Bernice Johnson Reagon was an American song leader,professor of American history,composer,historian,musician,scholar,curator at the Smithsonian,and social activist who,in the early 1960s,was a founding member of the Freedom Singers,organized by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the Albany Movement for civil rights in Georgia. In 1973,she founded the all-black female a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock,based in Washington,D.C. Reagon,along with other members of the SNCC Freedom Singers,realized the power of collective singing to unify the disparate groups who began to work together in the 1964 Freedom Summer protests in the South.
"After a song",Reagon recalled,"the differences between us were not so great. Somehow,making a song required an expression of that which was common to us all.... This music was like an instrument,like holding a tool in your hand."
Spelman College is a private,historically Black,women's liberal arts college in Atlanta,Georgia. It is a founding member of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium. Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary,Spelman awarded its first college degrees in 1901 and is the oldest private historically Black liberal arts institution for women.
Xernona Clayton Brady is an American civil rights leader and broadcasting executive. During the Civil Rights Movement,she worked for the National Urban League and Southern Christian Leadership Conference,where she became involved in the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Later,Clayton went into television,where she became the first African American from the southern United States to host a daily prime time talk show. She became corporate vice president for Turner Broadcasting.
Doris Adelaide Derby was an American activist and documentary photographer. She was the adjunct associate professor of anthropology at Georgia State University and the founding director of their Office of African-American Student Services and Programs. She was active in the Mississippi civil rights movement,and her work discusses the themes of race and African-American identity. She was a working member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and co-founder of the Free Southern Theater. Her photography has been exhibited internationally. Two of her photographs were published in Hands on the Freedom Plow:Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC,to which she also contributed an essay about her experiences in the Mississippi civil rights movement.
Tayari Jones is an American author and academic known for An American Marriage,which was a 2018 Oprah's Book Club Selection,and won the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction. Jones is a graduate of Spelman College,the University of Iowa,and Arizona State University. She is currently a member of the English faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences at Emory University,and recently returned to her hometown of Atlanta after a decade in New York City. Jones was Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-large at Cornell University before becoming Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University.
Etta Zuber Falconer was an American educator and mathematician the bulk of whose career was spent at Spelman College,where she eventually served as department head and associate provost. She was one of the earlier African-American women to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics.
Willie Christine King Farris was an American teacher and civil rights activist. King was the sister of Martin Luther King Jr. She taught at Spelman College and was the author of several books and was a public speaker on various topics,including the King family,multicultural education,and teaching.
Ella Gaines Yates is recognized in the library world as being the first African-American director of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System in Georgia.
The Georgia Alliance of African American Attorneys (GAAAA) is a minority bar association in the state of Georgia in the United States. Founded in 1992,the GAAAA was created as a result of the legal case of Tyrone Brooks,et al.,v. Georgia State Board of Elections and Max Cleland,Secretary of State and Chairman of the Georgia State Board of Elections. The State of was accused of not having enough diversity in judges. The litigation resulted in Georgia having the second-largest number of African American judges in any American state—second only to the state of Michigan.
The Atlanta Student Movement was formed in February 1960 in Atlanta by students of the campuses Atlanta University Center (AUC). It was led by the Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR) and was part of the Civil Rights Movement.
An Appeal for Human Rights is a civil rights manifesto initially printed as an advertisement in Atlanta newspapers on March 9,1960 that called for ending racial inequality in Atlanta,Georgia,United States. The manifesto was written by students of Atlanta's six historically black colleges and universities that comprise the Atlanta University Center. It was drafted by Roslyn Pope and other students of the Atlanta University Center after the students,led by Lonnie King and Julian Bond,were encouraged by the six presidents of the Atlanta University Center to draft a document stating their goals. The students,organized as the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR),published An Appeal for Human Rights working within and as part of the Civil Rights Movement.
Amalia K. Amaki is an African-American artist,art historian,educator,film critic and curator who recently resided in Tuscaloosa,Alabama,where she was Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa from 2007 to 2012.
Pearl Cleage is an African-American playwright,essayist,novelist,poet and political activist. She is currently the Playwright in Residence at the Alliance Theatre and at the Just Us Theater Company. Cleage is a political activist. She tackles issues at the crux of racism and sexism,and is known for her feminist views,particularly regarding her identity as an African-American woman. Her works are highly anthologized and have been the subject of many scholarly analyses. Many of her works across several genres have earned both popular and critical acclaim. Her novel What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day (1997) was a 1998 Oprah's Book Club selection.
Maxine (Atkins) Smith born in Memphis,Tennessee,United States,was an academic,civil rights activist,and school board official.
Reverend Romulus Moore was an American politician and leader of the early civil rights movement after the American Civil War during the Reconstruction Era in the U.S. state of Georgia. An African American,Moore was elected to the state legislature in 1868. Moore was expelled from the legislature in 1868 along with other African Americans and reinstated in the Georgia General Assembly in 1870 by an Act of Congress. Reverend Moore was active in advocating the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Georgia Caldwell Smith (1909–1961) was one of the first African-American women to gain a bachelor's degree in mathematics. When she was 51,she earned a Ph.D. in mathematics,one of the earliest by an African-American woman,awarded posthumously in 1961. Smith was the head of the Department of Mathematics at Spelman College.
Johnnie Hines Watts Prothro was an American nutritionist in the Southern United States whose career spanned the eras of racial segregation,Jim Crow laws,and the passing of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. She was one of the first African American nutritionists and food scientists.
Cassandra E. Maxwell was an American lawyer. She was South Carolina's first African American female lawyer.
Herchelle Sullivan Challenor is a foreign policy expert,international civil servant,university administrator,and was one of the key activists in the Atlanta Student Movement,part of the Civil Rights Movement,of the early 1960s.
