Mary Burnett Talbert was an American orator, activist, suffragist and reformer. In 2005, Talbert was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Charlotte E. Ray was an American lawyer. She was the first black American female lawyer in the United States. Ray graduated from Howard University School of Law in 1872. She was also the first female admitted to the District of Columbia Bar, and the first woman admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. Her admission was used as a precedent by women in other states who sought admission to the bar.
Mabel Keaton Staupers was a pioneer in the American nursing profession. Faced with racial discrimination after graduating from nursing school, Staupers became an advocate for racial equality in the nursing profession.
Anna Arnold Hedgeman was an African-American civil rights leader, politician, educator, and writer. Under President Harry Truman, Hedgeman served as executive director of the National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission, having worked on his presidential campaign. She was also appointed to the cabinet of New York City mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr., becoming the first African-American woman to hold a cabinet post in New York. Hedgeman was a major advocate for both minorities and the poor in New York City. She also served as a consultant for many companies and entities on racial issues, and late in her life founded Hedgeman Consultant Services. She was among the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington. Throughout her many years involved in the civil rights movement, she befriended Dorothy Height.
Adah Belle Samuels Thoms was an African American nurse who cofounded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, was acting director of the Lincoln School for Nurses, and fought for African Americans to serve as American Red Cross nurses during World War I and eventually as U.S. Army Nurse Corps nurses starting with the flu epidemic in December 1918. She was among the first nurses inducted into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame when it was established in 1976.
Kate Drumgoold was an American woman born into slavery around 1858 near Petersburg, Virginia. Her life is captured in her 1898 autobiography, A Slave Girl's Story, Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold. It offers a message of racial uplift, faith, and education. "It is a rare portrait of a former slave who moved between the highly urbanized environment of New York City and the rural South."
Darlene Clark Hine is an American author and professor in the field of African-American history. She is a recipient of the 2014 National Humanities Medal.
The Black Women Oral History Project consists of interviews with 72 African American women from 1976 to 1981, conducted under the auspices of the Schlesinger Library of Radcliffe College, now Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Henrietta Green Regulus Ray (1808–1836) was an African-American female activist living in New York City who advocated for women's education and independence. She helped found the African Dorcas Association, an organization that worked to provide clothing to students of the African Free School, and she became the organization's secretary in 1828. In 1834, she married Rev. Charles B. Ray, an African-American abolitionist and owner and editor of the Colored American, a weekly newspaper. Around the same time as her marriage, she also was elected as the first president of the New York Female Literary Society, which was "formed for the purpose of acquiring literary and scientific knowledge." She died in 1836 of tuberculosis.
Lena Doolin Mason was an American Methodist preacher and poet.
Cecelia Cabaniss Saunders sometimes written as Cecilia Cabaniss Saunders, was an African-American civil rights leader, and executive director of the Harlem, New York YWCA. She is best known for working against racial discrimination in wartime employment during World War II, for broader work training and opportunities for African-American women, and against police violence in Harlem.
Dr. Rosa Slade Gragg was an American activist and politician. She founded the first black vocational school in Detroit, Michigan; and was the advisor to three United States presidents. She was inducted in 1987 into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.
The Detroit Study Club is a Black women's literary organization formed in 1898 by African American women in Detroit, Michigan, who were dedicated to individual intellectual achievement and Black community social betterment. The Club emerged in the 1890s around the same time as numerous other Black women's clubs across the country. The original creators of the Detroit Study Club established the club to increase their knowledge about literature and social issues. They later extended that work into community welfare endeavors. In 2018, the group celebrated one-hundred-and-twenty continuous years of activity.
Vivian Carter Mason was a staunch advocate for women's and civil rights as well as an ardent supporter of universal education. She served as an influential president of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) from 1953 to 1957. She is well-known for founding the Women's Council for Interracial Cooperation in communities such as Norfolk and Arlington, Virginia, in 1945. Mason also founded the Committee of 100 Women, which allowed for underprivileged children of color in New York City to attend summer camp for free.
Lucy Ann Henry Coles was an American missionary who travelled to Liberia with her husband John J. Coles. She was one of the first black women missionaries in Africa. She also served as president of the Baptist Foreign Mission Convention after her husband's death. Elizabeth Coles Bouey was her daughter.
Carrie E. Bullock was an American nurse. She served as the president of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) and founded their official newsletter.
Louise "Mamma" Harris was an American labor organizer and tobacco worker. Harris became involved with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in Richmond, Virginia. In 1938, she led a successful strike against the tobacco factory where she worked.
Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe is an American photographer and activist. She is best known for her work in magazines, newspapers, and several photography books, and also as an AIDS activist.
Gwendolyn Rosetta Capps Lightner was an American gospel pianist, arranger, and choir director and an influential figure within the Los Angeles gospel community. She was best known for her work as accompanist for Mahalia Jackson, and she was also a session musician for recordings by the Pilgrim Travelers, the Soul Stirrers, Brother Joe May, and Doris Akers. Lightner was also an active leader within the Baptist church for many years. Bernice Johnson Reagon, scholar, founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, and curator emeritus in the Division of Community Life and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History called Lightner "a brilliant exponent of classical gospel playing."
