Toni Morrison was a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist. She was the first Black Woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in 1931 in Lorain, Ohio to George and Ramah Wofford. Her parents had moved to Ohio to escape southern racism and taught their children about …
bell hooks is an American author, feminist, and social activist whose work deals with issues of race, gender, class, and sexual oppression. hooks was born Gloria Jean Watkins in 1952, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, a small, segregated town in rural Kentucky. Her experience in growing up within this community shaped her feminism and her father represented …
Sojourner Truth was an African-American abolitionist and women’s rights activist. Truth was born Isabella Baumfree around 1797 to James and Elizabeth Baumfree in the town of Swartekill, in Ulster County, New York. Her father was a slave who had been captured in modern-day Ghana and her mother was the daughter of slaves from Guinea. The …
Marian Anderson was an American singer and one of the finest contraltos of her time. She became the first African American to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1955 and an important figure in the struggle for black artists to overcome racial prejudice in the United States. Anderson was born in South Philadelphia …
Michelle Obama is the 44th first lady of the United States. She is a writer and an advocate for poverty awareness, nutrition, physical activity and healthy eating. Obama was born Michelle LaVaughn Robinson in 1964 in Chicago, Illinois. She was pushed to succeed in school and skipped the second grade. She was chosen for a …
Laverne Cox is an American emmy-nominated actress and the first trans woman of colour to have a leading role on a mainstream scripted television show. She is an advocate for the transgender community and was honored by GLAAD with its Stephen F. Kolzak Award for her work. Cox was born in Mobile, Alabama and raised …
Mary Fields (also known as Stagecoach Mary and Black Mary) was the first African-American woman employed as a mail carrier in the United States. She was the second woman to work for the United States Postal Service. Fields was born a slave in Hickman County, Tennessee around 1832. When American slavery was outlawed in 1865 …
Claudia Jones was a feminist, black nationalist, political activist, community leader, communist and journalist. She is the founder of Britain’s first black weekly newspaper “The West Indian Gazette” and has been described as the mother of the Notting Hill Carnival. Jones was born Claudia Vera Cumberbatch in Belmont, Port of Spain, Trinidad in 1915. At …
Marie Laveau was a Louisiana Creole practitioner of Voodoo. She is known as the ‘Voodoo Queen of New Orleans’. The history of Laveau is not certain, she is thought to have been born to a rich Creole plantation owner, Charles Laveau and his mistress Marguerite on a plantation on the outskirts of New Orleans. She …
Lady Bo was an American musician and a pioneer of rock ‘n’ roll. She was one of the first female rock guitarists in a highly visible rock band and the “Queen Mother of Guitar”. Lady Bo was born Peggy Jones in Harlem, New York City. She attended Manhattan’s High School for the Performing Arts where …