Marian Wright Edelman is an American activist for civil rights and children's rights. She is the founder and president emerita of the Children's Defense Fund. She influenced leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr.
Dorothy Irene Height was an African-American civil rights and women's rights activist. She focused on the issues of African-American women, including unemployment, illiteracy, and voter awareness. Height is credited as the first leader in the civil rights movement to recognize inequality for women and African Americans as problems that should be considered as a whole. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years. Height's role in the "Big Six" civil rights movement was frequently ignored by the press due to sexism. In 1974, she was named to the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which published the Belmont Report, a bioethics report in response to the infamous "Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
Gloria Naylor was an American novelist, known for novels including The Women of Brewster Place (1982), Linden Hills (1985) and Mama Day (1988).
Johnnetta Betsch Cole is an American anthropologist, educator, museum director, and college president. Cole was the first female African-American president of Spelman College, a historically black college, serving from 1987 to 1997. She was president of Bennett College from 2002 to 2007. During 2009–2017 she was Director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art. Cole served as the national chair and 7th president for the National Council of Negro Women from 2018 to 2022.
Lerone Bennett Jr. was an African-American scholar, author and social historian who analyzed race relations in the United States. His works included Before the Mayflower (1962) and Forced into Glory (2000), a book about U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
Mary Schmidt Campbell, is an American academic and government administrator, and museum director. She was the 10th president of Spelman College serving from 2015 to 2022. Prior to this position, director and curator for art museums, as the director of the Commission for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and for many years as the Dean of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
Selma Hortense Burke was an American sculptor and a member of the Harlem Renaissance movement. Burke is best known for a bas relief portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt which may have been the model for his image on the obverse of the dime. She described herself as "a people's sculptor" and created many pieces of public art, often portraits of prominent African-American figures like Duke Ellington, Mary McLeod Bethune and Booker T. Washington. In 1979, she was awarded the Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award. She summed up her life as an artist, "I really live and move in the atmosphere in which I am creating".
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is an American sociologist who examines the culture of schools, the patterns and structures of classroom life, socialization within families and communities, and the relationships between culture and learning styles. She is the Emily Hargroves Fisher professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a 1984 MacArthur Genius.
Janet Collins, OblSB was an African American prima ballerina, choreographer, and teacher. She performed on Broadway, in films, and appeared frequently on television. She was among the pioneers of black ballet dancing, one of the few classically trained Black dancers of her generation.
Patricia Walker-Shaw served as President of the Universal Life Insurance Company of Memphis, Tennessee.
The National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc. (NCBW) is a non-profit volunteer organization for African American women. Its members address common issues in their communities, families and personal lives, promoting gender and racial equity.
Susan L. Taylor is an American editor, writer, and journalist. She served as editor-in-chief of Essence from 1981 through 2000. In 1994, American Libraries referred to Taylor as "the most influential black woman in journalism today".
Beverly Guy-Sheftall is an American Black feminist scholar, writer and editor, who is the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies and English at Spelman College, in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the founding director of the Spelman College Women's Research and Resource Center, the first at a historically Black college or university.
Sylvia H. Williams, was an American museum director, curator, art historian, and scholar of African art. She helped develop the study and appreciation of African art as a significant aesthetic and intellectual pursuit in the United States.
Patricia S. Cowings is an aerospace psychophysiologist. She was the first American woman to be trained as a scientist astronaut by NASA; though she was an alternate for a space flight in 1979, she did not travel to space. She is most known for her studies in the physiology of astronauts in outer space, as well as helping find cures for astronaut's motion sickness.
Hazel Nell Dukes is an American activist. She is a past national president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the current President of the organization’s New York State chapter.
Sybil Lenora Collins Mobley was Dean Emerita of the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) School of Business and Industry. She led its business program and was the founding dean of its Business School. She also oversaw community projects including a revitalization program for majority African American Gretna, Florida.
Cheryl Linn Glass was an American racing driver. She was the first black, female professional racing driver in the United States. She raced sprint cars in the Northwestern United States.
Carolyn Craven was an American journalist. She was known for her reporting for KQED-TV in San Francisco, and for speaking publicly about being the victim of a serial rapist.
Vy Higginsen is an American theater producer, playwright, former disc jockey, and radio and television personality. She is the founder and executive director of the Mama Foundation for the Arts, and the co-writer of the 1983 musical Mama, I Want to Sing!, the longest running black off-Broadway musical in American history.
