Hattie McDaniel was an American actress, singer-songwriter and comedienne. She is best known for playing Mammy in Gone with the Wind, for which she became the first African American to win an Oscar. McDaniel was born in 1895 in Wichita, Kansas to Henry McDaniel, who had fought in the Civil War and Susan Holbert, who …
Lena Horne was an American singer, dancer, actress and civil rights activist. She was one of the most popular African American entertainers of the twentieth century and best known for films such as The Wiz and her trademark song, “Stormy Weather.” Horne was born in 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. Her mother, Edna, was an …
Black History Month is coming to a close & in this post I’ve compiled a list of all of the amazing women I’ve illustrated for Black History Month, along with a summary of their accomplishments and a link to the original post. This has been the most successful month to date for Illustrated Women in …
Daisy Bates was an American journalist and civil rights activist who is best known for playing a leading role in the Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957. Bates was born in 1914 in Huttig, Arkansas. Bates was adopted as a baby after her mother was murdered when attempting to resist being raped by three white …
Mary Eliza Mahoney was the first black professional nurse in the U.S. She co-founded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN), which worked to eliminate racial discrimination within the registered nursing profession. Mahoney was born in 1845 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents were freed slaves, who had moved north from Carolina before the Civil …
Margaret Ekpo was a Nigerian women’s rights activist, social mobiliser and pioneering female politician in Nigeria’s First Republic. Ekpo was born in 1914 in Creek Town, Cross River State Okoroafor Obiasulor, a native of Agulu-Uzo-Igbo near Awka in Anambra State and Inyang Eyo Aniemewue, who was from the family of King Eyo Honesty II, of …
Alice Walker is an American novelist, story story writer, poet and civil rights activist. She is best known for her critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Walker was born in 1944 in Putnam County, Georgia. Walker lived under Jim Crow Laws, but her parents refused to …
Ethel L. Payne was an African-American journalist, publisher, civil rights leader, and educator known as the “First Lady of the Black Press”. Payne was born in 1911 in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in Englewood, which was a black community surrounded by white neighbourhoods. Payne’s father died when she was 12, and her mother was …
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, …