Ntozake Shange is an American playwright and poet best known for the Obie Award-winning play for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. She is a self-proclaimed black feminist, and her work frequently addresses race and feminism. Shange was born Paulette L. Williams in 1948 in Trenton, New Jersey, where …
Dorothy Height was an American civil rights and women’s rights activist who served as president of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) for four decades. She is known as the “godmother of the women’s movement.” Height was born in 1912 in Richmond Virginia. At the age of 4, her family moved to Rankin, Pa, …
Fannie Lou Hamer was an American voting rights activist, civil rights leader, and philanthropist. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi’s Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and served as vice-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Hamer was born in 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi. Two years later, her family moved to …
Gwendolyn Brooks was an American poet and teacher. She was the first black author to win a Pulitzer prize, the first black woman to become poetry consultant to the Library of Congress and the Poet Laureate of Illinois from 1968 until her death. Brooks was born in 1917 in Topeka, Kansas to David Anderson and …
Ella Baker was an African-American civil rights and human rights activist who worked with the NAACP and co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Baker was born in 1903 in Norfolk, Virginia and grew up in North Carolina. Her grandmother would tell her stories about …
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the current President of Liberia. She is the first elected female head of state in Africa as well as the world’s first elected black female president. In 2011 she was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for her non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full …
Georgia Douglas Johnson was an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance and the first modern African-American female poet and playwright to gain widespread recognition. Johnson was born in 1877 in Atlanta, Georgia to parents of mixed ancestry including african and native american on her mother, Laura Jackson Camp’s side, and african-american and english heritage on …
Wangari Maathai was a Kenyan environmental and political activist who founded the Green Belt Movement, an organisation fighting to conserve the environment and campaign for women’s rights. She was the first African women to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for “her holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights, and women’s rights in …
Miriam Makeba was a South African singer and civil rights activist also known as “Mama Africa” and the “Empress of African Song”. She introduced Xhosa and Zulu songs to Western audiences, becoming one of the world’s most prominent black African performers in the 20th century. She is best known for the songs “Pata Pata,” “The …
Bridget “Biddy” Mason was an African-American nurse, real estate entrepreneur and philanthropist. She was able to support her extended family for generations due to her financial success. Mason was born into slavery in 1818 in Mississippi. She was named Bridget and given no last name. Mason was owned by slaveholders in Georgia and South Carolina …