Notable Black American Women is a three-volume series by Jessie Carney Smith profiling 1,100 Black American women. The first volume, with 500 profiles, was published in 1992, the second in 1994, and the third in 2003, all by Gale. Smith spent more than twenty years researching for the book.
Jessie Carney Smith was a professor at Fisk University who also worked as a librarian. For twenty years she researched Black women as she worked, recording information she came across. She developed this information into a list of 1,000 women and over the course of two years built the first volume, with more than two hundred people helping. Smith later said that she woke up between 4:00 and 4:30 in the morning every day, worked until 6:00 before leaving for work, where she continued to research. The first volume of Notable Black American Women was completed in December 1991 and published by Gale. Book one contained five hundred profiles, was 1,334 pages long, and weighed six pounds, but by February 1992 she already had three hundred names for inclusion in book two, which was set for publication in 1997, again by Gale. [1] [2] [3] She condensed the volume into Epic Lives: One Hundred Black Women Who Made a Difference, which was published by Visible Ink Press. [4]
The second volume was actually published in 1994. [5] Volume three was published in 2003, bringing the total of women profiled to 1,100. The third book included an index divided geographically and by occupation and subject covering all three volumes. [6]
A reviewer of the first volume considered the profiles "extensive" and "well written" and concluded that it was "an outstanding volume". [7] A review of the third volume called the series "excellent". [6]
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin was a publisher, journalist, civil rights leader, suffragist, and editor of the Woman's Era, the first national newspaper published by and for African-American women.
Dorothy Louise Porter Wesley was a librarian, bibliographer and curator, who built the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University into a world-class research collection. She was the first African American to receive a library science degree from Columbia University. Porter published numerous bibliographies on African American history. When she realized that the Dewey Decimal System had only two classification numbers for African Americans, one for slavery and one for colonization, she created a new classification system that ordered books by genre and author.
Alma Julia Hightower was an American vocalist, musician and music teacher. From the early 1920s to the mid-1960s she taught thousands of children and adults, many of whom became outstanding performers, such as Clarence McDonald.
Sarah Harris Fayerweather was an African-American activist, abolitionist, and school integrationist. Beginning in January 1833 at the age of twenty, she attended Prudence Crandall's Canterbury Female Boarding School in Canterbury, Connecticut, the first integrated school in the United States.
Lucy Stanton Day Sessions was an American abolitionist and feminist figure, notable for being the first African-American woman to complete a four-year course of a study at a college or university. She completed a Ladies Literary Course from Oberlin College in 1850.
Catherine Allen Latimer was the New York Public Library's first African-American librarian. She was a notable authority on bibliographies of African-American life and instrumental in forming the library's Division of Negro History, Literature and Prints.
Ida Gray was the first African-American woman to become a dentist in the United States.
The Woman's Era Club was an African-American women's civic organization founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in between 1892 and 1894 by Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin. The Club was the first black women's club in Boston. The organization was especially well-known for the conflict caused when Ruffin attempted to desegregate the General Federation of Women's Clubs (GFWC) in 1900.
Freddye Scarborough Henderson was an American business woman and travel agent known for pioneering travel agencies geared towards African-Americans. Henderson was born in Franklinton, Louisiana, on February 18, 1917 She earned a B.S. in home economics from Southern University in 1937 and was the first African American to earn a degree in fashion merchandising from New York University in 1950 and went on to teach fashion and textiles at Spelman College. She married Jacob R. Henderson in Georgia in 1941. From 1944 to 1950 Henderson owned a dress shop in Atlanta. In 1950, Henderson became a fashion editor for the Associated Negro Press and had a fashion column which was syndicated in many black newspapers in America. From 1957 to 193, Henderson wrote a syndicated weekly column, “Travel by Freddye,” which ran in the Pittsburgh Courier.
Jessie Carney Smith is an American librarian and educator, formerly Dean of the Fisk University Library and Camille Cosby Distinguished Chair in the Humanities. She was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. degree in library science from the University of Illinois. She is also a scholar and author of research guides and reference books focusing on notable African-American people.
Effie O'Neal Ellis was an American pediatrician, child medical care consultant, and an activist for infant health and maternal education. Ellis was the first African American woman to hold an executive position in the American Medical Association. In 1989, Ellis was inducted to the Chicago Women's Hall of Fame for her efforts in improving the lives of the black community and helping to lower infant mortality rates.
Mollie Ernestine Dunlap was a librarian, bibliographer, and educator. Her research illuminated the scholarship of African Americans and the experience of African Americans in higher education, especially the groundbreaking publication of the Index to Selected Negro Publications Received in the Hallie Q. Brown Library. Her work as a founding member of the first African American library association, as well as within the American Library Association, championed the civil rights of black librarians in the United States.
Helen Appo Cook was a wealthy, prominent African-American community activist in Washington, D.C., and a leader in the women's club movement. Cook was a founder and president of the Colored Women's League, which consolidated with another organization in 1896 to become the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), an organization still active in the 21st century. Cook supported voting rights and was a member of the Niagara Movement, which opposed racial segregation and African American disenfranchisement. In 1898, Cook publicly rebuked Susan B. Anthony, president of the National Woman's Suffrage Association, and requested she support universal suffrage following Anthony's speech at a U.S. Congress House Committee on Judiciary hearing.
Olivia Sophie L'Ange Shipp was a multi-instrumentalist known primarily as a bass violinist. She performed in dance bands, jazz bands, chamber music ensembles and orchestras in New York City and other parts of the U.S.A. She was also a founder of the Negro Women's Orchestral and Civic Association.
Helena Maud Brown Cobb was an American educator and missionary from Georgia. Born in Monroe County, Georgia, she attended Atlanta University and served as an educator and principal at many schools for African Americans in the state. She was also active in organizing and pushing for greater missionary opportunities for women within the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church.
Cora Catherine Calhoun Horne was an suffragist, civil rights activist, and an Atlanta socialite. She was an African-American woman. She was an early member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a founding member of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). She was the grandmother of entertainer Lena Horne and raised Horne when she was young.
Constance Hill Marteena was an American librarian and author, known for her bibliographies about Black women.
Millie Essie Gibson Hale was an American nurse, hospital founder, social activist, and civic worker.
Anna Belle Rhodes Penn was an African American essayist, poet, and educator, who began her studies at Shaw University aged just thirteen.
Louie Zenobia Coleman was an American librarian who worked for most of her career at Tougaloo College in Mississippi. She is credited with "pav[ing] the way for future black librarians", and received an honorary lifelong membership from the American Library Association. The L. Zenobia Coleman library at Tougaloo College is named for her.