Bennett College is a private historically black liberal arts college for women in Greensboro, North Carolina. It was founded in 1873 as a normal school to educate freedmen and train both men and women as teachers. Originally coed, in 1926 it became a four-year women's college. It is one of two historically black colleges that enroll only women, the other being Spelman College.
Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander was a pioneering Black professional and civil rights activist of the early-to-mid-20th century. In 1921, Mossell Alexander was the second African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. and the first one to receive one in economics in the United States. In 1927, she was first Black woman to receive a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and went on to become the first Black woman to practice law in the state. She was also the first national president of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, serving from 1919 to 1923.
Suzanne Maria Malveaux is an American broadcast journalist. After joining CNN from NBC News in 2002, she co-anchored the CNN international news program Around the World and editions of CNN Newsroom and also served as the network's White House correspondent and as primary substitute to Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room. She departed the network in 2023.
Leontine Turpeau Current Kelly was an American bishop of the United Methodist Church. She was the second woman elevated to the position of bishop within the United Methodist Church, and the first African American woman.
Barbara Rose Bergmann was a feminist economist. Her work covers many topics from childcare and gender issues to poverty and Social Security. Bergmann was a co-founder and president of the International Association for Feminist Economics, a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security, and Professor Emerita of Economics at the University of Maryland and American University.
Jewelle Lydia Gomez is an American author, poet, critic and playwright. She lived in New York City for 22 years, working in public television, theater, as well as philanthropy, before relocating to the West Coast. Her writing—fiction, poetry, essays and cultural criticism—has appeared in a wide variety of outlets, both feminist and mainstream. Her work centers on women's experiences, particularly those of LGBTQ women of color. She has been interviewed for several documentaries focused on LGBT rights and culture.
Shirley Montag Almon was an American economist noted for the Almon Lag.
Maidie Ruth Norman was an American radio, stage, film, and television actress as well as an instructor in African-American literature and theater.
Omar Hamid Ali is an American historian of the African diaspora who specializes in the history of independent black political movements in the United States, Islam in the Indian Ocean world, and black resistance to slavery in Latin America.
The Black Scholar (TBS), the third-oldest journal of Black culture and political thought in the United States, was founded in 1969 near San Francisco, California, by Robert Chrisman, Nathan Hare, and Allan Ross. It is arguably the most influential journal of Black Studies and central to the very emergence of that field. After being renewed and reinvigorated in 2012, it has continued its influence. In 2017, The Princeton Review of Academic Journals ranked it the number-one journal of Black Studies in the United States. Its associated Black Scholar Press has published books since the 1970s. The journal is currently housed at Boston University's Program in African American Studies.
Phyllis A. Wallace was an American economist and activist, as well as the first woman to receive a doctorate of economics at Yale University. Her work tended to focus on racial, as well as gender discrimination in the workplace.She mentored many students and colleagues.
Willa Beatrice Player was an American educator, college administrator, college president, civil rights activist, and federal appointee. Player was the first African-American woman to become president of a four-year, fully accredited liberal arts college when she took the position at Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Suzette M. Malveaux is an American law professor and civil rights lawyer. She is currently Provost Professor of Civil Rights Law and Director of the Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Law at the University of Colorado Law School. She has also taught at the Columbus School of Law, Catholic University of America and the University of Alabama School of Law. She teaches Civil Procedure, Complex Litigation, Employment Discrimination and Civil Rights. She is a nationally recognized expert on civil rights law and class action litigation, who has appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court and argued before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. She is a member of the American Law Institute.
Lisa DeNell Cook is an American economist who has served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors since May 23, 2022. She is the first African American woman and first woman of color to sit on the Board. Before her appointment to the Federal Reserve, she was elected to the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
Margaret Constance Simms is a 21st century American economist whose work focuses on the economic well being of African Americans.
Eva Katherine Hamlin Miller was an artist from Greensboro, North Carolina. She grew up in New York City and studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York; Columbia University, the Graduate School of Fine Art in Florence and the University of Ibadan in Nigeria before moving to North Carolina.
Linda Datcher Loury was an American economist who was a professor of economics at Tufts University. Her work on family and neighborhood economics put her among the founders of social economics.
Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe is an American economist who is the founder and current president of the Women's Institute for Science, Equity, and Race (WISER). She is a feminist economist who has been a faculty member at an extensive list of colleges and universities and served as president of the National Economic Association from 2017 to 2018.
Willene A. Johnson is an American economist who is a former vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, former U.S. Executive Director of the African Development Bank, and a former president of the National Economic Association.
Noliwe Rooks is an American academic and author. She is the L. Herbert Ballou University Professor and chair of Africana Studies at Brown University and is the founding director of the Segrenomics Lab at Brown. She previously held the W.E.B. Du Bois Professorship of Literature at Cornell University.
