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Sophia Bracy Harris co-founded the Federation of Child Care Centers of Alabama (FOCAL). She was awarded the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur "Genius" Award in 1991, [1] the Rockefeller Public Service Award, [2] and Gleitsman Foundation "People who Make a Difference". She was among the first Black students to attend Wetumpka High School under a Freedom of Choice plan. [3]
When only a young girl her family home was firebombed in response to her attempts to attend school. On January 1, 1966, at around 1 a.m., homemade fire bombs were thrown at her house. They hit three different sides of the house. The flames blocked all but one exit. Despite the fact that 11 people had been inside, nine of whom had been sleeping, all escaped alive. The house was burned to the ground. [3]
Harris was one of the founders of Federation of Child Care Centers of Alabama (FOCAL), now known as the Federation of Community-Controlled Centers of Alabama. This organization worked to help organize child care centers in rural Alabama and ensure compliance with new licensing laws that were being inconsistently applied. FOCAL also worked to defeat a 1974 bill that would have required child care providers to take college courses and would have been logistically challenging for many of the rural child care providers the group organized and represented. [4]
In 1984, Harris organized the Black Women's Leadership and Economic Development Project to help support black women's self-sufficiency and provide leadership training. [5]
Coretta Scott King was an American author, activist, and civil rights leader who was the wife of Martin Luther King Jr. from 1953 until his assassination in 1968. As an advocate for African-American equality, she was a leader for the civil rights movement in the 1960s. King was also a singer who often incorporated music into her civil rights work. King met her husband while attending graduate school in Boston. They both became increasingly active in the American civil rights movement.
Shirley Anita Chisholm was an American politician who, in 1968, became the first black woman to be elected to the United States Congress. Chisholm represented New York's 12th congressional district, a district centered in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In 1972, she became the first black candidate for a major-party nomination for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Throughout her career, she was known for taking "a resolute stand against economic, social, and political injustices," as well as being a strong supporter of black civil rights and women's rights.
Ella Josephine Baker was an African-American civil rights and human rights activist. She was a largely behind-the-scenes organizer whose career spanned more than five decades. In New York City and the South, she worked alongside some of the most noted civil rights leaders of the 20th century, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King Jr. She also mentored many emerging activists, such as Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, and Bob Moses, as leaders in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Edgar Daniel Nixon, known as E. D. Nixon, was an American civil rights leader and union organizer in Alabama who played a crucial role in organizing the landmark Montgomery bus boycott there in 1955. The boycott highlighted the issues of segregation in the South, was upheld for more than a year by black residents, and nearly brought the city-owned bus system to bankruptcy. It ended in December 1956, after the United States Supreme Court ruled in the related case, Browder v. Gayle (1956), that the local and state laws were unconstitutional, and ordered the state to end bus segregation.
Diane Judith Nash is an American civil rights activist, and a leader and strategist of the student wing of the Civil Rights Movement.
Regina Marcia Benjamin is an American physician and a former vice admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps who served as the 18th Surgeon General of the United States. Benjamin previously directed a nonprofit primary care medical clinic in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, and served on the board of trustees for the Morehouse School of Medicine.
Margaret Murray Washington was an American educator who was the principal of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, which later became Tuskegee University. She also led women's clubs, including the Tuskegee Woman's Club and the National Federation of Afro-American Women. She was the third wife of Booker T. Washington. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1972.
Janie Porter Barrett was an American social reformer, educator and welfare worker. She established the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls, a pioneering rehabilitation center for African-American female "delinquents". She was also the founder of the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs.
Maya Lakshmi Harris is an American lawyer, public policy advocate, and writer. Harris was one of three senior policy advisors for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign's policy agenda and she also served as chair of the 2020 presidential campaign of her sister, Kamala Harris.
Melissa Victoria Harris-Perry, formerly known as Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell, is an American writer, the Presidential Chair Professor of Politics & International Affairs and head of The Anna Julia Cooper Project at Wake Forest University, television host, and political commentator with a focus on African-American politics. Harris-Perry hosted the Melissa Harris-Perry weekend news on MSNBC from 2012 to February 27, 2016.
Merle Hoffman is an American journalist and activist.
Alice Harris, also known as "Sweet Alice", is a community organizer, based in Watts, Los Angeles, California, as the founder and executive director of Parents of Watts, a local youth outreach group.
Terrycina Andrea "Terri" Sewell is an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, she has served since 2011 as the U.S. representative for Alabama's 7th congressional district, which includes most of the Black Belt, as well as most of the predominantly African American portions of Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Montgomery.
Martha Kehres Roby is an American lawyer and politician who served as the U.S. representative for Alabama's 2nd congressional district from 2011 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, she defeated the incumbent Democratic U.S. Representative Bobby Bright in 2010. That year, Roby and Terri Sewell became the first women elected to Congress from Alabama in regular elections. On July 26, 2019, Roby announced she would retire from Congress at the end of her fifth term, which ended in 2021.
Recy Taylor was an African-American woman from Abbeville in Henry County, Alabama. She was born and raised in a sharecropping family in the Jim Crow era Southern United States. In the 1940s, Taylor's refusal to remain silent about her rape by white men led to organizing in the African-American community for justice and civil rights.
Midwives in the United States assist childbearing women during pregnancy, labor and birth, and the postpartum period. Some midwives also provide primary care for women including well-woman exams, health promotion, and disease prevention, family planning options, and care for common gynecological concerns. Before the turn of the 20th century, traditional midwives were informally trained and helped deliver almost all births. Today, midwives are professionals who must undergo formal training. Midwives in the United States formed the Midwifery Education, Regulation, and Association task force to establish a framework for midwifery.
Eunice Verdell Rivers Laurie (1899–1986) was an African American nurse who worked in the state of Alabama. She is known for her work as one of the nurses of the U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study in Macon County from 1932 to 1972.
Bernice Robinson (1914–1994) was an American activist in the Civil Rights Movement and education proponent who helped establish adult Citizenship Schools in South Carolina. Becoming field supervisor of adult education for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), she led political education workshops throughout the south, in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and other states to teach adult reading skills so that blacks would be able to pass literacy tests to vote. Between 1970 and 1975, Robinson worked for the South Carolina Commission for Farm Workers, supervising VISTA workers and directing day care centers. In both 1972 and 1974, she unsuccessfully ran for the South Carolina House of Representatives, becoming the first African American woman to run for a political office in the state.
Heather Booth is an American civil rights activist, feminist, and political strategist who has been involved in activism for progressive causes. During her student years, she was active in both the civil rights movement and feminist causes. Since then she has had a career involving feminism, community organization, and progressive politics.
LaTosha Brown is an American community organizer, political strategist, and consultant. She is the co-founder of the voting rights group Black Voters Matter, which has been noted for its work on the 2017 U.S. Senate special election in Alabama and its influence during the 2020–21 Georgia state elections. Brown was born in Selma, Alabama and attended Selma High School and Auburn University at Montgomery. After unsuccessful bids for the Alabama State Board of Education and the Alabama House of Representatives, Brown began working and founding a series of nonprofit organizations centered around disaster relief, Black voting rights, and funding grassroots community development initiatives. In 2016, Brown and fellow activist Cliff Albright founded Black Voters Matter, an organization whose work is credited with significant voter registration and get out the vote efforts in several elections, notably that of United States Senator Doug Jones of Alabama in 2017; the 2020–21 United States Senate election in Georgia; and the 2020–21 United States Senate special election in Georgia.