Early Women of the Civil Rights Movement - PowerPoint Presentation

Early Women of the Civil Rights Movement Women’s Studies 222Winterim 2014 Women's Club of Buffalo, New York, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-112350

Sojourner Truth (1797- 1883) The woman we know as Sojourner Truth was born into slavery in New York as Isabella Baumfree (after her father's owner, Baumfree). She was sold several times, and while owned by the John Dumont family in Ulster County, married Thomas, another of Dumont's slaves. She had five children with Thomas. In 1827, New York law emancipated all slaves, but Isabella had already left her husband and run away with her youngest child. She went to work for the family of Isaac Van Wagenen. While working for the Van Wagenen's -- whose name she used briefly -- she discovered that a member of the Dumont family had sold one of her children to slavery in Alabama. Since this son had been emancipated under New York Law, Isabella sued in court and won his return. Isabella experienced a religious conversion, moved to New York City and to a Methodist perfectionist commune, and there came under the influence of a religious prophet named Mathias. The commune fell apart a few years later, with allegations of sexual improprieties and even murder. Isabella herself was accused of poisoning, and sued successfully for libel. She continued as well during that time to work as a household servant. In 1843, she took the name Sojourner Truth, believing this to be on the instructions of the Holy Spirit and became a traveling preacher (the meaning of her new name). In the late 1840s she connected with the abolitionist movement, becoming a popular speaker. In 1850, she also began speaking on woman suffrage. Her most famous speech, Ain't I a Woman?, was given in 1851 at a women's rights convention in Ohio. Sojourner Truth met Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote about her for the Atlantic Monthly and wrote a new introduction to Truth's autobiography, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Sojourner Truth moved to Michigan and joined yet another religious commune, this one associated with the Friends. She was at one point friendly with Millerites, a religious movement that grew out of Methodism and later became the Seventh Day Adventists. During the Civil War Sojourner Truth raised food and clothing contributions for black regiments, and met Abraham Lincoln at the White House in 1864. While there, she tried to challenge the discrimination that segregated street cars by race. After the War ended, Sojourner Truth again spoke widely, advocating for some time a "Negro State" in the west. She spoke mainly to white audiences, and mostly on religion, "Negro" and women's rights, and on temperance, though immediately after the Civil War she tried to organize efforts to provide jobs for black refugees from the war. Active until 1875, when her grandson and companion fell ill and died, Sojourner Truth returned to Michigan where her health deteriorated and she died in 1883 in a Battle Creek sanitorium of infected ulcers on her legs. She was buried in Battle Creek, Michigan, after a very well-attended funeral. Source: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/sojournertruth/a/sojourner_truth.htm

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) Harriet Beecher was born June 14, 1811, the seventh child of a famous protestant preacher. Harriet worked as a teacher with her older sister Catharine: her earliest publication was a geography for children, issued under her sister's name in 1833. In 1836, Harriet married widower Calvin Stowe: they eventually had seven children. Stowe helped to support her family financially by writing for local and religious periodicals. During her life, she wrote poems, travel books, biographical sketches, and children's books, as well as adult novels. She met and corresponded with people as varied as Lady Byron, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and George Eliot. She died at the age of 85, in Hartford Connecticut. While she wrote at least ten adult novels, Harriet Beecher Stowe is predominantly known for her first, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Begun as a serial for the Washington anti-slavery weekly, the National Era, it focused public interest on the issue of slavery, and was deeply controversial. In writing the book, Stowe drew on her personal experience: she was familiar with slavery, the antislavery movement, and the underground railroad because Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio, where Stowe had lived, was a slave state. Following publication of the book, she became a celebrity, speaking against slavery both in America and Europe. She wrote A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853) extensively documenting the realities on which the book was based, to refute critics who tried to argue that it was inauthentic; and published a second anti-slavery novel, Dred in1856. In 1862, when she visited President Lincoln, legend claims that he greeted her as "the little lady who made this big war": the war between the states. Campaigners for other social changes, such as Caroline Norton, respected and drew upon her work. The historical significance of Stowe's antislavery writing has tended to draw attention away from her other work, and from her work's literary significance. Her work is admittedly uneven. At its worst, it indulges in a romanticized Christian sensibility that was much in favour with the audience of her time, but that finds little sympathy or credibility with modern readers. At her best, Stowe was a early and effective realist. Her settings are often accurately and detailedly described. Her portraits of local social life, particularly with minor characters, reflect an awareness of the complexity of the culture she lived in, and an ability to communicate that culture to others. In her commitment to realism, and her serious narrative use of local dialect, Stowe predated works like Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn by 30 years, and influenced later regionalist writers including Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary Wilkins Freeman. Source: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/stowe/StoweHB.html

Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) Harriet Ann Jacobs escaped slavery and moved to New York where she wrote the powerful autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The powerful and comprehensive slave narrative became one of the most influential books of the period. From:   http://www.biography.com/people/harriet-ann-jacobs-9351667.

Harriet Tubman (1820-1913) Harriet Tubman is perhaps the most well-known of all the Underground Railroad's "conductors." During a ten-year span she made 19 trips into the South and escorted over 300 slaves to freedom. And, as she once proudly pointed out to Frederick Douglass, in all of her journeys she "never lost a single passenger." Tubman was born a slave in Maryland's Dorchester County around 1820. At age five or six, she began to work as a house servant. Seven years later she was sent to work in the fields. While she was still in her early teens, she suffered an injury that would follow her for the rest of her life. Always ready to stand up for someone else, Tubman blocked a doorway to protect another field hand from an angry overseer. The overseer picked up and threw a two-pound weight at the field hand. It fell short, striking Tubman on the head. She never fully recovered from the blow, which subjected her to spells in which she would fall into a deep sleep. Around 1844 she married a free black named John Tubman and took his last name. (She was born Araminta Ross; she later changed her first name to Harriet, after her mother.) In 1849, in fear that she, along with the other slaves on the plantation, was to be sold, Tubman resolved to run away. She set out one night on foot. With some assistance from a friendly white woman, Tubman was on her way. She followed the North Star by night, making her way to Pennsylvania and soon after to Philadelphia, where she found work and saved her money. The following year she returned to Maryland and escorted her sister and her sister's two children to freedom. She made the dangerous trip back to the South soon after to rescue her brother and two other men. On her third return, she went after her husband, only to find he had taken another wife. Undeterred, she found other slaves seeking freedom and escorted them to the North. By 1856, Tubman's capture would have brought a $40,000 reward from the South. On one occasion, she overheard some men reading her wanted poster, which stated that she was illiterate. She promptly pulled out a book and feigned reading it. The ploy was enough to fool the men.Tubman had made the perilous trip to slave country 19 times by 1860, including one especially challenging journey in which she rescued her 70-year-old parents. Of the famed heroine, who became known as "Moses," Frederick Douglass said, "Excepting John Brown -- of sacred memory -- I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than [Harriet Tubman].“ And John Brown, who conferred with "General Tubman" about his plans to raid Harpers Ferry, once said that she was "one of the bravest persons on this continent."Becoming friends with the leading abolitionists of the day, Tubman took part in antislavery meetings. On the way to such a meeting in Boston in 1860, in an incident in Troy, New York, she helped a fugitive slave who had been captured.During the Civil War Harriet Tubman worked for the Union as a cook, a nurse, and even a spy. After the war she settled in Auburn, New York, where she would spend the rest of her long life. She died in 1913.Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1535.html

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) Frances Ellen Watkins Harper lectured frequently on abolitionism in New England, the Midwest, and California, and also published poetry in magazines and newspapers. Her Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, published in 1854 with a preface by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, sold more than 10,000 copies and was reissued and reprinted several times .1845: Published first book of poems entitled, Forest Leaves1850: Published a second collection of poems, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects.  The collection sold more than 10,000 copies--a record for a poetry collection by a writer 1857:  First woman to teach at Union Seminary, which is now known as Wilberforce University1859: Editor and contributor to the first African-American literary journal--Anglo-African Magazine1883: Appointed director of the Northern United States Temperance Union1892: Published best-selling novel, Iola Leroy, Or Shadows Uplifted1896: Co-founder of the National Association of Colored Women

Mary Jane Patterson (1840- 1894) Educator Mary Jane Patterson is considered to be the first African American woman to receive a B.A. degree when she graduated from Oberlin College in 1862. Although Patterson’s early years are unclear, it is believed that she was born into slavery in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1840. As a young girl, she arrived in Oberlin, Ohio with her family during the mid-1850s. In 1857 she completed a year of preparatory coursework at Oberlin College. Rather than transitioning into Oberlin’s two-year program for women, she enrolled in the school’s “gentlemen’s course,” a four-year program of classical studies that led to a Bachelor of Arts degree with high honors in 1862. 

Josephine Ruffin (1842-1924) Josephine St. Pierre, was born in Boston on 31st August, 1842. Her mother was a white woman and her father had been born in Martinique. John St. Pierre was a successful clothes dealer and was able to afford a good education for his daughter. He objected to the segregated schools in Boston and so she was sent to Salem to be educated. When Josephine was sixteen she married George Lewis Ruffin, the first African-American to graduate from Harvard Law School. The couple were both active in the struggle against slavery and during the Civil War they helped recruit black soldiers for the Union Army. Josephine also supported women's suffrage and in 1869 joined with Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone formed the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) in Boston. George Lewis Ruffin died in 1886. He had been a successful lawyer and municipal judge and left his wife a considerable amount of money. Josephine decided to use this to fund the Woman's Era , the country's first journal published by and for African-American women. Edited by her daughter, Flora Ruffin, the monthly magazine advocated women's suffrage and equal civil rights. In 1895 Ruffin organized the formation of the National Federation of Afro-American Women. The following year it merged with the Colored Women's League to form the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). Mary Church Terrell was elected president and Ruffin served as one of the organization's vice-presidents. Ruffin remained active in the struggle for equal rights and in 1910 helped form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Josephine Ruffin, co-founder of the League of Women for Community Service, died in Boston on 13th March, 1924. Source: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASruffin.htm

Fanny Garrison Villard (1844-1928) Fanny Garrison Villard, the daughter of William Lloyd Garrison and Helen Villard, was born on 16th December, 1844. She taught the piano until marrying Henry Villard, the owner of the The Nation. Her son, Oswald Garrison Villard, was born in 1872.Villard an active supporter of women's rights, joined the American Woman Suffrage Association in 1906. She was also, like her son, Oswald Garrison Villard, a founder member of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). A committed pacifist, Villard with Lillian Wald, led a parade of 1200 women down Fifth Avenue in New York on 29th August, 1914 to protest against the First World War. Villard was also a member of the Woman's Peace Party (WPP) and after the war helped establish the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Fanny Garrison Villard died on 5th July, 1928. Source: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAWvillard.htm

Edmonia Highgate (1844-1870) The daughter of freed slaves, was born in Syracuse, New York. She was in the first class at Syracuse High School and graduated with honors as the only African American in 1861. She was granted a teaching certificate by the Syracuse Board of Education and served in several teaching capacities. taught for a year in Montrose, Pennsylvania, and then became principal of a black school in Binghamton, New York. She was one of the many upstate New Yorkers who responded to the appeal to aid those who had survived slavery. Edmonia Highgate worked for the AMA as both a teacher and a fundraiser between 1864 and 1870. The AMA first appointed her to Norfolk, Virginia, where she was deeply moved by the sufferings of the black men, women and children who had waited so long for the chance to learn. Emotionally exhausted from her labors, Highgate returned north in the summer of 1864, and after recuperating, traveled about the region seeking funds for her educational work. In the 1860s it was still an unusual occupation for any woman to travel about New York, New England, and Lower Canada, addressing meetings and raising money. For a woman of color to do it successfully says much about the AMA and Edmonia Highgate.In October 1864, she spoke of her work at the National Convention of Colored Men held in the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Syracuse, an opportunity rarely given to women in the black conventions of the nineteenth century.Highgate returned to the South and in the spring of 1865, working briefly in Darlington, Maryland. Assigned next to Louisiana, she served in New Orleans as principal of Frederick Douglass School, which was housed in a former slave pen.She fell in love with John Henry Vosburg, a married white man who had lied to her, and after a few months died of a botched abortion.

Lucy Parsons (1853-1942) Little is known about the early life of Lucy Parsons. She claimed to have been born the daughter of a Mexican women, Marie del Gather and John Waller, a Creek Indian, and orphaned at age three. From there she said she was raised on a ranch in Texas by her maternal uncle. However, later research has pointed to the possibility that she was a slave in Texas. Around 1870 she met Albert Parsons, a former Confederate soldier turned radical Republican and married him in either 1871 or 1872. Forced to flee Texas because of their mixed marriage, they settled in Chicago in 1873 and became heavily involved in the revolutionary elements of the labor movement. In 1877 Lucy Parsons opened a dress shop after her husband was blacklisted from the printing trade. She began writing articles about the homeless and unemployed, Civil War veterans, and working women for The Socialist in 1878, and gave birth to two children within the next few years. Known for being a powerful writer and speaker, Parsons played a crucial role in the worker's movements in Chicago. In 1883 she helped found the International Working People's Association (IWPA), an anarchist-influenced labor organization that promoted revolutionary direct action towards a stateless and cooperative society and insisted on the equality of people of color and women. Parsons became a frequent contributor to the IPWA weekly paper The Alarm in 1884. Her most famous piece was "To Tramps," which encouraged workers and the unemployed to rise up in direct acts of violence against the rich. Although Parsons was primarily a labor activist, she was also a staunch advocate of the rights of African Americans. She wrote numerous articles and pamphlets condemning racist attacks and killings. Her most significant piece being "The Negro: Let Him Leave Politics to the Politician and Prayer to the Preacher." Published in The Alarm on April 3rd, 1886, the article was a response to the Iynching of thirteen African Americans in Corrollton, MS. In it, she claimed that blacks where only victimized because they were poor, and that racism would inevitably disappear with the destruction of capitalism. In 1886 Parsons and the IPWA worked with the other industrial trade unions for a general strike in support of the 8 hour work day beyinning on the first of May that involved close to 80,000 workers. Five days later at a rally at Haymarket Square in support of the strike, a bomb was hurled at police officers after they attacked the demonstration. Police blamed the IWPA and began rounding up anarchist organizers, including Albert Parsons. Lucy Parsons took the lead in organizing their defense, and after they were all found guilty of murder, she travelled the country speaking on behalf of their innocence and raising money for their appeals. In November of that year her husband was hanged, along with the other three Haymarket defendants. After her husband's death, Parsons continued revolutionary activism on behalf of workers, political prisoners, people of color, the homeless, and women. In 1892 she published the short lived Freedom, which attacked Iynchings and black peonage. In 1905 she participated in the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World, an anarcho-syndicalist trade union, and also published a paper called The Liberator. In 1927 she was made a member of the National Committee of the International Labor Defense, a communist-led organization that defended labor activists and unjustly accused African Americans such as the Scottsboro Nine and Angelo Herndon. After working with the Communist Party for a number of years, she finally joined in 1939, despairing of the advance of both capitalism and fascism on the world stage and unconvinced of the anarchists' ability to effectively confront them. After almost 50 years of continuous activism, Parsons died in a fire in her Chicago home in 1942. Viewed as a threat to the political order in death as well as life, her personal papers and books were seized by the police from the gutted house. Source: http://lucyparsons.org/biography-freesociety.php

Fannie Barrier Williams (1855-1944) Fannie Barrier Williams was an African American teacher, social activist, clubwoman, lecturer, and journalist who worked for social justice, civil liberties, education, and employment opportunities, especially for black women. Associating with both Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, she represented the viewpoint of African-Americans in the Illinois Women’s Alliance and lectured frequently on the need for all women, but especially black women, to have the vote. Her women’s rights was recognized when she was the only African-American selected to eulogize Susan B. Anthony at the 1907 National American Woman Suffrage Association convention. Barrier Williams was among the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She also helped found the National League of Colored Women in 1893 and its successor, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896. She was involved in the establishment and development of other reform and service oriented organizations, including: Provident Hospital , in 1891, an inter-racial medical facility that included a nursing training school that admitted black women; Frederick Douglass Center, in 1905, a settlement house; the Phillis Wheatley Home for Girls; the National Federation of Afro-American Women, 1895, working with Mary Church Terrell.When Barrier Williams was nominated to the prestigious Chicago Women’s Club in 1894, she and her supporters received threats, both public and private. Barrier Williams continued to fight for inclusion and was admitted in 1895. She was also the first black and the first woman on the Chicago Library Board.Barrier Williams achieved broader public recognition due to her efforts to gain representation of blacks at the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893. She succeeded in having two staff appointments designated for African-Americans and ensured that African-American interests were included in the program. She was appointed as Clerk in charge of Colored Interests in the Department of Publicity and Promotions.

Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) Ida B. Wells was born a slave in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Her father, James, was a carpenter and her mother, Elizabeth, was a famous cook. Both parents were literate and taught Ida how to read at a young age. She was surrounded by political activists and grew up with a sense of hope about the possibilities of former slaves within the American society. Both parents died, along with an infant brother, during the 1878 yellow fever epidemic when Ida was 16 years old. At that young age, she assumed the responsibility of rearing her five younger brothers and sisters. She soon became a teacher in order to earn money for the family and eventually ended up working in Memphis. While there, one day changed her life forever. She has accustomed to riding the train in whatever seat she chose. In 1883, she sued the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad because they forbade her from sitting in the ladies coach subsequently wrote and article about the experience. The success of her article about the ease influenced her career change to journalist. As injustices against former slaves raged throughout the South and a reign of terror began, Wells' sense of indignation and quest for justice was fueled. She decided to use her pen to expose the motives behind the violence. Lynching had become one of the main tactics in the strategy to terrorize blacks, and exposing its real purpose became the target of her crusade for justice. When three of her male friends, who were upstanding, law-abiding, successful businessmen (in direct competition with white businessmen), were lynched on the pretext of a crime they did not commit, Wells wrote about the situation with a clarity and forcefulness that riveted the attention of both blacks and whites. Her major contention that lynchings were a systematic attempt to subordinate the black community was incendiary.She advocated for both an economic boycott and a mass exodus. She traveled through the United States and England, writing and speaking about lynching and the government's refusal to intervene to stop it. This so enraged her enemies that they burned her presses, and put a price on her head, threatening her life if she returned to the South. She remained in exile for almost forty years.Wells went to Chicago in the mid-1890s where she met and married Ferdinand Barnett, a widower and a fellow crusader who was a well-known attorney as well as the founder of The Conservator newspaper. In addition to raising Barnett's two children from his previous marriage, the couple had four children of their own in eight years. Even with this added responsibility, Wells continued in her relentless fight for social justice. She was very active in the suffragist movement and became one of the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Association for Colored Women (NACW).Ida B. Wells-Barnett died in 1931, leaving a formidable legacy of undaunted courage and tenacity in the fight against racism and sexism in America. Source: http://www.idabwells.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47&Itemid=54

Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) Born into an affluent family in 1863, Mary Church Terrell was a native of Memphis, Tennessee. Louisa Church started a successful hair salon in Memphis which enabled the family to purchase their first house and carriage. Her father Robert Church was an ex-slave, the son of his former master. When the yellow fever epidemic of 1878 caused residents to desert their properties, he bought up large real estate holdings and reputedly became the first black millionaire in the South. Wanting her to have the life of a genteel lady, her father sent her to public and private schools in Ohio. In 1884, she graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in the classics. Although her father threatened to disinherit her, Mary taught at Wilberforce College and then at Washington Colored High School. In Washington, D.C. she met her future husband Robert Terrell, the principal of the city’s highly respected black public school. A Harvard graduate and lawyer, he was bound for a municipal judgeship. Terrell’s accomplishments were impressive. She and Frederick Douglass met with President Benjamin Harrison at the White House, demanding he take a stand against lynching. She served as president of the Bethel Library and Historical Society, became the first black woman to serve on the Washington, D.C. Board of Education, and co-founded the Washington Colored Women’s League. When the League merged with the National Federation of Afro-American Women to become the National Association of Colored Women in 1896, she served as the new organization’s first president. In 1909, she joined the fledgling NAACP. Between 1913 and 1914, she helped found the Delta Sigma Theta sorority and wrote its creed twenty-six years later. During World War I, she was active in the War Camp Community Service which facilitated the demobilization of African American soldiers. Terrell served as a U.S. delegate to many international conferences. She met the famous writer H.G. Wells in London. In her address to the International Council of Women in Berlin, she amazed the delegates with her knowledge of French and German.Her recurring theme was full rights for women and blacks worldwide.Terrell’s home of Washington, D.C. remained heavily segregated until she helped change the city’s racist practices in 1953. At eighty-nine, Terrell headed a committee of well-known citizens to demand the enforcement of a seventy-five-year-old law prohibiting the discrimination of “respectable persons” in restaurants. After she and a group of blacks were refused service at several restaurants they filed a suit in which the Supreme Court upheld the old law. Soon after, segregation faded from hotels, theaters, and other public places in the city. Mary Church Terrell died in Annapolis, Maryland in 1954, a few months after the Supreme Court outlawed segregation. Source: http://www.afroamfl.com/blackhistory.aspx?contributor=marychurchterrell

Mary White Ovington (1865-1951) Mary White Ovington was to parents who were members of the Unitarian Church and supporters of women's rights and had been involved in anti-slavery movement. Educated at Packer Collegiate Institute and Radcliffe College, Ovington became involved in the campaign for civil rights in 1890 after hearing Frederick Douglass speak in a Brooklyn church. In 1895 she helped found the Greenpoint Settlement in Brooklyn. Appointed head of the project the following year, Ovington remained until 1904 when she was appointed fellow of the Greenwich House Committee on Social Investigations. Over the next five years she studied employment and housing problems in black Manhattan. During her investigations she met William Du Bois, an African American from Harvard University, and she was introduced to the founding members of the Niagara Movement. Influenced by the ideas of William Morris, Ovington joined the Socialist Party in 1905, where she met people such as Daniel De Leon, Asa Philip Randolph, Floyd Dell, Max Eastman and Jack London, who argued that racial problems were as much a matter of class as of race. Ovington wrote for radical journals and newspapers such as, The Masses, New York Evening Post and The Call. She also worked with Ray Stannard Baker and influenced the content of his book, Following the Color Line (1908).In September 1908 Ovington read an article by William English Walling, entitled Race War in the North, that described the atrocities being carried out against African-Americans. Walling ended the article by calling for a powerful body of citizens to come to their aid. Ovington responded to the article by writing to Walling and at a meeting in New York they decided to form the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). The first meeting of the organization was held on 12th February, 1909. In 1910 Ovington was appointed as executive secretary of the NAACP. The following year she attended the Universal Races Congress in London. Ovington remained active in the struggle for women's suffrage and as a pacifist opposed America's involvement in the First World War. During the war Ovington supported Asa Philip Randolph and his magazine, The Messenger , which campaigned for black civil rights. After the war Ovington served the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People as board member, executive secretary and chairman. The NAACP fought a long legal battle against segregation and racial discrimination in housing, education, employment, voting and transportation. They appealed to the Supreme Court to rule that several laws passed by southern states were unconstitutional and won three important judgments between 1915-23 concerning voting rights and housing. Ovington wrote several books and articles including a study of black Manhattan, Half a Man (1911), Status of the Negro in the United States (1913), Socialism and the Feminist Movement (1914), an anthology for black children, The Upward Path (1919), biographical sketches of prominent African Americans, Portraits in Color (1927), an autobiography, Reminiscences (1932) and a history of the NAACP, The Walls Come Tumbling Down (1947). Ovington who retired as a board member of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People in 1947 and in doing so, ended her thirty-eight years service with the organization. Mary White Ovington died in 1951.  Source: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASovington.htm

Margaret Murray Washington (1865-1925) During her tenure as Lady Principal of Tuskegee, she also created the Tuskegee Woman's Club and merged local organizations with women clubs to help improve the values and liberation of womanhood in African American women of the Jim Crow south. She is credited with co-founding the National Association of Colored Women in 1896.  In July 1895, Murray attended the Boston meeting which established the National Federation of Afro-American Women (NFAW). After being elected president the following year, she helped merge the NFAW and the Colored Women’s League (CWL) to form the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). She founded country schools, taught women how to live and attend to their homes, worked for the improvement of prisons, started the Mt. Meigs school for boys and an industrial school for girls at Tuskegee, and constantly worked for the betterment of the poor and neglected. In 1912, she became the fifth president for the National Association of Colored Women.http://www.blackpast.org/aah/washington-margaret-murray-1865-1925

Mary Burnett (1866-1923) Mary Burnett was born in Oberlin, Ohio in 1866. After graduating from Oberlin College, she became a teacher at Bethel University in Little Rock, Arkansas. Eventually she became vice principal but left teaching after marrying William Talbert and moving to Buffalo. Talbert obtained a Ph.D degree at the University of Buffalo and during the First World War she served as a Red Cross nurse on the Western Front. Talbert was the president of the Christian Culture Congress and the National Association of Colored Women (1916-21). A founder member of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), she was for several years its director. After the First World War Talbert toured Europe giving lectures on women's rights and race relations. In 1921 she travelled thousands of miles making public speeches in an attempt to gain support for Dyer's anti-lynching bill. Mary Talbert died in 1923. Source: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAStalbert.htm

Madam C.J. Walker (1867- 1919) Sarah Breedlove Walker, known as Madam C. J. Walker, was the first African American woman millionaire in America, known not only for her hair straightening treatment and her salon system which helped other African Americans to succeed, but also her work to end lynching and gain women's rights She founded philanthropies that included educational scholarships and donations to homes for the elderly, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the National Conference on Lynching, among other organizations focused on improving the lives of African-Americans. She also donated the largest amount of money by an African-American toward the construction of an Indianapolis YMCA in 1913.

Charlotta Spears Bass (1874-1969) Charlotta A. Bass stands among the most influential African Americans of the twentieth century. A crusading journalist and extraordinary political activist, she was at the forefront of the civil rights struggles of her time, especially in Los Angeles, but also in California and the nation.Bass was managing editor and publisher of the California Eagle , from 1912 to 1951. The Eagle, founded in 1879, was one of the longest running African American newspapers in the West. Bass was also a political candidate at the local, state, and national level, including running for vice president of the United States on the Progressive Party ticket in 1952. She became the first African-American woman to run for national office as the Vice Presidential candidate on the Progressive Party ticket. She used the newspaper, along with direct-action campaigns and the political process, to challenge inequality for Blacks, workers, women, and other minorities in Los Angeles. Her mission was nothing short of achieving the equality and justice promised by the United States Constitution. She believed her own role in society, and the role of the Black community, was defined by Americanism, democracy, and citizenship. Acting on this belief, Bass was one of the pioneers who helped to lay the groundwork for the later Civil Rights Movement and the women's liberation movement. She fought important battles against job and housing discrimination, police brutality, and media stereotyping, and for immigrant and women's rights and civil liberties. Over time, her role as an activist evolved from championing local business concerns, to strengthening the labor movement, fighting fascism at home and abroad during World War II, and showing a global concern for world peace. Her leadership, courage, truth-telling, and tenacity were an effective force in Los Angeles, and the world, that yielded greater equality for Blacks, workers, and other people facing oppression. Bass paid a price for her outspokenness. Her life was threatened on numerous occasions. The FBI placed her under surveillance on the charge that her newspaper was seditious and continued to monitor her until her death. Accused of being a Communist, in 1950, she was called before the California Legislature's Joint Fact-Finding Committee on un-American Activities. The accusations began to take a toll on her effectiveness in the community and her ability to sell her newspaper. In 1951, she sold the paper and continued her work in the political realm.Whatever the consequences, Bass didn't waver in her pursuit of justice. Both Bass and her newspaper served the people--fighting for them, speaking for them, and leading them in battles against inequality and injustice.Source: http://www.socallib.org/bass/story/index.html

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) Equal parts educator, politician, and social visionary, Mary McLeod Bethune was one of the most prominent African American women of the first half of the twentieth century—and one of the most powerful. Known as the "First Lady of the Struggle," she devoted her career to improving the lives of African Americans through education and political and economic empowerment, first through the school she founded, Bethune-Cookman College, later as president of the National Council of Negro Women, and then as a top black administrator in the Roosevelt administration. Born the fifteenth of seventeen children to parents who were former slaves, Mary Jane McLeod grew up in rural South Carolina and attended segregated mission schools. She initially intended to become a missionary but turned to education when the Presbyterian mission board rejected her application to go to Africa. After marrying Albertus Bethune in 1898, she moved to Florida where in 1904 she founded the Daytona Educational and Industrial School for Negro Girls. In 1923, the school merged with the all-male Cookman Institute of Jacksonville and eventually became Bethune-Cookman College, a four-year, coeducational institution. Bethune served as the college's president until 1942 and again from 1946-47. At the same time, Bethune also cemented her position as a leader in African American education and the African American women's club movement by serving as president of state, regional, and national organizations, including the National Association of Colored Women. In 1935, she founded a more politically oriented organization, the National Council of Negro Women, a coalition of black women's organizations focused on ending segregation and discrimination and cultivating better international relationships. She served as its president until 1949.During World War II, Bethune served as special assistant to the secretary of war and assistant director of the Women's Army Corps. In that capacity she organized the first women's officer candidate schools and lobbied federal officials, including Franklin Roosevelt, on behalf of African American women who wanted to join the military. Bethune left the federal government after the NYA disbanded in 1944. She continued as president of the National Council of Negro Women until 1949 and, in that capacity, attended the founding conference of the United Nations. After her retirement, she returned to Florida where she continued to speak and write about civil rights issues. She died in 1955. Source: http://www.nps.gov/archive/elro/glossary/bethune-mary.htm

Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961) Nannie Helen Burroughs was born in 1879 in Orange, Virginia. When she was five, her mother brought her to Washington, DC so that she might pursue an education. In 1900, she began working for the National Baptist Convention, the largest organization of African American clergy.  Burroughs was instrumental in the formation of the National Baptist Women’s Convention, and served as its Corresponding Secretary and President for over sixty years. In 1909, she opened the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, DC. The motto of the school was “We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible.” The school focused on vocational training, including nursing, clerical work, dressmaking, and agriculture. The school also offered a Christian liberal arts education. Her goal was to train African American women to be self-sufficient wage earners.Nannie Helen Burroughs died in Washington in 1961. Her school, renamed the Nannie Helen Burroughs School in 1964, continue to operate today. http://www.nwhm.org/online-exhibits/progressiveera/burroughs.html

Daisy Lampkin (1884-1965) Born August 9, 1884 in Reading, Pennsylvania, Daisy Lampkin became one of the most highly acclaimed African American women of her time. While Lampkin is best known for becoming the first women to be elected to the national board of the NAACP, she spent much of her life rallying for racial and gender equality. Lampkin’s social and political activism began shortly after graduating from high school. After migrating to Pittsburgh, Lampkin worked as a motivational speaker for housewives and organized women into consumer protest groups. In addition, as an active member of the Lucy Stone Women’s Suffrage League and the National Suffrage League, Lampkin rallied for women’s right to vote. Understanding the challenges specific to African American women, she also became involved with the National Association for Colored Women (NACW), and was later named national organizer and chair of the executive board. Due to Lampkins exceptional activism for African Americans, she was profiled in the Pittsburgh Courier in December of 1912. In response, Lampkin became a strong advocate of the Courier and even received a cash prize in 1913 for selling the most subscriptions. After several years of investing time and money to this newspaper, Lampkin was elected vice-president of the Courier Publishing Company in 1929. For over thirty years, Lampkin was an enthusiastic member and officer for the NAACP. Between 1930 and 1964, she served as an officer for three consecutive terms. Lampkin began as a regional secretary (1930-1935), than served as the national secretary (1935-1947), and lastly, as a member of the board of the directors (1947-1964). Throughout her years of service with the NAACP, Lampkin increased membership and gave speeches throughout the United States. In addition, she continued to rally for voting rights, becoming vice-chair for both the Colored Voters Division of the Republican Party and the Negro Voters League of Pennsylvania. Decades of rallying for social, political, and gender equality took its toll on Lampkin’s physical health and she suffered a stroke in 1964. After spending her entire adult years advocating for equality, Lampkin retired to her home. In December of 1964, she was honored with the Eleanor Roosevelt-Mary McLeod Bethune World Citizenship Award from the National Council of Negro Women for her dedication to racial and gender equality. After giving over fifty years of her life to the struggle for African American equality, Lampkin passed away on March 10, 1965. Source: http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/lampkin-daisy-1884-1964

Anna Arnold Hedgeman(1889-1990) Born Anna Arnold in Marshalltown, Iowa she moved with her family to Anoka, Minnesota when she was very young. Her father created an insular world for Hedgeman and her sisters. "I grew up in Anoka, Minnesota, in a small, comfortable Midwestern town with the traditional main street," she wrote in her book The Trumpet Sounds. "There was no poverty as I have come to know it in the slums of our urban centers. I had not realized that a man could need bread and not be able to get it."The only African American family in an area dominated by European immigrants, the Arnolds were very much a part of the community and the young Arnold children were never made to feel different. Hedgeman's father created a nurturing environment that stressed education and a strong work ethic. In that environment, however, there was also a strictness and high level of expectation for Hedgeman and her two sisters. She learned to read at home, but wasn't permitted to attend school until she was seven years old. Following her graduation from high school, Hedgeman prepared to attend Hamline University, a small Methodist college. She would become the first African American student at Hamline. One of the highlights of her college years was a lecture given by author and NAACP president W.E.B. DuBois in St. Paul. Hedgeman recalled in The Gift of Chaos, "The audience gave rapt attention and I returned to the campus with the image of black men of poise, dignity, and intelligence, who were determined to be free."In November of 1933 Hedgeman married her husband, Merrit, who was an interpreter of African American folk music. The following year, she returned to New York to be with her husband and took a job as a supervisor and consultant to the Emergency Relief Bureau, now called the Department of Welfare. She would remain in that position until 1938 when she went back to the YWCA as director of the African American branch in Brooklyn. Disillusioned with the blatant segregation policies of the national Association, Hedgeman resigned and went to work as an assistant in race relations for the National Office of Civilian Defense.In 1944, Hedgeman served as the executive director of the newly-formed National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission. This organization initiated national legislative programs to ensure that minority groups would have access to education and jobs. The main goal of the organization was to secure passage of the FEPC bill, which would have guaranteed the right to work without regard to race, creed, or color. Passage of the bill was defeated in 1945.In 1949, after working on Harry Truman's presidential campaign, Hedgeman went to work as an assistant to the administrator of the Federal Security Agency, which was later known as the Office of Health, Education and Welfare. This position enabled her to spend three months in India as an exchange leader for the Department of State. Upon returning to New York, Hedgeman became involved in city politics and, following the election of Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. in 1954, became the first African American woman to hold a mayoral cabinet position in the city's history. In this position, Hedgeman was responsible for corresponding with eight city departments and served as a liaison for international guests visiting New York. Disenchanted with the back room bureaucracy of city hall, Hedgeman resigned in 1958 to take a job as a public relations consultant for the Fuller Products Company, a cosmetics firm. At Fuller Products, she made contacts with church and civic groups and gave daily lectures to salesmen. When company president S.B. Fuller bought the New York Age , the nation's oldest African American newspaper, Hedgeman was asked to serve as associate editor and columnist. Due to dwindling circulation, the paper ceased production in 1960. That same year, Hedgeman was the keynote speaker at the first Conference of the Woman of Africa and of African Descent held in Ghana. In 1963, Hedgeman was asked to serve as Coordinator of Special Events for the Commission of Religion and Race of the National Council of Churches. Her first task was to locate 30,000 white Protestants from across the country who were willing to participate in a March on Washington scheduled for August 28, 1963. Hedgeman played a major role in what is considered one of the greatest civil rights moments in history. When she noticed that there were no women scheduled to speak at the Lincoln Memorial, Hedgeman moved swiftly to correct the oversight. She also worked with the National Council of Churches to ensure passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, a descendant of the FEPC bill proposed twenty years earlier. Selected Awards: Consumer Protective Committee Award, 1955; Outstanding Citizen's Award, Abyssinian Baptist Church, 1956; Manhattan Arts and Educational Guild Award Certificate, 1957; Rust College Shield Award, 1971; Frederick Douglass Award, 1974; Pioneer Woman Award, New York State Conference on Midlife and Older Women, 1983. Source: http://www.answers.com/topic/anna-arnold-hedgeman

Marion Anderson (1897-1993) Throughout her life, Marian had experienced racism, but the most famous event occurred in 1939. Hurok tried to rent Washington, D.C.’s Constitutional Hall, the city’s foremost center, but was told no dates were available. Washington was segregated and even the hall had segregated seating. In 1935, the hall instated a new clause: “concert by white artists only.” Hurok would have walked away with the response he’d received, but a rival manager asked about renting the hall for the same dates and was told they were open. The hall’s director told Hurok the truth, even yelling before slamming down the phone, “No Negro will ever appear in this hall while I am manager.” The public was outraged, famous musicians protested, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), who owned the hall. Roosevelt, along with Hurok and Walter White of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), encouraged Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to arrange a free open-air concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for Easter Sunday. On April 9, Marian sang before 75,000 people and millions of radio listeners. Several weeks later, Marian gave a private concert at the White House, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt was entertaining King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of Britain. In 1957, she toured India and the Far East as a goodwill ambassador through the U.S. State Department and the American National Theater and Academy. She traveled 35,000 miles in 12 weeks, giving 24 concerts. After that, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed her as a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. She sang at his inauguration, as well as John F. Kennedy’s in 1961. In 1962, she toured Australia. In 1963, she sang at the March on Washington for Job and Freedom. During her career, she received many awards, including the Springarn Medal in 1939, given annually to a black American who “shall have made the highest achievement during the preceding year or years in any honorable field of endeavor.” In 1941, she received the Bok award, given annually to an outstanding Philadelphia citizen. She used the $10,000 prize money to found the Marian Anderson Scholarships. In 1963, President Lyndon Johnson awarded her the American Medal of Freedom. In 1977, Congress awarded her a gold medal for what was thought to be her 75th birthday. In 1980, the U.S. Treasury Department coined a half-ounce gold commemorative medal with her likeness. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan presented her with the National Medal of Arts.Early on, she insisted on “vertical” seating in segregated cities; meaning black audience members would be allotted seats in all parts of the auditorium. Many times, it was the first time blacks would sit in the orchestra section. By 1950, she would refuse to sing where the audience was segregated.Source: http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/ande-mar.htm

Regina M. Anderson (1901-1993) Multi-racial playwright and librarian. She was of Swedish, Native American, East Indian, Jewish, and other European ancestry (including one grandparent who was a Confederate general); one of her eight grandparents was of African descent, born in Madagascar. Despite her own identification of her r ace as "American“, she was perceived to be African American by others, and became a key member of the Harlem Renaissance .Born in Chicago, she studied at Wilberforce University, University of Chicago, and Columbia University. She moved to New York and became a librarian at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library, working under the supervision of Ernestine Rose. She shared an apartment in the Sugar Hill district of Harlem with Ethel Ray and Louella Tucker. The women opened the space to the community, hosting salons, events, and gatherings for artists. Located at at 580 Saint Nicholas Avenue, the apartment became known as the "580" and the "Harlem West Side Literary Salon".  Anderson helped to organize the Civic Club dinner of 1924 for black New York intellectuals and writers. 110 guests attended, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. The dinner was one of the coalescing events of the Harlem Renaissance.Anderson and Du Bois co-founded the Krigwa Players (later Negro Experimental Theatre), a black theater company. The Players produced her plays Climbing Jacob's Ladder (about a lynching) and Underground (about the Underground Railroad).Regina Anderson was one of ten African American women whose contributions were recognized at the 1939 World's Fair in New York.She was the first minority to climb the ranks and become a supervising librarian at the New York Public Library and her struggle to break the color barrier has earned her numerous accolades. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/23648/Regina-M-Anderson