Michelle Duster is an American author and public historian. She is known for her work to preserve the legacy of her great-grandmother, Ida B. Wells.
Michelle Duster was born in Chicago to Maxine Duster and Donald L. Duster. Her father worked for Comed, [1] and her mother was an English teacher and civic leader. [2] She is the paternal great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells. Growing up in Chicago's South Side, Duster began writing from an early age. While in high school, she entered essay contests and was a writer for the school newspaper. [3] In 1985, she obtained her B.A. in Psychology from Dartmouth College. [4] She went on to obtain an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School. [5]
Duster has worked to preserve Ida B. Wells' legacy both through written publications and public history projects. [6] [7] [8] She has written one children's book, Ida B. Wells, Voice of Truth: Educator, Feminist, and Anti-lynching Civil Rights Leader [9] and one young adult biography, Ida B. The Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy Of Ida B. Wells, [10] [11] about her great-grandmother. She has also edited two anthologies of Wells' writing.
She received the Multi-Generational Activist Award from the Illinois Human Rights Commission in 2019, and the 2019 Martin Luther King Jr. Social Justice Award from her alma mater, Dartmouth College. [12]
Roseann O'Donnell is an American comedian, television producer, actress, author, and television personality. She began her comedy career as a teenager and received her breakthrough on the television series Star Search in 1984. After a series of television and film roles that introduced her to a larger national audience, O'Donnell hosted her own syndicated daytime talk show, The Rosie O'Donnell Show, between 1996 and 2002, which won several Daytime Emmy Awards. During this period, she developed the nickname "Queen of Nice", as well as a reputation for philanthropic efforts.
Lansing is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States. Lansing is a south suburb of Chicago. The population was 29,076 at the 2020 census.
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Wells dedicated her career to combating prejudice and violence, and advocating for African-American equality—especially that of women.
Shonda Lynn Rhimes, is an American television producer and screenwriter, and founder of the production company Shondaland. Inducted into the Television Hall of Fame and NAB Broadcasting Hall of Fame, Rhimes became known as the showrunner—creator, head writer, and executive producer—of the medical drama Grey's Anatomy (2005–present), its spin-off Private Practice (2007–2013) and the political thriller Scandal (2012–2018), becoming the first woman to create three television dramas that have achieved the 100 episode milestone.
The Alpha Suffrage Club was the first and most important black female suffrage club in Chicago and one of the most important in Illinois. It was founded on January 30, 1913, by Ida B. Wells with the help of her white colleagues Belle Squire and Virginia Brooks. The Club aimed to give a voice to African American women who had been excluded from national suffrage organizations such as the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Its stated purpose was to inform black women of their civic responsibility and to organize them to help elect candidates who would best serve the interests of African Americans in Chicago.
Alexandra Scott Billings is an American actress, singer, and teacher. Billings, a trans woman, played one of TV's first openly transgender characters in 2005 made-for-TV movie Romy and Michele: In the Beginning. She is also known for portraying the recurring character Davina in the Amazon series Transparent and has played transgender characters in ER, Eli Stone, How to Get Away with Murder, Grey's Anatomy and The Conners.
Lisel Mueller was a German-born American poet, translator and academic teacher. Her family fled the Nazi regime, and she arrived in the U.S. in 1939 at the age of 15. She worked as a literary critic and taught at the University of Chicago, Elmhurst College and Goddard College. She began writing poetry in the 1950s and published her first collection in 1965, after years of self-study. She received awards including the National Book Award in 1981 and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1997, as the only German-born poet awarded that prize.
Eleanor Taylor Bland was an African-American writer of crime fiction. She was the creator of Lincoln Prairie, Illinois police detective Marti McAllister.
Shannon Farnon is a Canadian-born American actress. She is best known as being the first actress to voice Wonder Woman in a Hanna-Barbera production, having voiced her in Super Friends from 1973 to 1983.
Jamila Woods is a Chicago-based American singer, songwriter and poet. Woods is a graduate of St. Ignatius College Prep and Brown University, where she received a BA in Africana Studies and Theater & Performance Studies. Her work focuses on themes of Black ancestry, Black feminism, and Black identity, with recurring emphases on self-love and the City of Chicago.
Naysha Lopez is the stage name of drag performer and beauty pageant winner Fabian Rodriguez, who won the 2013 Miss Continental competition and appeared on the eighth seasons of both RuPaul's Drag Race and RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars.
Maureen Therese Seaton was an American lesbian poet, memoirist, and professor of creative writing. She authored fifteen solo books of poetry, co-authored an additional thirteen, and wrote one memoir, Sex Talks to Girls, which won the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography. Seaton's writing has been described as "unusual, compressed, and surrealistic," and was frequently created in collaboration with fellow poets such as Denise Duhamel, Samuel Ace, Neil de la Flor, David Trinidad, Kristine Snodgrass, cin salach, Niki Nolin, and Mia Leonin.
Ada Sophia Dennison McKinley was an American educator, settlement house worker, and activist in Chicago, Illinois. She founded the South Side Settlement House, later renamed in her honor as Ada S. McKinley Community Services. The organization continues to serve thousands in the Chicago metropolitan area, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Because of her pioneering community service work, she is hailed as a "heroine of Chicago's South Side."
Torkwase Dyson is an interdisciplinary artist based in Beacon, New York, United States. Dyson describes the themes of her work as "architecture, infrastructure, environmental justice, and abstract drawing." Her work is informed by her own theory of Black Compositional Thought. This working term considers how spatial networks—paths, throughways, water, architecture, and geographies—are composed by Black bodies as a means of exploring potential networks for Black liberation. She is represented by Pace Gallery and Richard Gray Gallery.
Alfreda M. Duster was an American social worker and civic leader in Chicago. She is best known as the youngest daughter of civil rights activist Ida B. Wells and as the editor of her mother's posthumously published autobiography, Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells (1970).
The Memphis Free Speech was an African American newspaper founded in 1881 in Memphis, Tennessee, by the Reverend Taylor Nightingale, based at the Beale Street Baptist Church. In 1888 the publication's name was changed to the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight when Nightingale was joined by J. L. Fleming, a newspaperman from Crittenden County, Arkansas, who had previously edited the Marion Headlight "until a white mob 'liberated' the county from black rule and ran him out of town." The following year Ida B. Wells was invited to contribute to the paper but declined to do so unless she was an equal partner, so with the agreement of Nightingale and Fleming she bought a one-third interest, becoming the editor while Fleming was the business manager and Nightingale the sales manager.
Martha Broadus Anderson, later Martha B. Anderson-Winn or Martha B. Winn, was an American singer based in Chicago, and vice-president of the National Association of Negro Musicians.
The Light of Truth: Ida B. Wells National Monument is a bronze and marble public sculpture by artist Richard Hunt. Located in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, the sculpture takes its name from a quote by civil rights activist and investigative journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931): "The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them". It was unveiled in 2021 by the Ida B. Wells Commemorative Art Committee.
Mary Downey Powers was a Chicago-area civil rights activist. Her work included advocating for police accountability and gay and lesbian rights. Powers is a 1992 inductee into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame.
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