African Descent Archives - Infinite Women

Lena Olive Smith

Lena Olive Smith was a prominent civil rights lawyer and activist during the 1920s and 1930s.

Ethel Ray Nance was an African American activist and writer. During the 1920s, she broke various racial and gender barriers in Minnesota, participated in the Harlem Renaissance movement, worked as a secretary for the National Urban League, and contributed to Opportunity magazine.

Emily Grey

Best known for initiating the effort to free an enslaved woman named Eliza Winston in 1860, she weathered mob violence for her efforts. She rebuilt her home and business after the incident and lived in Minneapolis for the remainder of her life.

Nellie Stone Johnson

Nellie Stone Johnson was an African American union and civil rights leader whose career spanned the class-conscious politics of the 1930s and the liberal reforms of the Minnesota DFL Party.

Ida Dorsey

Employing the racial prejudices and fantasies of elite male clients once used against her, Ida Dorsey established herself as one of the Twin Cities’ most notorious madams, running multiple brothels between the 1880s and the 1910s.

Marvel Cooke

Marvel Cooke was a pioneering journalist and political activist who spent her groundbreaking career in a world where she was often the only female African American.

Virginia Lane Frazier

Virginia Lane Frazier was one of the first Black US Army’s Women’s Corps (WAC) soldiers to enlist in Minnesota during World War II.

Hilda Simms

Civil rights activist Hilda Simms became a national celebrity for her leading role in the first all-Black performance of the Broadway show Anna Lucasta. Frustrated by her struggling career and the lack of roles for Black actors, Simms worked as the creative director for the New York State Human Rights Commission to address racial discrimination in the entertainment industry.

Fannie Barrier Williams

Civil rights activist who helped found the National League of Colored Women in 1893

Harriet Forten Purvis

American abolitionist and suffragist who co-founded the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society