February is Black History (or Herstory) Month and it is a time to celebrate all of the amazing individuals that have influenced change. Here are some influential women that helped shape the world as we know it:
Dorothy Height
Dorothy Height was an activist for Civil Rights and Women’s Right since the 1930s. She worked with Martin Luther King Jr. on the March on Washington event and was the president of the National Council of Negro Women. Height also was a founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus with Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and Shirley Chisholm in 1971.
Angela Davis
Davis grew up in Birmingham, Alabama and experience the harsh racism and terror from the Ku Klux Klan. She is known as an activist for Civil Rights and other social issues for African Americans, especially for women. When she was a teenager she organized interracial study groups that the police broke up. In college, she was a member of the Black Panthers. She now travels to colleges giving lectures about race relations, social issues, and women’s rights.
Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells is a well-known abolitionist, feminist, and a journalist that led the anti-lynching movement and spoke out about the treatment of African Americans. She was a founder of the National Association of Colored Women in 1896 which later turned into the National Association of Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). With the National Equal Rights League, she called out President Woodrow Wilson for the discrimination African Americans faced during hiring for government jobs along with fighting for women’s suffrage.
Bessie Coleman
Coleman was the first black woman to earn her pilot’s license and the first black woman aviator. After pilot schools denied her entrance in the US, she taught herself French and moved to France to go to school there. Then in 1921, Coleman was the first black woman to make a public flight in America. She is also known for her stunt flying and aerial tricks.
Hattie McDaniel
Hattie McDaniel was the first African American to win an Oscar for her supporting role as “Mammy” in “Gone with the Wind” in 1940. She was also the first African-American woman to perform on the radio in the 1920s.
[Photos courtesy of Google Images]