Emmy in 2010 for her guest performance on Wonder Pets!.

Angela Davis

Educator and activist Angela Davis (1944-) became known for her involvement in a politically charged murder case in the early 1970s. Influenced by her segregated upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama, Davis joined the Black Panthers and an all-black branch of the Communist Party as a young woman. She became a professor at UCLA, but fell out of favor with the administration due to her ties. Davis was charged with aiding the botched escape attempt of imprisoned black radical George Jackson, and served roughly 18 months in jail before her acquittal in 1972. After spending time traveling and lecturing, Davis returned to the classroom as a professor and authored several books. Angela Yvonne Davis is best known as a radical African American educator and activist for civil rights and other social issues.

Ella Baker

Ella Baker, in full Ella Josephine Baker, (born December 13, 1903, Norfolk, Virginia, U.S.—died December 13, 1986, New York, New York), American community organizer and political activist who brought her skills and principles to bear in the major civil rights organizations of the mid-20th century. Baker was reared in Littleton, North Carolina. In 1918 she began attending the high school academy of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Baker continued her college education at Shaw, graduating as valedictorian in 1927. She then moved to New York City in search of employment. There she found people suffering from poverty and hardship caused by the Great Depression and was introduced to the radical political activism that became her life's work. In the early 1930s, in one of her first efforts at implementing social improvement, she helped organize the Young Negroes Cooperative League, which was created to form cooperative groups that would pool community resources and thus provide less-expensive goods and services to members. Baker married T.J. Roberts in the late 1930s and then joined the staff of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), first as a field secretary and later as national director of the NAACP's various branches. Unhappy with the bureaucratic nature of the NAACP and newly responsible for the care of her young niece, she resigned from her director position in 1946 but worked with the New York branch to integrate local schools and improve the quality of education for black children. Inspired by the historic bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, Baker cofounded the organization In Friendship to raise money for the civil rights movement in the South. In 1957 she met with a group of Southern black ministers and helped form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to coordinate reform efforts throughout the South. Martin Luther King, Jr., served as the SCLC's first president and Baker as its director. She left the SCLC in 1960 to help student leaders of college activist groups organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). With her guidance and encouragement, SNCC became one of the foremost advocates for human rights in the country. Her influence was reflected in the nickname she acquired: "Fundi," a Swahili word meaning a person who teaches a craft to the next generation. Baker continued to be a respected and influential leader in the fight for human and civil rights until her death on her 83rd birthday.

Elsa Barkley Brown

Elsa Barkley Brown is an American historian and educator. As of 2018 Brown works as an associate professor of history and African American studies and as a faculty member of the African American Studies and American Studies Department at the University of Maryland. Brown's focus of research includes African American political culture, Black gender studies, Black women's arts and culture, political narrative, and theories of collectivity and citizenship.[1][2] She has also researched the history of the black community in Richmond, Virginia and the history of women during the Civil Rights movement.[3][4]

Eslanda Cardozo Goode Robeson (December 15, 1895 - December 13, 1965)

Eslanda Cardozo Goode Robeson had a varied and remarkable career both within and outside motion picture filmmaking, working initially as the first Black hired at New York City's Presbyterian Hospital in the surgical pathology department. After her marriage to Paul Robeson, world-renowned actor, singer, and activist, whose biography she wrote in 1930, she joined him in several independent film projects. Later she worked as an anthropologist and travel writer. In addition to being Robeson's talent manager when he worked on Body and Soul (1925), Charles Musser argues that Eslanda managed many aspects of her husband's film career as well his musical and theatrical career (91). In the silent era, Eslanda appears only in the avant-garde classic Borderline (1930), but later would have a role, which she negotiated to secure, as a café proprietress in the Robeson film Big Fella (1937) (Duberman 207). Borderline tackled the issue of a biracial love affair between a white man and a black woman, played by Eslanda Robeson, and has been widely considered bold and ground-breaking for the way in which it treats not only racial tensions but heterosexuality and homosexuality. Filmed by avant-garde artist and filmmaker Kenneth MacPherson in Territet, Switzerland, during March 20-30, 1930, the film also starred the poet, actress, and producer of Borderline, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), who recollected that "Essie Robeson treated the experience as being something of a lark for them." Eslanda Robeson's diary, however, reveals the Robesons' point of view on their white European collaborators. She wrote that "Kenneth and H.D. used to make us so shriek with laughter with their naïve ideas of Negroes that Paul and I often completely ruined our makeup with tears of laughter, had to make up all over again. We never once were colored with them." MacPherson had worked on the film for a year as writer, producer, and director while the Robesons were filmed over the course of one week. Paul and Eslanda agreed to participate in the experimental film, thinking of it as a type of vacation retreat. Although they were only a part of the production process for a week, Eslanda began talks with MacPherson early in the script development often suggesting ideas. According to Robeson biographer Martin Duberman, however, MacPherson only "promised to incorporate her suggestions" and finally did not allow her to see the finished version (130)

Esther Jones

Esther Lee Jones, known by her stage names "Baby Esther" and "Little Esther" (and variants thereof), was an American singer and child entertainer of the late 1920s, known for her "baby" singing style. After rising to fame in her hometown of Chicago, she became an international celebrity before leaving the public spotlight as a teenager. Theatrical manager Lou Bolton testified during the Kane v. Fleischer trial that Helen Kane saw Baby Esther's cabaret act in 1928 with him and appropriated Jones' style of singing, changing the interpolated words "boo-boo-boo" and "doo-doo-doo" to "boop-boop-a-doop" in a recording of "I Wanna Be Loved By You." While Kane never publicly admitted her borrowing, Jones' style—as imitated by Kane—went on to become the inspiration for the voice of the cartoon character Betty Boop. When Kane attempted to sue Fleischer Studios for using her persona, the studios defended themselves by arguing that Kane herself had taken it from "Baby Esther" Jones. An early test sound film of Baby Esther's performance was used as evidence. In court, it was presumed that Jones was still in Paris.

Nina Simone

Eunice Kathleen Waymon (February 21, 1933 - April 21, 2003), known professionally as Nina Simone, was an American singer, songwriter, musician, arranger, and civil rights activist. Her music spanned a broad range of musical styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop. The sixth of eight children born to a poor family in Tryon, North Carolina, Simone initially aspired to be a concert pianist.[1] With the help of a few supporters in her hometown, she enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York City.[2] She then applied for a scholarship to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she was denied admission despite a well-received audition,[3] which she attributed to racial discrimination. In 2003, just days before her death, the Institute awarded her an honorary degree.[4] To make a living, Simone started playing piano at a nightclub in Atlantic City. She changed her name to "Nina Simone" to disguise herself from family members, having chosen to play "the devil's music"[3] or so-called "cocktail piano". She was told in the nightclub that she would have to sing to her own accompaniment, which effectively launched her career as a jazz vocalist.[5] She went on to record more than 40 albums between 1958 and 1974, making her debut with Little Girl Blue. She had a hit single in the United States in 1958 with "I Loves You, Porgy".[1] Her musical style fused gospel and pop with classical music, in particular Johann Sebastian Bach,[6] and accompanied expressive, jazz-like singing in her contralto voice.

Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977)

Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer rose from humble beginnings in the Mississippi Delta to become one of the most important, passionate, and powerful voices of the civil and voting rights movements and a leader in the efforts for greater economic opportunities for African Americans. Hamer was born on October 6, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi, the 20th and last child of sharecroppers Lou Ella and James Townsend. She grew up in poverty, and at age six Hamer joined her family picking cotton. By age 12, she left school to work. In 1944, she married Perry Hamer and the couple toiled on the Mississippi plantation owned by B.D. Marlowe until 1962. Because Hamer was the only worker who could read and write, she also served as plantation timekeeper. In 1961, Hamer received a hysterectomy by a white doctor without her consent while undergoing surgery to remove a uterine tumor. Such forced sterilization of black women, as a way to reduce the black population, was so widespread it was dubbed a "Mississippi appendectomy." Unable to have children of their own, the Hamers adopted two daughters. That summer, Hamer attended a meeting led by civil rights activists James Forman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and James Bevel of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Hamer was incensed by efforts to deny blacks the right to vote. She became a SNCC organizer and on August 31, 1962 led 17 volunteers to register to vote at the Indianola, Mississippi Courthouse. Denied the right to vote due to an unfair literacy test, the group was harassed on their way home, when police stopped their bus and fined them $100 for the trumped-up charge that the bus was too yellow. That night, Marlow fired Hamer for her attempt to vote; her husband was required to stay until the harvest. Marlow confiscated much of their property. The Hamers moved to Ruleville, Mississippi in Sunflower County with very little. In June 1963, after successfully registering to vote, Hamer and several other black women were arrested for sitting in a "whites-only" bus station restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina. At the jailhouse, she and several of the women were brutally beaten, leaving Hamer with lifelong injuries from a blood clot in her eye, kidney damage, and leg damage. In 1964, Hamer's national reputation soared as she co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which challenged the local Democratic Party's efforts to block black participation. Hamer and other MFDP members went to the Democratic National Convention that year, arguing to be recognized as the official delegation. When Hamer spoke before the Credentials Committee, calling for mandatory integrated state delegations, President Lyndon Johnson held a televised press conference so she would not get any television air time. But her speech, with its poignant descriptions of racial prejudice in the South, was televised later. By 1968, Hamer's vision for racial parity in delegations had become a reality and Hamer was a member of Mississippi's first integrated delegation. In 1964 Hamer helped organize Freedom Summer, which brought hundreds of college students, black and white, to help with African American voter registration in the segregated South. In 1964, she announced her candidacy for the Mississippi House of Representatives but was barred from the ballot. A year later, Hamer, Victoria Gray, and Annie Devine became the first black women to stand in the US Congress when they unsuccessfully protested the Mississippi House election of 1964. She also traveled extensively, giving powerful speeches on behalf of civil rights. In 1971, Hamer helped to found the National Women's Political Caucus. Frustrated by the political process, Hamer turned to economics as a strategy for greater racial equality. In 1968, she began a "pig bank," to provide free pigs for black farmers to breed, raise, and slaughter. A year later she launched the Freedom Farm Cooperative (FFC), buying up land that blacks could own and farm collectively. With the assistance of donors (including famed singer Harry Belafonte), she purchased 640 acres and launched a coop store, boutique, and sewing enterprise. She single-handedly ensured that 200 units of low-income housing were built—many still exist in Ruleville today. The FFC lasted until the mid-1970s, at its heyday it was among the largest employers in Sunflower County. Extensive travel and fundraising took Hamer away from the day-to-day operations, as did her failing health, and the FFC hobbled along until folding. Not long after, in 1977, Hamer died of breast cancer and died at age 59.

Alice Walker

February 9, 1944, Eatonton, Georgia, U.S.), American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture. Her novels, most notably The Color Purple (1982), focus particularly on women. Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she wrote the novel The Color Purple, for which she won the National Book Award for hardcover fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[2][3] She also wrote the novels Meridian (1976) and The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970). An avowed feminist, Walker coined the term womanist to mean "A black feminist or feminist of color" in 1983.[4]

Kai Barrow

Kai Lumumba Barrow is a visual artist based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her creative space, Studio in the Hood, serves as a collaborative hub for interdisciplinary artists who travel to NOLA from all over the country. Kai works as a socially-engaged artist with her colleagues to create and curate what she describes as "large-scale visual operas." We sat down with her to talk about her work and vision, realities faced by artists in New Orleans, and how Fractured Atlas has helped on her journey as a creative professional.

Florence (Flo) Kennedy

Kennedy used Intersectionality as her approach to activism. Sherie Randolph, in her book Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: The Life of a Radical Black Feminist, quotes Flo saying: "My main message is that we have a pathologically, institutionally racist, sexist, classist society. And that ******izing techniques that are used don't only damage black people, but they also damage women, gay people, ex-prison inmates, prostitutes, children, old people, handicapped people, native Americans. And that if we can begin to analyze the pathology of oppression... we would learn a lot about how to deal with it."[12] Kennedy kept revisiting the same aim: "urging women to examine the sources of their oppression. She spoke of day to day acts of resistance that we can all take and hold her own arrests and political actions."[13] Kennedy summed up her protest strategy as "Mak[ing] white people nervous".[2] Kennedy often dressed in a cowboy hat and pink sunglasses.[14] Another trademark in public appearances were false eyelashes, which she referred to as her "Daffy Duck" lashes, and which she used to great effect. Kennedy had a summer home on Fire Island, and was a popular fixture on the social scene there, entertaining many activists whom she invited to visit her. Kennedy held regular salons in her apartment on East 48th Street, off Fifth Avenue, in New York City. She would preside over networking and facilitate people meeting each other, sharing ideas, and was always coming up with projects. She would give tours of her apartment, directing guests to the "filthy room" and the "dirty room". Early activism[edit] Her activism began early. According to Jason Chambers in his book Madison Avenue and the Color Line: African Americans in the Advertising Industry, "After graduating high school, [Kennedy] organized a successful boycott against a Coca-Cola bottler who refused to hire black truck drivers."[15] "Kennedy recalled being arrested for the first time in 1965 when she attempted to reach her home on East 48th Street and police refused to believe she lived in the neighborhood. From that point on, she focused her attention on combatting racism and discrimination."[11] She worked as an activist for feminism and civil rights, and the cases she took on increasingly tended to be related to these causes. She was close friends with fellow Columbia law graduate Morton Birnbaum MD, whose concept of sanism she influenced during the 1960s.[6] Kennedy established the Media Workshop in 1966, "[using] these sessions to discuss strategies for challenging the media and to stress the importance of sharing tactical information across movement lines."[16] She and others would picket and lobby the media over their representation of Black people. She stated that she would lead boycotts of major advertisers if they did not feature black people in their ads. She attended all three Black Power conferences and represented H. Rap Brown, Assata Shakur and the Black Panthers. Kennedy also represented prominent radical feminist Valerie Solanas, who was on trial for the 1968 attempted murder of Andy Warhol.[11] Kennedy played a significant role in formulating the Miss America protest of 1968.[12] The Miss America protest was used as a tool to demonstrate the "exploitation of women".[12] Randolph noted in her book, Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical, that the responsibility lay with Kennedy to recruit other black feminists to this protest.[12] During the protest multiple women were arrested and Kennedy took on their cases as their attorney.[12] In the 1970s Kennedy traveled the lecture circuit with writer Gloria Steinem. If a man asked the pair if they were lesbians - a stereotype of feminists at the time - Kennedy would quote Ti-Grace Atkinson and answer, "Are you my alternative?"[17] She was an early member of the National Organization for Women, but left them in 1970, dissatisfied with their approach to change. In 1971 she founded the Feminist Party, which nominated Shirley Chisholm for president. She also helped found the National Women's Political Caucus. Beginning in 1972 she served on the Advisory Board of the Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective, a New York City theatre group that produced plays on feminist issues. Kennedy's "position on the role of black feminists was diplomatic without being evasive."[13] Kennedy supported abortion rights and co-authored the book Abortion Rap with Diane Schulder. The phrase "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament" is sometimes attributed to Kennedy, although Gloria Steinem attributed it to "an old Irish woman taxi driver in Boston" whom she said she and Kennedy met.[18] In 1972, Kennedy filed tax evasion charges with the Internal Revenue Service against the Catholic Church, saying that their campaign against abortion rights violated the separation of church and state. Sherie Randolph outlines in her article "Not to Rely Completely on the Courts" that Kennedy was one of the lawyers in the Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz case, the class action suit that wanted to repeal New York's strict abortion laws.[19] Randolph stated: "This case was one of the first to use women who suffered from illegal abortions as expert witnesses instead of relying on physicians."[19] "These tactics were eventually used in the Roe v. Wade case, in 1973, which overturned restrictive abortion laws."[19] Kennedy was a lawyer for the Women's Health Collective and 350 plaintiffs in a similar lawsuit about abortion in New York.[20] Later activism[edit] After the 1971 rebellion at Attica Prison in New York State arose as a result of human rights abuse, the issue of solidarity arose between the black power movement and the feminist movement, often forcing activists to choose between the two. Kennedy addressed the discord that feminists had against those who supported both the black power movement and feminism by saying: "We do not support Attica. We ARE Attica. We are Attica or we are nothing."[21] In 1973 Kennedy co-founded with Margaret Sloan-Hunter the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO),[11] which also dealt with race and gender issues such as reproductive rights and sterilization campaigns that were aimed at specific races.[20] In 1973, to protest the lack of female bathrooms at Harvard University, women poured jars of fake urine on the steps of the University's Lowell Hall, a protest Kennedy thought of and participated in.[22] When asked about this, she said: I'm just a loud-mouthed middle-aged colored lady with a fused spine and three feet of intestines missing and a lot of people think I'm crazy. Maybe you do too, but I never stop to wonder why I'm not like other people. The mystery to me is why more people aren't like me.[3] In 1974, People magazine wrote that she was "The biggest, loudest and, indisputably, the rudest mouth on the battleground."[23] In 1977, Kennedy became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP).[24] WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media. A strong opponent of military and interventionist wars, especially the Vietnam War, Kennedy coined the term "Pentagonorrhea".

Melissa Harris-Perry

Melissa Victoria Harris-Perry (born October 2, 1973), formerly known as Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell, is an American writer, professor, television host, and political commentator with a focus on African-American politics. Harris-Perry hosted the Melissa Harris-Perry weekend news and opinion television show on MSNBC from 2012 to February 27, 2016.

M. Adams

For the second year in a row, the online nonprofit magazine, Madison365, published a "Black Power list" naming the most influential African-Americans in Wisconsin. One of the 44 names on the Black Power 2016 list is Freedom Inc. co-executive director M Adams. Adams' work with the Madison-based organization Freedom Inc., which centers around helping low-income communities of color. She said the grassroots nonprofit responds to community needs in part by creating programs specific to developing leadership skills. Freedom Inc. offers a range of programs. One program, People Like Us, aims to support and teach leadership skills for black and Hmong youth of color who identify as LGBT. Another is Freethinkers, a group for African-American young adults who want to educate themselves through reading and discussing literature specific to liberation, according to the nonprofit's website. While Adams described Freedom Inc. as a group that is "not resource rich" with the money to pull people out of economic challenges, she said the group's work cultivating leadership so people can take a systematic approach to help their own communities has gotten a positive response. She gave the example of people who worked with Freedom Inc. going on to create cooperatives and "alternative structures" they believe would be less hurtful to their communities. The nonprofit has become involved in local policy issues, everything form creating housing opportunities to developing space for urban gardening. But Adams also said beyond keeping track of policy, a key way to ensure Freedom Inc.'s goals are met is to ensure the continued development of leaders who will target issues that have been around for a long time. "Because these are long and deep-seated issues, it's going to take a movement to undo them. And the movement work is lifelong work," Adams said. Adams was a member of the first delegation to the White House for the LGBT Leaders of Color Summit, according to Madison365, and was a United States delegate to the United Nation's 2014 Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Other influential African-Americans named in this year's list have a range of professions and ages. University of Wisconsin-Madison's Men's Basketball forward Nigel Hayes, who has been outspoken about discrimination and racial injustice, was among the first to be named to the list. Another is Everett Mitchell, the third African-American judge in Dane County Circuit Court, according to Madison365

Frances E. W. Harper (September 24, 1825 - February 22, 1911)

Frances E.W. Harper was born in 1825 in Baltimore, Maryland. She was able to attend school as the daughter of free black parents. Her first poem collection, Forest Leaves, was published around 1845. The delivery of her public speech, "Education and the Elevation of the Colored Race," resulted in a two-year lecture tour for the Anti-Slavery Society. She died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1911.

Georgia Gilmore (February 5, 1920 - March 7, 1990)

Georgia Teresa Gilmore was an African-American woman from Montgomery, Alabama, who participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott through her fund-raising effort selling food at boycott mass meetings. Her grass-roots activism helped to sustain the long boycott and inspired similar groups to begin raising money.

bell hooks

Gloria Jean Watkins (born September 25, 1952), better known by her pen name bell hooks,[1] is an American author, professor, feminist, and social activist. The name "bell hooks" is borrowed from her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks.[2] The focus of hooks' writing has been the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she describes as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination. She has published more than 30 books and numerous scholarly articles, appeared in documentary films, and participated in public lectures. She has addressed race, class, and gender in education, art, history, sexuality, mass media, and feminism.[3] In 2014, she founded the bell hooks Institute at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky.[4]

Gloria Joseph

Gloria Joseph is an activist, author and Professor Emeritus of Africana Studies at Hampshire College. She has countered racism, sexism, homophobia and other social injustices for over sixty years. Her pedagogical style folds in arts, activism and scholarship and extends beyond academia to vocational and alternative venues of education, from elementary through university levels of instruction, counseling, community development and organizational management. Amongst the many works Gloria has authored are the novel, On Time and in Step: Reunion on the Glory Road (2008) and most recently, a bio-anthology of Audre Lorde titled The Wind is Spirit (2016). She has co-authored Common Differences: Conflicts in Black and White Feminist Perspectives (1981) and edited multiple anthologies including Hell Under God's Orders (1990). Gloria has founded and co-founded several organizations including the Che Lumumba School for Truth; Women's Coalition of St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands; Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa; and Doc Loc Apiary (Local Honey Production and Educational Outreach).

Holiday Simmons

Holiday Simmons, MSW is a Black Cherokee, transmasculine and two-spirit activist. With a background in Social Work, Education, and Performing Arts Activism, he has worked on frontlines of the Black trans rights movements, in social work case management, and has served on boards of community organizations. He is one of the founders and active members in the Solutions Not Punishments Coalition (SNaPCO), a Black trans-centered anti-police state collective, operating under the Racial Justice Action Center. He also works with the Southeast Two-Spirit Collective, a group of queer, trans, Indigenous people, and their allies. He is a proud Southerner based out of Atlanta, GA. 2018UNITED STATES, ACADEMY, LAW

Hortense Spillers

Hortense Spillers (born 1942) is an American literary critic, Black Feminist scholar and the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor at Vanderbilt University. A scholar of the African diaspora, Spillers is known for her essays on African-American literature, collected in Black, White, and In Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2003, and Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex, and Nationality in the Modern Text, a collection edited by Spillers published by Routledge in 1991.

Johnnetta B. Cole

In 1987, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, Ph.D., became Spelman College's seventh president and the first Black woman to lead the College that was founded specifically for the education of women of African descent.After a decade of service to Spelman, Dr. Cole remained in Atlanta while returning to the classroom at Emory University as the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Women's Studies and African-American Studies. In 2002, she became the president of Bennett College in North Carolina, the only other HBCU dedicated to educate Black women. She retired in 2007 and continued to serve as chair of the Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute in Atlanta. In 2009, she was named director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art, a position she currently holds. The recipient of more than 50 honorary degrees and numerous accolades, Dr. Cole has served on many boards including Home Depot and Merck. In 2004, Dr. Cole became the first African-American chair of the board of United Way of America. During her Spelman presidency, she was the first woman elected to serve on the board of Coca-Cola Enterprises. She currently chairs the board of the National Visionary Leadership Project and is on the Advisory Committee of America's Promise and the Points of Light Foundation. Dr. Cole is married to James D. Staton Jr., and has three sons, one step-son, and three grand children.

Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964)

In addition to working to advance African American educational opportunities, Cooper also established and co-founded several organizations to promote black civil rights causes. She helped found the Colored Women's League in 1892, and she joined the executive committee of the first Pan-African Conference in 1900.

Kimberle Crenshaw

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (born 1959) is an American lawyer, civil rights advocate, philosopher, and a leading scholar of critical race theory who developed the theory of intersectionality. She is a full-time professor at the UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School, where she specializes in race and gender issues.[1] Crenshaw is also the founder of Columbia Law School's Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies (CISPS) and the African American Policy Forum (AAPF), as well as the president of the Berlin-based Center for Intersectional Justice (CIJ).[2] Crenshaw is known for the introduction and development of intersectionality, the theory of how overlapping or intersecting social identities, particularly minority identities, relate to systems and structures of oppression, domination, or discrimination.[3] Her scholarship was also essential in the development of intersectional feminism which examines the overlapping systems of oppression and discrimination to which women are subject due to their ethnicity, sexuality and economic background.[4]

June Jordan (July 9, 1936-June 14, 2002)

June Jordan (1936 - 2002) was a poet, activist, journalist, essayist and teacher. Prolific and passionate, she was an influential voice who lived and wrote on the frontlines of American poetry, international political vision and human moral witness. The author of many award-winning books, she traveled widely to read her poems and to proclaim a vision of liberation for all people. Dynamic, rebellious, and courageous, June Jordan was, and still is, a lyrical catalyst for change.Born in Harlem in 1936, Jordan was the child of West Indian immigrant parents, who raised her in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, where she began writing poetry at the age of seven. In her teens, she attended the Northfield School for Girls in Massachusetts, and in 1953 enrolled at Barnard College, where she would earn her B.A. She was married in 1955, and divorced after having one child. Jordan was active in the civil rights, feminist, antiwar and gay and lesbian rights movements, even as she became known as a writer. In 1967, after running poetry workshops for children in Harlem, Jordan began her teaching career at the City College of New York. She taught at Yale University and Sarah Lawrence College, and became a professor of English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she directed The Poetry Center. In 1988, she was appointed professor of African-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she founded the influential poetry program Poetry For the People.June Jordan was the author of more than twenty-five major works of poetry, fiction and essays, as well as numerous children's books. Jordan wrote the librettos for the operas Bang Bang Uber Alles with music by Adrienne Torf, and I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, with music by John Adams; she wrote lyrics frequently for other musicians, as well as plays and musicals. Her journalism was published widely in magazines and newspapers around the world, and she was a regular columnist for The Progressive. An electrifying speaker, Jordan collected many of her most influential speeches and addresses in her books of essays.Jordan earned numerous honors and awards, including a 1969-1970 Rockefeller grant for creative writing, a Yaddo residency (1979), a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship (1982) and the Achievement Award for International Reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists (1984). Jordan also won the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writers Award (1995-1998), the Ground Breakers-Dream Makers Award from The Woman's Foundation (1994), the Chancellor's Distinguished Lectureship from the University of California at Berkeley, the PEN Center USA West Freedom to Write Award (1991) and a congressional citation for her outstanding contributions to literature, the progressive movement and the civil rights movement.

Linda Burnham

Linda Burnham is the Research Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. She is the co-author of Home Economics: The Invisible and Unregulated World of Domestic Work. Burnham was a leader in the Third World Women's Alliance, a national organization that was an early advocate for the rights of women of color. In 1990 she co-founded Women of Color Resource Center. She was its Executive Director for 18 years. Burnham led large delegations of women of color to the 1985 UN World Conference on Women in Nairobi, the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, and the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. Burnham has published numerous articles on African-American women, African-American politics, and feminist theory in a wide range of periodicals and anthologies. In 2005 Burnham was nominated as one of 1000 Peace Women for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2008 she was awarded the Twink Frey Social Activist Fellowship at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 2009 she edited and contributed to the anthology, Changing the Race: Racial Politics and the Election of Barack Obama. Her recent article, "1% Feminism," a response to Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In, was widely circulated. Linda Burnham is an American journalist, activist, and leader in women's rights movements, particularly with organizations and projects serving and advocating for women of color.

Loretta Ross

Loretta J. Ross is a Visiting Professor of Practice in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University teaching "Reproductive Justice Theory and Practice" and "Race and Culture in the U.S." for the 2018-2019 academic year. Previously, she was a Visiting Professor at Hampshire College in Women's Studies for the 2017-2018 academic year teaching "White Supremacy in the Age of Trump." She was a co-founder and the National Coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective from 2005-2012, a network founded in 1997 of women of color and allied organizations that organize women of color in the reproductive justice movement. She is one of the creators of the term "Reproductive Justice" coined by African American women in 1994 that has transformed reproductive politics in the U.S. She is a nationally-recognized trainer on using the transformative power of Reproductive Justice to build a Human Rights movement that includes everyone. Ms. Ross is an expert on women's issues, hate groups, racism and intolerance, human rights, and violence against women. Her work focuses on the intersectionality of social justice issues and how this affects social change and service delivery in all movements. Ross has appeared on CNN, BET, "Lead Story," "Good Morning America," "The Donahue Show," "Democracy Now," "Oprah Winfrey Radio Network," and "The Charlie Rose Show. She is a member of the Women's Media Center's Progressive Women's Voices. More information is available on the Makers: Women Who Make America video at http://www.makers.com/loretta-ross. Ms. Ross was National Co-Director of the April 25, 2004 March for Women's Lives in Washington D.C., the largest protest march in U.S. history with more than one million participants. As part of a nearly five-decade history in social justice activism, between 1996-2004, she was the Founder and Executive Director of the National Center for Human Rights Education (NCHRE) in Atlanta, Georgia. Before that, she was the Program Research Director at the Center for Democratic Renewal/National Anti-Klan Network where she led projects researching hate groups, and working against all forms of bigotry with universities, schools, and community groups. She launched the Women of Color Program for the National Organization for Women (NOW) in the 1980s, and led delegations of women of color to many international conferences on women's issues and human rights. She was one of the first African American women to direct a rape crisis center in the 1970s, launching her career by pioneering work on violence against women. She is a co-author of Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice, written with Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried, and Elena Gutiérrez, and published by South End Press in 2004 (awarded the Myers Outstanding Book Award by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights), and author of "The Color of Choice" chapter in Incite! Women of Color Against Violence published in 2006. She has also written extensively on the history of African American women and reproductive justice activism. Among her latest books are Reproductive Justice: An Introduction co-authored with Rickie Solinger and published by the University of California Press in 2017. She was the lead editor of Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundations, Theory, Practice and Critique, co-edited by Lynn Roberts, Erika Derkas, Whitney Peoples, and Pamela Bridgewater-Toure published by Feminist Press also in 2017. Her forthcoming book is entitled Calling In the Calling Out Culture to be published in 2019. Loretta is a rape survivor, was forced to raise a child born of incest, and she is also a survivor of sterilization abuse. She is a model of how to survive and thrive despite the traumas that disproportionately affect low-income women of color. She serves as a consultant for Smith College, collecting oral histories of feminists of color for the Sophia Smith Collection which also contains her personal archives (see https://www.smith.edu/library/libs/ssc/pwv/pwv-ross.html). She is a mother, grandmother and a great-grandmother. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and holds an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law degree awarded in 2003 from Arcadia University and a second honorary doctorate degree awarded from Smith College in 2013.

Lorraine Hansberry (May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965)

Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago on May 19, 1930, and was the youngest of four children. Her father was a real estate broker, and her mother a schoolteacher Her parents publicly fought discrimination against Black people. When Hansberry was a child, she and her family lived in a Black neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. During this era, segregation was still legal and widespread throughout the South. Northern states, including Hansberry's own Illinois, had no official policy of segregation, but they were generally self-segregated along racial and economic lines. Chicago was a striking example of a city carved into strictly racially divided neighborhoods. Hansberry's family became one of the first to move into a white neighborhood, but Hansberry still attended a segregated public school for Blacks. When neighbors struck at them with threats of violence and legal action, the Hansberrys defended themselves. Hansberry's father filed a lawsuit and successfully brought his case all the way to the Supreme Court. Hansberry initially attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before moving to New York City and transferring to the New School. She was involved in civil rights activism for her whole adult life, including working as a writer for the Freedom newspaper, alongside W.E.B. Du Bois. In addition to Black civil rights, Hansberry advocated for gay rights and was a vocal feminist. Although she was married to a man, it is widely believed that she was herself a lesbian. Hansberry wrote her most famous work, A Raisin in the Sun, in 1957. She was one of the first playwrights to create realistic portraits of African-American life. Arguably the first mainstream play to portray Black characters, themes, and conflicts in a natural and realistic manner, A Raisin in the Sun received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play of the Year. Hansberry was the youngest playwright, the fifth woman, and the only Black writer at that point to win the award. She used her new fame to help bring attention to the American Civil Rights Movement as well as African struggles for independence from colonialism. Her promising career was cut short when she died from cancer in 1965, at the age of thirty-four.

Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton, original name Thelma Lucille Sayles, (born June 27, 1936, Depew, New York, U.S.—died February 13, 2010, Baltimore, Maryland), American poet whose works examine family life, racism, and gender. Born of a family that was descended from slaves, she attended Howard University from 1953 to 1955 and graduated from Fredonia State Teachers College (now State University of New York College at Fredonia) in 1955. Three years later she married Fred James Clifton, and in 1969 her first book, a collection of poetry titled Good Times, was published. Clifton worked in state and federal government positions until 1971, when she became a writer in residence at Coppin State College in Baltimore, Maryland. Remaining at Coppin until 1974, she produced two further books of poetry, Good News About the Earth (1972) and An Ordinary Woman (1974). From 1982 to 1983 she was a visiting writer at Columbia University School of the Arts and at George Washington University. Thereafter she taught literature and creative writing at the University of California at Santa Cruz and then at St. Mary's College of Maryland. Clifton's later poetry collections include Next: New Poems (1987), Quilting: Poems 1987-1990 (1991), The Terrible Stories (1996), Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000 (2000), and Mercy (2004). Generations: A Memoir (1976) is a prose piece celebrating her origins, and Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980 (1987) collects some of her previously published verse. The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton: 1965-2010 (2012) aggregated much of her oeuvre, including a substantial number of unpublished poems. Clifton's many children's books, written expressly for an African American audience, include All Us Come Cross the Water (1973), Three Wishes (1976), and My Friend Jacob (1980). She also wrote an award-winning series of books featuring events in the life of Everett Anderson, a young black boy. These include Some of the Days of Everett Anderson (1970), Everett Anderson's Goodbye (1983), and One of the Problems of Everett Anderson (2001).

Mamie Till Mobley

Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley[a] (born Mamie Elizabeth Carthan; November 23, 1921 - January 6, 2003) was an American educator and activist. She was the mother of Emmett Till, who was murdered in Mississippi on August 28, 1955 at the age of 14, after allegedly offending a white cashier woman, Carolyn Bryant, at the grocery store. For her son's funeral in Chicago, Mamie Till insisted that the casket containing his body be left open, because, in her words, "I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby."[2] Born in Mississippi, Till-Mobley moved with her parents to the Chicago area during the Great Migration. After her son's murder she became an educator and activist in the Civil Rights Movement. Mamie's activism extended far beyond what she did in regards to her son's death. However, since her son's death became symbolic for many of the lynchings going on in the South during the mid-1950s, some history books only reference her in relation to him.[16] Following Emmett's death she continued working as an activist. A large part of her work centered around education. She worked throughout her life to help children living in poverty. Her activism in this field alone lasted over 40 years.[17] Specifically, she spent 23 years teaching in the Chicago public school system.[18] She also established a group called "The Emmett Till Players," which worked with school children outside of the classroom. The members learned and performed famous speeches by civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr.. The group still performs to this day.[18] She also spent a great deal of time contributing to knowledge production. She was frequently interviewed for documentary films and began working on a book which was later published after she died.[17] Additionally, she was a very sought-after speaker. Mamie began holding speaking engagements soon after Emmett died.[16] The NAACP even hired her to go on a speaking tour around the country and share what happened to Emmett to "overflowing crowds",[19] making it one of the most successful fundraising tours in NAACP history.[19] Despite the tour being a huge success, Mamie, and the NAACP quickly ended it due to a business dispute with executive secretary Roy Wilkins of the NAACP over payment for her being on tour.[18] Even without the support of the NAACP, Mamie continued to be an influential speaker throughout her entire life. Mamie did speaking engagements as late as 2000. She flew down to the South and gave testimony at her son's murder trial on his behalf.[16] At the time the case was prominent news and she utilized that publicity to speak about the violence of lynching.[16] Ever since Emmett's death she had a close relationship with many African-American media outlets. These media organizations were relatively new at the time of Emmett's murder yet she was able to enlist their support in her cause.[16] An important fixture of Mamie's activism was religion as she was a deeply religious person. Throughout her life she drew connections between what happened to Emmett and what happened to Christ.[16] These connections helped to establish Emmett as a martyr figure. Mamie was able to use her role as a mother to relate to other people, and gain support for her cause of racial justice.[16] A few years after Emmett's death, many female activists united around motherhood and defending children in a similar fashion. Women uniting around motherhood became a unifying force for other social movements like the Women's Movement in the 1960s and 1970s.[20]

Maria Stewart (1803 - December 17, 1879)

Maria Stewart was an essayist, lecturer, abolitionist and women's rights activist. She was the earliest known American woman to lecture in public on political issues. Stewart is known for four powerful speeches she delivered in Boston in the early 1830s - a time when no woman, black or white, dared to address an audience from a public platform.

Mariama Kaba

Mariame Kaba is an American activist and organizer who advocates for the abolition of the prison industrial complex, including all police[1].

Marsha P. Johnson (August 24, 1945 - July 6, 1992)

Marsha P. Johnson was an activist, self-identified drag queen, performer, and survivor. She was a prominent figure in the Stonewall uprising of 1969. Marsha went by "Black Marsha" before settling on Marsha P. Johnson. The "P" stood for "Pay It No Mind," which is what Marsha would say in response to questions about her gender. It is the consideration of who "Black Marsha" was that inspired The Marsha P. Johnson Institute. So much of our understanding of Marsha came from the accounts of people who did not look like or come from the same place as her. As transness is now more accessible to the world, introducing the Institute to BLACK trans people who are resisting, grappling with survival, and looking for community has become a clear need.

Mary Fields

Mary Fields (c. 1832-1914),[1][2] also known as Stagecoach Mary and Black Mary, was the first African-American female star route mail carrier in the United States.[3][4] She was not an employee of the United States Post Office; the Post Office Department did not hire or employ mail carriers for star routes but rather awarded star route contracts to persons who proposed the lowest qualified bids, and who in accordance with the Department's application process posted bonds and sureties to substantiate their ability to finance the route. Once a contract was obtained, the contractor could then drive the route themselves, sublet the route, or hire an experienced driver. Some individuals obtained multiple star route contracts and conducted the operations as a business.[3] Fields obtained the star route contract for the delivery of U.S. mail from Cascade, Montana, to Saint Peter's Mission in 1885. She drove the route for two four-year contracts: from 1895 to 1899 and from 1899 to 1903. Author Miantae Metcalf McConnell provided documentation discovered during her research about Mary Fields to the United States Postal Service Archives Historian in 2006. This enabled USPS to establish Mary Fields' contribution as the first African American female star route mail carrier in the United States.[

Rosa Parks (1913-2005)

NAACP leader in Montgomery, Alabama, who inaugurated that city's famous bus boycott in 1955 by refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white passenger. She became a living symbol of the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement and the cause of racial equality throughout her long life.Rosa Parks (1913—2005) helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955. Her actions inspired the leaders of the local black community to organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott began the day Parks was convicted of violating the segregation laws. Led by a young Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the boycott lasted more than a year—during which Parks not coincidentally lost her job—and ended only when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional. Over the next half-century, Parks became a nationally recognized symbol of dignity and strength in the struggle to end entrenched racial segregation.

Nikky Finney

Nikky Finney was born on the coast of South Carolina in 1957 to a family of politicians and activists. She began writing poetry as a young girl, during a childhood marked by the civil rights struggle, and subsequently attended Talladega College in Alabama. Finney is the author of the poetry collections Head Off & Split (TriQuarterly Books, 2011), winner of the 2011 National Book Award; The World Is Round (InnerLight Publishing, 2003); Rice (Sister Vision, 1995); and On Wings Made of Gauze (W. Morrow, 1985). As a photographer and performance artist, Finney worked to engage her political and artistic selves, before finding a unique fusion of the two in her poetry. She is deeply invested in the Black Arts movement, and is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets, a group of multiracial poets devoted to giving voice to the diversity of Appalachia. Finney is also on the Board of Cave Canem. In addition to the National Book Award, Finney has received a PEN American Open Book Award and the Benjamin Franklin Award for Poetry. She has taught at the University of Kentucky, is currently a professor at the University of South Carolina.

Octavia E. Butler

Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction author. A multiple recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, she became in 1995 the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. Butler was born in Pasadena, California. After her father died, she was raised by her widowed mother. Author Octavia E. Butler is known for blending science fiction with African-American spiritualism. Her novels include 'Patternmaster,' 'Kindred,' 'Dawn' and 'Parable of the Sower.

Olive Morris

Olive Elaine Morris (26 June 1952 - 12 July 1979) was a Jamaican-born British-based community leader and activist in the feminist, Black nationalist, and squatters' rights campaigns of the 1970s. Morris was a key organiser in the Black Women's Movement in the United Kingdom, co-founding the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent in London and support groups in Manchester. She joined the British Black Panthers and squatted 121 Railton Road in Brixton.

Zora Neale Hurston

On January 7, 1891, Zora Neale Hurston, novelist and folklorist, is born in Notasulga, Alabama. Although at the time of her death in 1960, Hurston had published more books than any other black woman in America, she was unable to capture a mainstream audience in her lifetime, and she died poor and alone in a welfare hotel. Today, she is seen as one of the most important black writers in American history. Eatonville, Fla., was an all-black town when Hurston was born. The daughter of a Baptist preacher, Hurston had little contact with white people until her mother's death in 1904, when Hurston was 13 years old. Until her teens, Hurston was largely sheltered from racism. A talented, energetic young women with a powerful desire to learn, she didn't finish high school but prepared herself for college and excelled at Howard University. In 1925, she moved to New York, where she became a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. High-spirited, outgoing, and witty, she became famous for her storytelling talents. She studied anthropology with a prominent professor at Barnard and received a fellowship to collect oral histories and folklore in her home state. She also studied voodoo in Haiti. In 1931, she collaborated with Langston Hughes on the play Mule Bone. Her first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine, featuring a central character based on her father, was published in 1934. Mules and Men, a collection of material from her research in oral folklore, was published in 1935 and became her bestselling work during her lifetime-but even so, it earned her only $943.75. In 1937, she published Their Eyes Were Watching God, the story of a black woman looking for love and happiness in the South. The book was criticized at the time, especially by black male writers, who condemned Hurston for not taking a political stand and demonstrating the ill effects of racism. Instead, the novel, now considered her masterwork, celebrated the rich tradition of the rural black South. Hurston's work remained uplifting and joyful despite her financial struggles. She published a memoir, Dust Tracks on a Road, in 1942. Hurston worked on and off as a maid near the end of her life, and she died in poverty in 1960. In the 1970s, her work, almost forgotten, was revived by feminist and black-studies scholars, and an anthology, I Love Myself When I Am Laughing...And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive, was published in 1979.

Paris Hatcher

Paris Hatcher is a Black, queer feminist in love with the South. With over 10 years of experience on the local, national, and international level, Paris has been working with leading organizations to amplify the leadership of marginalized communities, win public policy campaigns, and advance reproductive and sexual health and justice, gender justice and queer liberation. Notably, she co-founded and was the Executive Director of SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW, one of the leading reproductive health and justice organizations in the Southeast. Under her direction SPARK led successful advocacy campaigns, increased the participation of women of color, queer and trans youth of color, and young people in the political process, and worked with stakeholders to begin to shift the narrative about reproductive health and justice in the state of Georgia and in the Southeast. She completed her Masters of Arts in Africana Women's Studies at Clark Atlanta University with a research focus on Caribbean women's activism and social movements. Paris is a Board member of SONG (Southerners On New Ground), a founding Board member for the Groundswell Fund(2007-2012), a founding Steering Committee member for the Black Reproductive Justice Think Tank, and a bike magician with Red, Bike, and Green. When not grinding for justice, you can find Paris on her bike, on the farm, dancing, or with her fabulous family including her beloved Jack Russell Terrier, Audre.

Pat Parker (January 20, 1944 - June 19, 1989)

Pat Parker was born Patricia Cooks in Houston, Texas, on January 20, 1944. The daughter of a tire retreader and a domestic worker, she grew up in poverty. After graduating from high school in 1962, she moved to California and received a BA from Los Angeles City College and a graduate degree from San Francisco State College. She married twice in the 1960s, first to the playwright Ed Bullins and later to Robert F. Parker, from whom she was divorced in 1966.In the late 1960s, Parker began to identify as a lesbian, and she became actively involved in the civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights movements, occasionally reading her poetry at events. Along with the poet Judy Grahn and others, she developed a community around lesbian poetry readings on the West Coast. Parker said of this community, "It was like pioneering....We were talking to women about women, and, at the same time, letting women know that the experiences they were having were shared by other people." Parker was the author of five poetry collections: Jonestown and other madness (Firebrand Books, 1985), Movement in Black (Diana Press, 1978), Woman Slaughter (Diana Press, 1978), Pit Stop (Women's Press Collective, 1975), and Child of Myself (Women's Press Collective, 1972). Parker is known for her unflinching honesty in addressing issues of sex, race, motherhood, alcoholism, and violence. Audre Lorde called Parker's poetry "clean and sharp without ever being neat." Parker directed the Feminist Women's Health Center in Oakland, founded the Black Women's Revolutionary Council and the Women's Press Collective, and testified before the United Nations on the status of women. She died of breast cancer in June of 1989.

Pauli Murray (1910-1985)

Pauli Murray was a civil rights activist, a pioneering feminist, a labor organizer, a lawyer, an Episcopal priest, and a writer of nonfiction, memoir, and poetry. Born Anna Pauline Murray in Baltimore, she was raised by aunts and maternal grandparents. Her grandmother was born into slavery, the product of rape between her enslaved mother and her owner. Murray's mother died when Murray was just three years old; her father, committed to an asylum "for the Negro insane" for his symptoms of long-term typhoid fever, also died during Murray's childhood, beaten to death by a guard. Murray earned a BA from Hunter College and a JD from Howard Law School. The only woman in her class, she was valedictorian and awarded a prestigious Rosenwald fellowship for postgraduate study-only to be denied admission to her first choice, Harvard University, because of her gender. She earned a master's at the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, and became the first black woman to earn a PhD in juridical science from Yale Law School. She also earned a master's in divinity from the General Theological Seminary. Murray was the author of two autobiographies: Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family (1956) and Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage (1987), which received a Lillian Smith Book Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. As a legal scholar, she wrote The Constitution and Government of Ghana (1964), with Leslie Rubin, and States' Laws on Race and Color (1951), which Thurgood Marshall, then counsel of the NAACP and later a Supreme Court justice, called "the Bible for civil rights lawyers." She is also the author of a collection of poetry, Dark Testament, originally published in 1970 and reissued in 2018. Murray was a friend of Harlem Renaissance writers, including Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, and her articles, poems, and a serialized novel, Angel of the Desert, appeared in newspapers and anthologies such as Negro. Murray was a leader in the fight against racism and sexism and worked as a labor organizer. She was a founding member of the Congress for Racial Equality and the National Organization for Women. She laid the intellectual foundations for the civil rights and feminist movements, articulating arguments for dismantling the "separate but equal" doctrine that permitted racial segregation and for extending the Equal Protection clause to women, and she mounted legal challenges to discriminatory laws. She taught at the Ghana School of Law and Brandeis College, becoming the first person to teach African American and women's studies courses there. In her '60s, Murray was the first woman ordained as an Episcopal priest. She served as a priest for eight years. Murray was gender nonconforming, describing herself as "a girl who should have been a boy" and trying without success to obtain hormone therapy. Though she didn't like to characterize herself as a lesbian, she nevertheless had serious relationships with women, including a decades-long partnership with a woman named Irene Barlow. Murray died on July 1, 1985, of pancreatic cancer. Since her death, she has been named a saint by the Episcopal Church. Yale University announced her name would grace a new residential college, and her childhood home in North Carolina was named a National Treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation

Addie L. Wyatt (March 8, 1924 - March 28, 2012)

Rev. Addie L. Wyatt is one of the country's foremost labor union leaders, women's rights advocate and civil rights activist. She started working with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America in 1941 in Chicago and later became president of the local union-the first female to hold such a position. She went on to become the first woman to be elected an International Vice President of Amalgamated. Wyatt's contributions not only helped that union to become more progressive, but also helped open the way for redefining women's roles within the general labor movement. Rev. Wyatt became an ordained minister in 1955. In 1956, she and her husband Rev. Claude S. Wyatt founded the Vernon Park Church of God in Chicago. From 1956 to 1968, she joined Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in major civil rights marches, including the March on Washington, the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and the demonstration in Chicago. During this period, Wyatt also became director of the Women's Affairs and Human Rights departments in the Amalgamated Meat Cutters. Her successful leadership of that department led Eleanor Roosevelt to appoint her to serve on the Labor Legislation Committee of the Commission on the Status of Women in the early 1960s. In 1974, Rev. Wyatt was one of the founders of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), the country's only national organization for union women. She is also a founding member of the National Organization of Women (NOW). As the oldest girl of eight children, Addie took care of her seven siblings while her mother Maggie Cameron worked. Rev. Wyatt credits her mother with instilling in her empathy and a sense of responsibility for others. In 1984, Rev. Wyatt retired as Vice President of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Her honors include being named one of Time Magazine's Women of the Year in 1975; and one of Ebony Magazine's 100 most influential black Americans from 1980 to 1984. In 1987, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists established the Addie L. Wyatt Award.

Ruby Dee

Ruby Dee (born Ruby Ann Wallace; October 27, 1922 - June 11, 2014) was an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and civil rights activist.[1] She is perhaps best known for originating the role of "Ruth Younger" in the stage and film versions of A Raisin in the Sun (1961). Her other notable film roles include The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) and Do the Right Thing (1989). Dee was married to Ossie Davis, with whom she frequently performed until his death in 2005.[2]

Shana Griffin

Shana M. griffin is a feminist activist, independent researcher, applied sociologist, artist, and geographer. Her practice is interdisciplinary and undisciplinary, working across the fields of sociology, geography, land-use planning, and socially engaged art and within movements challenging urban displacement, carcerality, reproductive control, and gender-based violence. Shana engages in research, organizing projects, and art practices that attend to the lived experiences of the black Diaspora—centering the particular experiences of black women most vulnerable to the violence of poverty, incarceration, polluted environments, reproductive legislation, economic exploitation, and housing discrimination. Shana is the Associate Director of Antenna, a multidisciplinary visual and literary arts organization; founder of PUNCTUATE, a recently established feminist research, art, and activist initiative foregrounding the embodied aesthetics and practices of black feminist epistemological to address the intersecting forms of everyday violence and subjectivity black women, their families, and communities experience; creator of DISPLACED, a multimedia and public history project that chronicles the institutionalization of spatial residential segregation through the violence of racial slavery and displacement in New Orleans, and founder of Assemblage, a pop-up and online collection of feminist-inspired t-shirts, totes, prints, books, vintage wares, and textiles. Shana holds a Master's of Arts in Sociology and two Bachelors of Arts degrees in History and Sociology.

Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005)

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was the first African American woman in Congress (1968) and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties (1972). Her motto and title of her autobiography—Unbossed and Unbought—illustrated her outspoken advocacy for women and minorities during her seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Rosetta Tharpe

Sister Rosetta Tharpe (March 20, 1915 - October 9, 1973) was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and recording artist. She attained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and rhythmic accompaniment that was a precursor of rock and roll. She was the first great recording star of gospel music and among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll".[1][2][3][4] She influenced early rock-and-roll musicians, including Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.[5][6][7] Tharpe was a pioneer in her guitar technique; she was among the first popular recording artists to use heavy distortion on her electric guitar, presaging the rise of electric blues. Her guitar playing technique had a profound influence on the development of British blues in the 1960s; in particular a European tour with Muddy Waters in 1964 with a stop in Manchester on 7 May is cited by prominent British guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards.[8] Willing to cross the line between sacred and secular by performing her music of "light" in the "darkness" of nightclubs and concert halls with big bands behind her, Tharpe pushed spiritual music into the mainstream and helped pioneer the rise of pop-gospel, beginning in 1938 with the recording "Rock Me" and with her 1939 hit "This Train".[1][5] Her unique music left a lasting mark on more conventional gospel artists such as Ira Tucker, Sr., of the Dixie Hummingbirds. While she offended some conservative churchgoers with her forays into the pop world, she never left gospel music. Tharpe's 1944 release "Down by the Riverside" was selected for the National Recording Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress in 2004, which noted that it "captures her spirited guitar playing and unique vocal style, demonstrating clearly her influence on early rhythm-and-blues performers" and cited her influence on "many gospel, jazz, and rock artists".[9] ("Down by the Riverside" was recorded by Tharpe on December 2, 1948, in New York City, and issued as Decca single 48106.[10]) Her 1945 hit "Strange Things Happening Every Day", recorded in late 1944, featured Tharpe's vocals and electric guitar, with Sammy Price (piano), bass and drums. It was the first gospel record to cross over, hitting no. 2 on the Billboard "race records" chart, the term then used for what later became the R&B chart, in April 1945.[1][11] The recording has been cited as a precursor of rock and roll.[6] On December 13, 2017, Tharpe was chosen for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an Early Influence.

Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press

Smith to co-found Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press along with Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, Hattie Gossett, June Jordan, Cherríe Moraga, and Susan L. Yung. The press' name was chosen because, as Smith explained: "the kitchen is the center of the home, the place where women in particular work and communicate with each other." As the first publisher in the United States for women of color, Kitchen Table also foregrounded the voices of lesbian and queer women in landmark anthologies Going beyond the theory and practice of black feminism, as articulated in the Combahee River Collective Statement, the press worked to build coalitions between women of various ethnicities and sexualities in response to the racial and and sexual exclusions of mainstream social justice movements. Smith to co-found Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press along with Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, Hattie Gossett, June Jordan, Cherríe Moraga, and Susan L. Yung. The press' name was chosen because, as Smith explained: "the kitchen is the center of the home, the place where women in particular work and communicate with each other." As the first publisher in the United States for women of color, Kitchen Table also foregrounded the voices of lesbian and queer women in landmark anthologies such as Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, edited by Smith, and This Bridge Called My Back: Writing by Radical Women of Color, edited by Anzaldúa and Moraga. Going beyond the theory and practice of black feminism, as articulated in the Combahee River Collective Statement, the press worked to build coalitions between women of various ethnicities and sexualities in response to the racial and and sexual exclusions of mainstream social justice movements. Though Kitchen Table disbanded in 1992 following Audre Lorde's untimely death from cancer, the legacy of the press continues through the changes it inspired in the mainstream publishing industry. Kitchen Table brought the work of women of color, many of whom were also lesbian or queer, to the forefront of American literature, and large publishing houses began to publish the work of writers such as Louise Erdrich, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, and Alice Walker. Following her mother's wishes, Barbara Smith used her knowledge to radically change the way we think about black women's oppression, in particular, and the practice of social justice, in general. She has also been critical of the the extent to which the mainstream LGBTQ Rights Movement has strayed from its revolutionary roots, has excluded the concerns of LGBTQ people of color, and has shied away from working for long-term systemic change.

Summer Lee

Summer L. Lee (born November 26, 1987)[1] is a lawyer, a community organizer, and the Democratic representative for the 34th district of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.[2] A member of the Democratic Socialists of America, she defeated incumbent Democratic representative Paul Costa in the 2018 Democratic primary election with over 67% of the vote.[3] On January 1, 2019, Lee became the first black woman to represent Southwestern Pennsylvania in the state legislature.[2] Lee was raised in North Braddock, Pennsylvania and attended Woodland Hills High School. She graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 2009 and earned a Juris Doctor from the Howard University School of Law in 2015.[1][4][5]

Patricia Hill Collins

The American sociologist Patricia Hill Collins, in her book Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (1990), proposed a form of standpoint theory that emphasized the perspective of African American women. Collins argued that the matrix of oppression—an interlocking system of race, gender, and class oppression and privilege—has given African American women a distinctive point of view from which to understand their marginalized status. She showed how African American women have been oppressed by the economic exploitation of their labour, the political denial of their rights, and the use of controlling cultural images that create damaging stereotypes, and she suggested that African American women can contribute something special to feminist scholarship. Collins called for inclusive scholarship that rejects knowledge that dehumanizes and objectifies people. To address critiques that standpoint theory is essentialist in its implicit claim that there is a universal women's standpoint, standpoint theorists have focused on the political aspects of social position by emphasizing a feminist rather than a women's standpoint. Other work has also been careful not to lump women together and has extended Collins's perspective to embrace the diverse standpoints of many marginalized groups (categories of race and ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, age, physical ability, nationality, and citizenship status). American sociologist Patricia Hill Collins characterized the features of "Black feminist epistemology" as "lived experience as a criterion of meaning." She argued that among many black women, personal experience was treated as being more epistemologically valuable than science or theory because it was based on immediate reality.

Thenjiwe Mettarris

Thenjiwe McHarris has spent her entire political and professional career challenging the injustices that imprison people and their communities in a life of poverty or behind bars. That commitment has led her to campaign on human rights issues in the United States and around the world. She honed her human rights campaign development and organizing skills at the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund and Amnesty International USA. From working to prevent the execution of Troy Anthony Davis, to launching an economic and social rights campaign in South Africa, to helping lead high profile mobilizations around the country, she has become a highly skilled campaigner for social justice and human rights.Thenjiwe began her political career calling for an end to policies and practices that contributed to acts of torture committed by law enforcement. She went on to help organize efforts that addressed the human rights violations that occurred during and after Hurricanes Katrina & Rita. In 2009, she joined Amnesty International where she worked on a number of campaigns including those that addressed the illicit and illegal trafficking of small arms, solitary confinement, capital punishment, excessive use of force by law enforcement, and poverty. Thenjiwe has worked with a number of social justice organizations and movements in the US and is helping to establish a global activist collective for organizers engaged in movement building work around the world.

Vel Phillips (February 18, 1923 - April 17, 2018)

Vel Phillips is one of the most prominent and accomplished figures of Milwaukee's African American community. Phillips was born in Milwaukee on February 18, 1924. She graduated from Milwaukee's North Division High School and then from Howard University in Washington D.C. She returned to Wisconsin to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School and received her law degree in 1951. In 1956, at the age of 32, she became the first African American and first woman elected to Milwaukee's Common Council. In 1962, she introduced the Phillips Housing Ordinance-a bill that outlawed housing discrimination-to her peers in the Common Council. The bill, however, was defeated 18-1 with only her vote in favor. Between the years of 1963 and 1967, Phillips would reintroduce the fair housing bill three additional times, only to have it defeated each time. In 1967, she and the Milwaukee NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Youth Council joined forces in an effort to rally for the passing of an open housing bill. In an effort to dramatize the open housing issue, the Youth Council staged marches across the 16th Street bridge to the South Side of the city. Although she favored legal action over direct action, Phillips made it a priority to march along with the Youth Council on the second day of the open housing marches. She was also arrested a few days later for allegedly violating Mayor Maier's 30-day ban on marches and demonstrations. The Youth Council once again teamed up with Vel Phillips for its 1968 campaign against the Allen-Bradley Company's discriminatory hiring policy. Although she did not march in the campaign, Phillips did assist the Youth Council in negotiating with the company's officials and representatives. A few years later, in 1971, Governor Patrick Lucey appointed Phillips to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, making her Wisconsin's first African American judge. In 1978, she once again made history when she became the first African American to be elected as secretary of state. Phillips is still a committed activist and resides in Milwaukee. EM

Wangari Maathai

Wangarĩ Muta Maathai (/wænˈɡɑːri mɑːˈtaɪ/; 1 April 1940 - 25 September 2011) was a renowned Kenyan social, environmental and political activist and the first African woman to win the Nobel Prize.[1] She earned a Bachelor's Degree in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica (Benedictine College), her Master's Degree at the University of Pittsburgh, and went on to become the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a PhD, at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement,[2] an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 1984, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "converting the Kenyan ecological debate into mass action for reforestation." Maathai was an elected member of Parliament and served as assistant minister for Environment and Natural resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki between January 2003 and November 2005. She was an Honorary Councillor of the World Future Council. She was affiliated to professional bodies and received several awards.[3] On Sunday, 25 September 2011, Maathai died of complications from ovarian cancer.

Daisy Bates

When Daisy Bates was three years old her mother was killed by three white men. Although Bates, was just a child, her biological mother's death made an emotional and mental imprint on her. The unfortunate death forced Bates to confront racism at an early age and pushed her to dedicate her life to ending racial injustice. Daisy Bates was born in Huttig, Arkansas in 1914 and raised in a foster home. When she was fifteen, she met her future husband and began travelling with him throughout the South. The couple settled in Little Rock, Arkansas and started their own newspaper. The Arkansas Weekly was one of the only African American newspapers solely dedicated to the Civil Rights Movement. The paper was circulated state wide. Bates not only worked as an editor, but also regularly contributed articles. Naturally, Bates also worked with local Civil Rights organizations. For many years, she served as the President of the Arkansas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Her work with the NAACP not only transformed the Civil Rights Movement but it also made Bates a household name. In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled segregated schools unconstitutional. After the ruling Bates began gathering African American students to enroll at all white schools. Often the white schools refused to let black students attend. Bates used her newspaper to publicize the schools who did follow the federal mandate. Despite the continuous rejection from many Arkansas public schools, she pushed forward. When the national NAACP office started to focus on Arkansas' schools, they looked to Bates to plan the strategy. She took the reins and organized the Little Rock Nine. Bates selected nine students to integrate Central High School in Little Rock in 1957. She regularly drove the students to school and worked tirelessly to ensure they were protected from violent crowds. She also advised the group and even joined the school's parent organization. Due to Bates' role in the integration, she was often a target for intimidation. Rocks were thrown into her home several times and she received bullet shells in the mail. The threats forced the Bates family to shut down their newspaper. After the success of the Little Rock Nine, Bates continued to work on improving the status of African Americans in the South. Her influential work with school integration brought her national recognition. In 1962, she published her memoirs, The Long Shadow of Little Rock. Eventually, the book would win an American Book Award. Bates was invited to sit on the stage during the program at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. Due to a last-minute change, Bates was invited to speak at the march. In 1968, Bates moved to Mitchellville, Arkansas. The majority black town was impoverished and lacked economic resources. When Bates arrived, she used her organizational skills to pull together residents and improve the community. Bates died on November 4th, 1999. For her work, the state of Arkansas proclaimed the third Monday in February, Daisy Gatson Bates Day. She was posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1999.

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955)

Writer and educator, and daughter of former slaves, she was a champion of humanitarian causes and an advocate of civil rights and education for Blacks. Among her accomplishments were establishing Florida's Bethune-Cookman College and serving as Director of the Division of Negro Affairs in the National Youth Administration during Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency, at that the highest position ever held in government by a black woman.

Nannie Helen Burroughs (May 2, 1879 - May 20, 1961)

believed women should have the opportunity to receive an education and job training. She wrote about the need for black and white women to work together to achieve the right to vote. She believed suffrage for African American women was crucial to protect their interests in an often discriminatory society.

Johnnie Tillmon

was a welfare rights activist. In 1963 she became ill and was encouraged to begin receiving welfare.[1] Seeing how people on welfare were treated, she organized those on welfare in the housing project, and in 1963 founded ANC (Aid to Needy Children) Mothers Anonymous, which was one of the first grassroots welfare mothers' organizations.[1] This organization later became part of the National Welfare Rights Organization.[1] Tillmon became the first chair of the NWRO.[4] In 1972 she became its executive director when George Wiley resigned.[1] Wiley had been trying to mobilize the working poor, she was not ever a feminist[1] Tillmon's 1972 essay, "Welfare Is a Woman's Issue," which was published in Ms., emphasized women's right to adequate income, regardless of whether they worked in a factory or at home raising children.[5] The funding for the NWRO had gone down by the time Tillmon became the executive director, and the NWRO ended in bankruptcy in March 1975; however, Tillmon continued fighting for welfare rights at the state and local levels.[1][6] The National Union of the Homeless used what was called a "Johnnie Tillmon model" of organizing, named after her.[7