Eartha Kitt was an American actress, singer, cabaret star, dancer, stand-up comedian, activist and voice artist. She had a distinctive singing style and is best known for her Christmas song “Santa Baby” and for playing Catwoman in the television series Batman. Kitt was born in 1927 near the town of North in South Carolina. Her …
Viola Desmond was a Black Nova Scotian businesswoman who challenged racial segregation at a film theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia in 1946. Her actions sparked the modern civil rights movement in Canada. Desmond was born Viola Davis in 1914 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her parents, James Albert and Gwendolin Irene were active in the …
Octavia E. Butler was a world renowned African-American science fiction novelist and the first African-American woman to gain popularity and critical acclaim as a major science fiction writer. Her novels include Patternmaster, Kindred, Dawn and Parable of the Sower. Butler was born in 1947 in Pasadena, California. Her father died at an early age, and …
Pauli Murray was an American civil rights activist, women’s rights activist, lawyer and author. She was the first woman to be awarded a J.D.S degree from Yale and the first black woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. She also co-founded NOW, the National Organization for Women. Murray was born in 1910 in Baltimore, …
Mary McLeod Bethune was an educator and activist known as “The First Lady of The Struggle” due of her commitment to gain better lives for African Americans. She founded the National Council of Negro Women and served as president of the National Association of Colored Women. Bethune was born Mary Jane McLeod in 1875 near …
Mary Seacole was a Jamaican-born nurse who helped soldiers during the Crimean War by setting up a “British Hotel” behind the lines for sick and convalescent officers. She was posthumously awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit in 1991. Seacole was born Mary Grant in 1805 in Kingston, Jamaica. She was of Scottish and Creole descent …
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an award-winning Nigerian novelist, nonfiction writer and short story writer. She is best known for her novels, Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah and her inspirational 2012 TEDx talk entitled “We should all be feminists” which was adapted into a book-length essay in 2014. Adichie was born in …
Kimberlé Crenshaw is an American scholar in the field of critical race theory, and a professor at UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School. She is a leading authority in the areas of Civil Rights, Black feminist legal theory, and race, racism and the law and a co-founder and executive director of the African …
Bessie “Queen Bess” Coleman was a pioneer in the field of aviation. She was the first black female pilot, the first black woman to earn an international pilot’s license and the first black woman to fly a plane in a public airshow in the U.S. Coleman was born in 1892 in Atlanta, Texas to sharecroppers …
Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author. She is considered one of the pre-eminent writers of twentieth-century African-American literature and was closely associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston was born in 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama. At the age of three, her family moved to Eatonville Florida, one of the first incorporated black …