Safi Faye is a Senegalese film director and ethnologist who has directed several documentary and fiction films focusing on rural life in Senegal. She was the first woman from sub-Saharan Africa to direct a commercially distributed feature film, Kaddu Beykat (1975).
Delta Sigma Theta, a service sorority for black women, was founded at Howard University in Washington, DC in 1912, with Myra Davis Hemmings of San Antonio elected as its first president. At the time she was also president of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first Greek-named sorority for African American women.
Hemmings was active in amateur theater and directed productions for the San Antonio Negro Little Theater. She and her husband helped to organize the city’s Phyllis Wheatley Dramatic Guild Players. In addition to acting on stage, she appeared in three films: 1941 tragic drama film Go Down Death: The Story of Jesus and the Devil, starring as the martyr Sister Caroline (she also co-produced and co-directed the film), Marching On (1943) and In Girl in Room 20 (1946).
As a drama teacher, Hemmings directed plays from the 1920s through the 1950s at San Antonio’s Carver Community Cultural Center. She taught in San Antonio for more than 50 years. Hemmings was elected as the national vice-president of Delta Sigma Theta in 1933 and became the organization’s historian in 1948. She was also a member of the NAACP, the National Council of Negro Women[13] and the Alpha Phi Literary Society.
Nicknamed Gwamile for her strength of character, Labotsibeni was Swaziland’s queen mother from 1894 to 1899 and then regent from 1899 to 1921. Growing up in the royal court under the tutelage of Queen Mother Thandile, she married King Mbandzeni in 1874. Noted for being a remarkably intelligent, articulate, and astute spokesperson for the Swazi nation, she opposed domination of the kingdom by outside forces.
For most of the three-year South African War, Labotsibeni was, with the support of a co-regent and her council, the last independent ruler in Africa south of the Zambezi. During this time she adopted the habitual stance of a Swazi monarch and sought to preserve Swaziland as a neutral region and maintained a diplomatic relationship with the South African Republic. She largely succeeded in keeping Swaziland out of the war. Ever pragmatic, Labotsibeni encouraged her people to accept Western education as the path to financial success, seeing it as the source of much of the power held by white people.
Pat Parker was an American poet and activist who drew from her experiences as an African-American lesbian feminist. Her poetry spoke to her difficult childhood growing up in poverty, coping with sexual assault, and the murder of her sister.
Keisha Lance Bottoms was elected the 60th Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia in 2017. She had previously served in the Atlanta City Council for eight years representing District 11 in southwest Atlanta and won a highly competitive election to become the second black woman ever to be elected mayor of Atlanta. Prior to that, Bottoms was a prosecutor, and also represented children in juvenile court. In 2002, she became a magistrate judge. As mayor, Bottoms she signed an executive order forbidding the city jail to hold ICE detainees. In February 2020, Bottoms released Atlanta’s first LGBTQ Affairs report, focusing on how various policies, initiatives, and programs could improve the lives of LGBTQ Atlantans. In 2018 she had created the city’s LGBTQ advisory board and in December 2020, Bottoms appointed the city’s first director of LGBTQ Affairs, and announced the continued LGBTQ advisory board leadership.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer whose works range from novels to short stories to nonfiction. Her best-known works include Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) – which was adapted into a 2013 film – short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), Americanah (2013), We Should All Be Feminists (2014) and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017).
She was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2008.
Tin Hinan was the first queen of the Tuareg, a group of Berber clans of obscure origin. Legend states that she led them into the Sahara around 400AD. The Tuareg would later dominate lucrative trade routes across the desert in medieval times.
Yvonne Hudson is an American television actress best known for being the first African-American female cast member on Saturday Night Live. She joined the cast as a featured player for the show’s 1980–1981 season. (The first black female repertory player was Danitra Vance.) She was also the third African-American SNL cast member, following Garrett Morris and Eddie Murphy. Hudson first appeared on the show in 1978 as an uncredited extra in many episodes.
Hudson rarely had a role of significance and was among the majority of the cast members fired at at the end of the troubled season. She continued to appear occasionally in uncredited small roles until her final appearance on the show in 1984. Other than her stint on SNL, Hudson has not appeared in any other television or film role.
Lozikeyi was a senior queen of the Ndebele nation until 1893. She was known for being outspoken, and for her defiance of the white settlers – who described her as a “dangerous and intriguing woman” – in what would become Rhodesia. When her husband disappeared in 1893, she served for a time as de facto regent of the kingdom. She is credited with keeping the nation stable following not only her husband’s disappearance, but also their 1893 Matebele war with The British South Africa Company.
In 1896, along with her twin brother, Queen Lozikeyi led the resistance against colonial rule and land theft. Referred to as Imfazo or The War of the Red Axe (Impi Yehlok’elibomvu), this was the catalyst to what is commonly known as the First Chimurenga war. Queen Lozikeyi had wisely stored ammunition that had not been used by King Lobengula; the Imbizo regiment were able to use this ammunition against the Cecil Rhodes’ forces. The predominantly Ndebele Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) referred to her as the Foremother of ZIPRA; in a show of honour and for good fortune, ZIPRA forces buried two bullets at her grave years after her death.
By the end of that year, British forces and the Ndebele army had reached a stalemate. Queen Lozikeyi led peace negotiations in the Matobo mountains, resulting in amnesty and a ceasefire, though the Ndebele people had already lost their best land and control.
She remained defiant until her death in 1919 after she succumbed to influenza.
Author Yvonne Vera once referred to her as a “conspicuous and commanding figure. A big, bold and beautiful woman of ample proportions and clearly the leading spirit among the Ndebele queens. With quick intelligence and ready wit, she was also remarkable among Ndebele women.”
Near Nkosikazi in Bubi District is a school for which she campaigned and which she opened; it still serves students. She was the subject of a 2013 biography, Lozikeyi Dlodlo, Queen of the Ndebele by Marieke Faber Clarke and Pathisa Nyathi.
In 2001, Shirley Clarke Franklin became Atlanta, Georgia’s first African American female mayor, as well as the first African-American woman to be a mayor of a major southern US city. It was the first time she had run for public office; with her 2005 re-election, she served as mayor until 2010. Under previous mayors, she had served the city as Commissioner of Cultural Affairs and Chief Administrative Officer and City Manager. In 2205, Franklin recieved the Profile in Courage Award in 2005 from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, which praised her management of the city during a critical period of enormous deficit and loss of public confidence in government following the corrupt administration of her predecessor, Mayor Bill Campbell.