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 …
Grace Lee Boggs was an American author, social activist, philosopher and feminist. She fought relentlessly for civil rights, feminism and labor for seven decades and was hugely influential in bringing about social change in Detroit. Boggs (born Grace Chin Lee or Yuk Ping (玉平) to use her Chinese name) was born in Providence, Rhode Island …
Barbara Brenner was a renowned American breast cancer activist and leader of the Breast Cancer Action organisation. Brenner’s activism started at a young age when her mother took her to a Civil Rights march when she was 10 where she heard Martin Luther King, Jr speak. While at Smith College she was active in the …
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She is the second female justice and the first Jewish female justice. Ginsburg graduated with a bachelor’s degree in government from Cornell University in 1954. In 1956 she enrolled at Harvard Law School, she was one of nine women in …
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 …
Nina Simone was an American singer, songwriter, pianist and civil rights activist. Simone started playing piano by ear when she was 3 years old. She played piano in her mother’s church and soon began to study classical music with an Englishwoman called Muriel Mazzanovich. She developed a love of Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. …
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 …
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. …