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.
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.
The National Council of Negro Women, Inc. (NCNW) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1935 with the mission to advance the opportunities and the quality of life for African-American women, their families, and communities. Mary McLeod Bethune, the founder of NCNW, wanted to encourage the participation of Negro women in civic, political, economic and educational activities and institutions. The organization was considered as a clearing house for the dissemination of activities concerning women but wanted to work alongside a group that supported civil rights rather than go to actual protests. Women on the council fought more towards political and economic successes of black women to uplift them in society. NCNW fulfills this mission through research, advocacy, national and community-based services, and programs in the United States and Africa.
The National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC) is an American organization that was formed in July 1896 at the First Annual Convention of the National Federation of Afro-American Women in Washington, D.C., United States, by a merger of the National Federation of Afro-American Women, the Woman's Era Club of Boston, and the Colored Women's League of Washington, DC, at the call of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin. From 1896 to 1904 it was known as the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). It adopted the motto "Lifting as we climb", to demonstrate to "an ignorant and suspicious world that our aims and interests are identical with those of all good aspiring women." When incorporated in 1904, NACW became known as the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC).
The Black Cabinet, or Federal Council of Negro Affairs or Black Brain Trust, was the informal term for a group of African Americans who served as public policy advisors to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in his terms in office from 1933 to 1945. Despite its name, it was not an official organization. The term was coined in 1936 by Mary McLeod Bethune and was occasionally used in the press. By mid-1935, there were 45 African Americans working in federal executive departments and New Deal agencies.
Mary Jane McLeod Bethune was an American educator, philanthropist, humanitarian, womanist, and civil rights activist. Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935, established the organization's flagship journal Aframerican Women's Journal, and presided as president or leader for a myriad of African American women's organizations including the National Association for Colored Women and the National Youth Administration's Negro Division.
Mary Church Terrell was one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree, and became known as a national activist for civil rights and suffrage. She taught in the Latin Department at the M Street School —the first African American public high school in the nation—in Washington, DC. In 1895, she was the first African-American woman in the United States to be appointed to the school board of a major city, serving in the District of Columbia until 1906. Terrell was a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909) and the Colored Women's League of Washington (1892). She helped found the National Association of Colored Women (1896) and served as its first national president, and she was a founding member of the National Association of College Women (1923).
The Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site preserves the house of Mary McLeod Bethune, located in Northwest Washington, D.C., at 1318 Vermont Avenue NW. National Park Service rangers offer tours of the home, and a video about Bethune's life is shown. It is part of the Logan Circle Historic District.
The Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedman's Memorial or the Emancipation Group is a monument in Lincoln Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It was sometimes referred to as the "Lincoln Memorial" before the more prominent so-named memorial was dedicated in 1922.
Betsy Graves Reyneau (1888–1964) was an American painter, best known for a series of paintings of prominent African Americans for the exhibition “Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin” that, with those by Laura Wheeler Waring and under the Harmon Foundation, toured the United States from 1944 to 1954. A granddaughter of Michigan Supreme Court Justice Benjamin F. Graves, Reyneau's sitters included Mary McLeod Bethune, George Washington Carver, Joe Louis, and Thurgood Marshall. Reyneau's portrait of Carver, the most famous, was the first of an African American to enter a national American collection.
The Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH) is a non-profit professional association based in Washington, D.C., in the United States. The organization was developed in 1977 and formally founded in 1979.
Louise Daniel Hutchinson was an American historian. She was the former Director of the Research at the Anacostia Community Museum. Growing up in Washington, D.C., Hutchinson was exposed to the Civil Rights Movement and the importance of community. Hutchinson worked closely with the African American community of Washington, D.C. and staff at the Smithsonian Institution to help build the Anacostia Community Museum. She was a historian of the Anacostia community.
Bettye Collier-Thomas is a scholar of African-American women's history.
Letitia Woods Brown was an African American researcher and historian. Earning a master's degree in 1935 from Ohio State University and a Ph.D. in 1966 from Harvard University, she served as a researcher and historian for over four decades and became one of the first black woman to earn a PhD from Harvard University in history. As a teacher, she started her career in Macon County, Alabama, between 1935 and 1936. Later in 1937, she became Tuskegee Institute's instructor in history but left in 1940. Between 1940 and 1945 she worked at LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis, Tennessee, as a tutor. From 1968 to 1971, she served as a Fulbright lecturer at Monash University and Australia National University followed by a period in 1971 working as a consultant at the Federal Executive Institute. Between 1971 and 1976 she served as a history professor in the African-American faculty of George Washington University and became the first full-time black member. She also served as a primary consultant for the Schlesinger Library’s Black Women Oral History project during the course of her professional career. Aside from teaching history, Brown wrote and contributed to books on Washington, D.C., such as Washington from Banneker to Douglas, 1791 – 1870 and Washington in the New Era, 1870 – 1970.
Francille Rusan Wilson is an American historian, who is best known for her research on black labor, social movements and black women's history.
Dr. Rosa Slade Gragg was an American activist and politician. She founded the first black vocational school in Detroit, Michigan; and was the advisor to three United States presidents. She was inducted in 1987 into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.
Roland C. McConnell (1910-2007) was a Canadian-born American archivist, historian and author.
National Archives for Black Women's History is an archive located at 3300 Hubbard Rd, Landover, Maryland. It is dedicated to cataloguing, restoring and preserving the documents and photographs of African-American women. The collection work began in 1935 and was formalized into the National Archives for Black Women's History in 1978. Originally housed at 1318 Vermont Avenue, Washington, D.C., in the carriage house of the former home of Mary McLeod Bethune, which is now a National Historic Site, the archive was controversially moved in 2014 by the National Park Service citing concerns over the inadequacy of the original site for preservation of its collection.
The statue honoring civil rights and women's rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune was unveiled in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., representing Florida in the National Statuary Hall Collection on July 13, 2022. This makes her the first black American represented in the National Statuary Hall Collection.
