Ida B Wells was an American journalist, suffragist, sociologist and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement. Wells was born a slave in Mississipi in 1862. Six months after her birth slaves were decreed free by the Union thanks to the Emancipation Proclamation. Wells faced racial prejudice and discriminatory rules because of her race. …
Billie Holiday was a hugely influential American jazz musician and singer-songwriter. Holiday (real name Eleanora Fagan) had a difficult childhood, her mother Sadie Fagan worked “transportation jobs”, serving on passenger railroads which meant that Holiday was left with family for most of the time. Holiday frequently skipped school and her truancy led to her being …
Madam C.J Walker was a civil rights activist, philanthropist and entrepreneur. She was named “the first black woman millionaire in America” for her successful line of hair care products. Walker was the first free child born to her parents Owen and Minerva Anderson Breedlove (her birth name is Sarah Breedlove). She was born on a …
Angela Davis is an American academic, Civil Rights Activist, scholar and Women’s Rights Activist who advocates for the oppressed. Davis’ political activism began when she was a child in Birmingham, Alabama. She lived in the “Dynamite Hill” neighbourhood, which was marked by racial conflict and experienced racial prejudice and discrimination. As a teenager she organised …
Amelia Boynton Robinson was an American activist who was a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement in Selma, Alabama and a key figure in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. She was also the first black woman to run for Congress in Alabama. Robinson began her interest in activism at nine years old when …
Barbara Jordan was the first black woman elected to the Texas state senate and the first black Texan in Congress. Jordan had been inspired to become an attorney by a talk by Edith Sampson, a black lawyer who gave a talk at Phyllis Wheatley High School, which was segregated. Jordan was a member of the …
Dr. Marie Maynard Daly was the first black woman to earn a Ph.D. in Chemistry. Daly was brought up in a family that valued education, her father had emigrated from the West Indies and enrolled at Cornell University to study chemistry, unfortunately he had to drop out due to a lack of money. Daly attended …
Rosa Parks was an African-American Civil Rights activist. She became the catalyst for the Civil Rights movement when she refused to move from her seat on the segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks was brought up in a family that bore the scars of slavery, her grandparents were former slaves and advocates for racial equality. …
Claudette Colvin was a pioneer of the Civil Rights movement. She was the first to refuse to give up her seat to a white person on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Nine months before Rosa Parks. Colvin was 15 years old when riding the bus home from school when the conductor ordered her to give …
Sister Rosetta Tharpe was the ‘godmother of rock ‘n’ roll’. She was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and recording artist. Tharpe’s mother encouraged her musically and by 4 years old she was performing under the name ‘Little Rosetta Nubin’ (Rosetta Nubin is her birth name). She would sing and play guitar. At six Tharpe was …