Dr. Edith Irby Jones was the first woman to be elected president of the National Medical Association and the first African American student to attend the University of Arkansas School of Medicine (now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences).
Dr. Eliza Ann Grier was the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in Georgia.
New York-based artist Mickalene Thomas is best known for her elaborate paintings composed of rhinestones, acrylic and enamel. Thomas introduces a complex vision of what it means to be a woman and expands common definitions of beauty.
Dr. Clara Brawner was the only practicing African American woman physician in Memphis in the mid-1950s.
Dr. Clarice Reid began her education in the segregated schools of Birmingham, Alabama, and went on to become director of the Division of Blood Diseases and Resources, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Audrey Forbes Manley was the first African American woman to achieve the rank of Assistant Surgeon General (Rear Admiral).
Lesser known than some of the national civil rights leaders, she took her own protests to the American courtrooms, arguing against racial discrimination and “Jim Crow” laws and became the first woman on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Evelyn Gibson Lowery has been both foot soldier and leader at pivotal moments in the Civil Rights Movement.
Dr. Dorothy Lavinia Brown was the first African American woman surgeon in the South, the first single woman in Tennessee to be granted the right to become an adoptive parent and the first African American woman to serve in the Tennessee state legislature.
American civil rights activist