African Descent Archives - Page 40 of 61

Flora Nwapa

Considered Africa’s first internationally published female novelist

Lumina Sophie

1870: Martinique, French West Indies. An eighteen-year-old pregnant black woman leads a group of her peers in the first worker’s protests since the abolition of slavery in 1848.

Tembandumba

Ruler of the Jaga of what is now Angola.

Mussasa

Ruler of the Jaga of what is now Angola.

Wangari Maathai

Kenyan environmental activist

Rachel Pringle Polgreen

In the 1770s and 1780s, hotelier and brothel owner Rachel Pringle Polgreen was one of the first mulatto women to own and operate a business in colonial Barbados.

Laura Wheeler Waring

With Edmonia Lewis, Meta Vaux Warrick, and Augusta Savage, Waring is one of the foremost Black American female artists of the first half of the twentieth century.

Amy Sherald

Rising to fame after being hand-picked by former First Lady Michelle Obama to paint her official portrait, Amy Sherald is today one of the best-known Black American artists.

Carrie Mae Weems

Decades before the #BlackLivesMatter movement stamped itself into our collective psyche, Carrie Mae Weems was living its message by example through provocative artwork about racial representation.

Etta Horn was a prominent welfare rights advocate. As an activist, she worked alongside other anti-poverty organizers to improve the living conditions of low-income DC residents. Though she had many successes, Horn is widely celebrated for her work with the Citywide Welfare Alliance.