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Performing Arts: Katherine Dunham (1910 - ), internationally acclaimed choreographer and dancer, first African- American commissioned by the Met _Aida_for 1963-1964 season ).
Ruby Dee(1923- ) film star and Shakespearean actress, who debuted 1951 in _The Jackie Robinson Story _as his wife, was the first African American woman to play a major classical role, (1965) Kate in _Taming of the Shrew_. She later played Cordelia in _King Lear_ and won an 1991 Emmy for her role in _Decoration Day_ a Hallmark Hall of Fame tv presentation.
Politicians: Barbara Jordon (1936 - ), beloved by members of all political parties for her decency in the heat of battle, advocate for the poor, minorities, and women, retired from Congress as a Representative from Texas (D, 1973-1978)
Rags-to-Riches; Self-Made Women: Biddy Mason (1818-1891) this former slave acquired property after the Civil War to become a wealthy landowner.
Madame C. J. Walker (1867-1919), first African-American woman millionaire, she developed beauty products for black women. She became a major employer of black women.
Singers and Musicians: Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield (1809-1876), "The Black Swan", diva with a 3 1/2 octaves range was self-taught since no white woman would teach her. She debuted at the Met in 1853 and had a command performance for Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace in 1854.
Marian Anderson (1902-1993) diva, was first black to sing with the Metropolitan Opera (Ulrica in Verdi's _A Masked Ball_, 1955). The famed conductor Arturo Toscanini called her voice a phenomenon heard "once in a hundred years".
Honorable mentions:
Social Activists: Susie King Taylor (1848-1912) this "black Clara Barton" organized African American women, including Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, to care for sick and wounded black soldiers in the Civil War.
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (1964) challenging the all-white Mississippi delegation to the national Democratic Party convention in 1964 thereby helping to make the vote a reality for African Americans.
Honorable mentions:
Sports: Althea Gibson, the first African American to compete at Wimbleton (1950), was also first African American to win at Wimbleton (1957).
Alice Coachman (1926 - ) was the first African American woman Olympic Gold Medalist (1948 high jump)
Now, my favorite category, writers: Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931), former slave, a journalist of such renown that she was elected an officer of the Colored Press Association in 1887, 1/3 owner of Memphis _Free Speech_ and Highlight, used editorial position to voice fierce opponent to the erosion of black men's rights. A leader in anti-lynching crusade, she used the paper to document lynching throughout the country, was an anti-discrimination activist, a founding member of the National Association of Colored Women and the NAACP. Politically closer to Langston Hughes, Marcus Garvey, and W.E.B. DuBois than to Booker T. Washington, she spoke out, often for men, during the worst of the Jim Crow era - a true heroine.
Toni Morrison (1931- ) 1987 Pulitizer Prize winner, 1993 Nobel Prize winner (Literature), is best known for _Beloved_ (1987).
Miscellaneous.: Fannie Coppin ( ) born into slavery, she was purchased by her aunt who freed her. After graduating from Oberlin College (1860), she taught Greek, Latin, and mathematics at the Institute for Colored Youth where she became principle, a position which she held for 35 years, in 1869.
Sarah Boone, the woman on this list for whose accomplishments I have mixed emotions, invented the ironing board in 1892.
Anna Julia Cooper: (1858-1964) one of the most respected, educated (the Sorbonne) and intellectual Black women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, she was an innovative educator turned writer. She is best known today for _A Voice from the South _(1886), a major theological work regarding black women's views of Christianity.
1. _African American Firsts: Famous, little known, and unsung triumphs of blacks in America_, Joan Potter and Constance Claytor, 1994, Pinto Press,
2. _Book of Black Heroes Vol 2: Great Women in the Struggle_, Toyomi Igus, Veronica Freeman Ellis, Diane Patrick, Valerie Wilson Wesley, 1991, Just Us Books
3 _In Our Voices: Four Centuries of American Women's Religious Writings_, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Rosemary Skinner Keller, Harper Collins, 1995
4 _Great Black Americans_, Ben Richardson and William A. Fahey, 1976, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., NY
5 _The Black 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential African Americans Past and Present_, Colombus Salley, 1993, Citadell Press
6 _American Women's History: An A to Z of People, Organizations, Issues, and Events_, Doris Weatherford, 1994, Prentis Hall
Encarta
Note: Barbara Jordon died shortly after this was written.
Purchased directly from the slave ship in 1761 by Susanna Wheately, Phillis was treated as if she was a daughter of the Wheatley family. Educated with the other Wheately children, she learned to speak, read, and write fluently in English within 1 and 1/2 years of her arrival. She published her first work, a piece of poetry, in 1767. On her trip to England in 1773 she was received by the Countess of Huntington who encouraged her to publish her work. Phillis became the first African American to publish a book, _Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral_ (1773). She returned to American after brief stay (~5 months) to attend to her ailing mistress who emancipated her. Although free, Phillis choose to remain with the Wheately family until it dissolved: Mary (daughter of Susanna and John Wheately) married and moved away in 1771, Susanna Wheately died in 1773, John (Susanna's husband) Wheately's, whose fortune suffered in Revolutionary War, he died in 1778. At 25, Phillis married John Peters, a free Negro, in April 1778. Peters regularly impregnated, then abandoned, her. She worked in a boarding house to support herself and her children until she died of malnutrition and cold in an unheated room with her third child in her arms.
reference: Encarta
"Throughout the struggle for emancipation of slaves - when most whites believed that dark-skinned people were genetically inferior - Phillis Wheatley's words spoke from the grave to offer contrary evidence." quote from Doris Weatherford, _American Women's History_, Prentiss Hall, 1994 page 371
"Black people cannot and will not become integrated into American society on any terms but those of self-determination and autonomy.
Gerda Lerner, _Black Women in White America_, 1972
There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.
Sojourner Truth, Speech, Annual Meeting of Equal Rights Convention, NYC, 9 May 1867
The difference between white and black females seemed to me an eminently satisfactory one. White females were ladies, said the sign maker, worthy of respect. And the quality that made ladyhood worthy? Softness, helplessness, and modesty - which I interpreted as a willingness to let others do their labor and their thinking. Colored females, on the other hand, were women - unworthy of respect, independent, and immodest.
Toni Morrison, "What the Black Woman Thinks About Women's Lib", the _New York Times Magazine_, 22 August 1971
True chivalry respects all womanhood . . . . Virtue knows no color lines, and the chivalry which depends upon complexion of skin and texture of hair can command no honest respect.
Ida B. Wells _A Red Record_, 1895
The true worth of a race must be measured by the character of its womanhood . . .
Mary McLeod Bethune, Address, "A Century of Progress of Negro Women" Chicago's Women Federation, 3, June 1933
All of the above quotes were taken from: _The New Quotable Woman: The Definitive Treasury of Notable Words by Women from Eve to the Present_, Elaine Partnow, Meridian Press, 1993
regarding Ida B. Wells-Barnett's anti-lynching efforts:
"The final act of the drama came in May when Wells (who had always been aware that her grandfather was white) introduced sexuality into the debate. "Nobody believes the old threadbare lies that Negro men rape white women," she wrote. The reverse was true instead - and not only did white men rape black women with impunity, but also, she added, "If Southern white men are not careful. . . a conclusion will be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women." Memphis whites could scarcely contain their fury; Wells' office was ransacked, her life was threatened, and she left Memphis forever."
Sounds like something I would have said.
_American Women's History: An A to Z of People, Organizations, Issues, and Events_, Doris Weatherford, Prentise Hall, 1994, page366
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last updated February, 1996
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