Despite being the first licensed Black pilot in the world, Coleman wasn’t recognized as a pioneer in aviation until after her death. Though history has favored Amelia Earhart or the Wright brothers, Coleman—who went to flight school in France in 1920—paved the way for a new generation of diverse fliers like the Tuskegee Airmen, Blackbirds, and Flying Hobos.
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Bridges probably had no idea that the bold act she committed in 1960 would set off a chain reaction leading to the integration of schools in the South. She was just 6 years old when she became the first African American student to attend William Frantz Elementary in Louisiana at the height of desegregation. Now the Ruby Bridges Foundation exists to “inspire the next generation of leaders to end racism together one step at a time.”
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After being diagnosed with cervical cancer at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1951, a sample of Lacks’s cancer cells were taken without her consent by a researcher.
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Hailed the “godmother of the women’s movement,” Height used her background in education and social work to advance women’s rights. She was a leader in the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and the president of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) for more than 40 years.
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The Selma, Alabama, native played a crucial part in the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement. But it wasn’t until Oprah played her in the 2014 Oscar-nominated film Selma that people really took notice of Cooper’s activism. She is lauded for punching Alabama Sheriff Jim Clark in the face, but she really deserves to be celebrated for fighting to restore and protect voting rights.
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“I always tell young people to hold on to their dreams. And sometimes you have to stand up for what you think is right even if you have to stand alone. Back then, as a teenager, I kept thinking, why don’t the adults around here just say something?” — Claudette Colvin
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A former slave, Sojourner Truth became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women’s rights in the nineteenth century.
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When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. — Maya Angelou
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The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free. — Maya Angelou
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One and God make a majority. — Frederick Douglass
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The name Stacey Abrams has become synonymous with voting accessibility and turnout, making history by becoming the first woman and first African American woman to hold positions in state and national politics. Abrams is now one of the most prominent African American female politicians in the United States.
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“I ain’t got no heart to go and see the sufferings of my people played on the stage. I’ve heard ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ read, and I tell you Mrs. Stowe’s pen hasn’t begun to paint what slavery is as I have seen it at the far South. I’ve seen the real thing, and I don’t want to see it on no stage or in no theater.” — Harriett Tubman
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An escaped enslaved woman who became a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head.
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On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of going to the back of the bus, which was designated for African Americans, she sat in the front. When the bus started to fill up with white passengers, the bus driver asked Parks to move. She refused. Her resistance set in motion one of the largest social movements in history, the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
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Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was the first African American woman in Congress (1968) and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties (1972).
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MRS. T’S CORNER 