At the turn of the century, Maggie Lena Walker was one of the foremost female business leaders in the United States. She gained national prominence when she became the first woman to own a bank in the United States. Walker’s entrepreneurial skills transformed black business practices while also inspiring other women to enter the field.
Mary Eliza Church Terrell was a well-known African American activist who championed racial equality and women’s suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a prominent journalist, activist, and researcher, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In her lifetime, she battled sexism, racism, and violence. As a skilled writer, Wells-Barnett also used her skills as a journalist to shed light on the conditions of African Americans throughout the South.
Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer lived her entire life in Virginia, where she tended her garden, worked as a librarian and teacher, hosted luminaries of Black intellectual and cultural life, and fought for equal rights for African Americans.
Ethel Payne is known as the First Lady of the Black Press, because of her fearlessness as a journalist and a Civil Rights activist.
As an admired chef and cookbook author, Edna Lewis taught the American public to appreciate southern meals in a new way. Known as both the Grande Dame and Grande Doyenne of southern cooking, Lewis was among the first African American women from the south to write a cookbook that did not hide the author’s true name, gender or race. Combining her love of food preparation and her deep knowledge of African American history, Lewis’ legacy taught countless others the importance of traditional southern cuisine.
On August 28th, 1963, Dr. Dorothy Height took a seat on the speaker stage at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. She was surrounded by most of the famous civil rights activists. Although, she was not scheduled to give remarks, Height had rightfully gained her place among these prominent leaders.
While the world watched during the Impeachment hearings of President Richard Nixon, Barbara Jordan boldly took center stage. As a lawyer, a congresswoman, and a scholar, Jordan used her public speaking skills to fight for civil and human rights. In 1972, Jordan became the first African American woman to be elected to Congress from the South since 1898.
Charlotta Spears Bass, longtime editor of the African American newspaper The California Eagle, was a journalist, activist, and politician who fought for the civil rights of African Americans in the early and mid-twentieth century. The first Black woman to run for vice president of the United States (1952), she worked to combat what she called, “The two-headed monster, Segregation and Discrimination.”
Although best known for being the wife of famed civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King created her own legacy in the movement to end injustice. She also worked to continue he husband’s legacy after his death.