The Black history heroes you may never have heard about
These are life stories worth knowing.
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Updated: 7:49 AM CST Feb 8, 2021
they hung loose is for him because he was a real fighter for civil rights. One time when the Children were smaller. I don't think they even remember. But we had threats on our home because of segregation, and at one time they had to kind of watch our house because we got bomb threats. Did you make it your purpose to get your Children involved in that? Yes. Can you tell me why? Because I knew somehow things would change one day and we would always encourage and to strive for the stars. I remember that foul grounds when my Children were small, they would ask me why they could not go. I said, Baby, one day you'll be able to go. The fairground was they would have fares and blacks could on the go So nice when your kids would ask you questions about you know why? Why can't we go? How did that make you feel? As a mother, I explained to them that hopefully one day they will be able to go. But blacks just wasn't allowed to go until certain days. But I had a lot of explaining to do. Tell me about your career path there. How hard was it for you? It was hard because I'm. When we first started nursing blacks weren't allowed to give medications. We just had to do the other words. But later on, after segregation was, you know they have working on this steel. But after that, we were able Thio give medications. What are some things you see today that you never thought you would see in Birmingham? I never thought we'll see a black man. I never thought we'll see Black City Council, black commissioners, black principals in schools. It's better now. It's much better than it was in those days because they really had to fight. Did you ever see the images of the black lives matter protest after George Floyd was killed? Have you ever compared the those same images to what was broadcasted then during the Martin Luther King rallies and, um, the sit down? Yes. Um, I do compare with that, but it's even. Even in those days was been a long time ago. We are It just wasn't like that. It wasn't as many people protesting. Can you give some positive energy some positive feedback to people who are still fighting like those who did back in the Martin Luther King days. Keep the chan up. Things are getting better. And I would always advise them. Like I told my Children to reach for the stars and always strive for higher like we have. Ah, first time we have a black vice president, and they could do that, too.
The Black history heroes you may never have heard about
These are life stories worth knowing.
![Marie Claire logo]()
Updated: 7:49 AM CST Feb 8, 2021
Video above: Woman reflects on life as Black nurse, mom during civil rights movement
Black History Month is the time to honor the role and achievements of African-Americans in the United States. While some groundbreaking heroes are well-known, there are many more unsung heroes worth celebrating — particularly Black women. Here, we rounded up some women whose accomplishments and tireless efforts transformed our country, and who never got the credit they deserve.
1
Jane Bolin
Jane Bolin became the nation's first Black woman judge in 1939. She was the first Black woman to graduate from Yale Law School, and would serve on New York's Family Court for four decades. Besides dealing with many domestic cases, she worked to stop probation officers from getting assignments based on the color of their skin. During her career, she also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to create a program that would intervene before young boys committed crimes.
2
Alice Allison Dunnigan
Alice Allison Dunnigan was the She was also the first Black female member of the Senate and House of Representatives press galleries. Her love for writing began when she was 13, penning one-sentence pieces for the Owensboro Enterprise. She became the chief of the Associated Negro Press in 1947, which would allow her a year later to become the first Black female to follow a president's campaign out on the road. While she had to on his Western campaign trail, she would finally receive the respect she deserved when John F. Kennedy was elected. She would serve as an education consultant of the president's committee on equal employment opportunity until 1965.
3
Wangari Maathai
Wangari Maathai became the first Black woman to win the for her environmental work in Kenya. She was also the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree. Maathai served as the chairman for six years on the National Council of Women in Kenya,and introduced the idea of accomplishing the largest tree-planting campaign in Africa — the Green Belt Movement. The organization in Kenya since its founding in 1977.
4
Marsha P. Johnson
Marsha P. Johnson was an LGBTQ activist and trans woman who was one of the first drag queens to walk into the Stonewall Inn. , Johnson co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries organization with Sylvia Rivera, . The organization housed and fed homeless youth that identified as queer, as well as sex workers in the lower part of New York City, Johnson also modeled for Andy Warhol, performed with the drag group Hot Peaches and was an AIDS activist with ACT UP for five years.
5
Claudette Colvin
Nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, a then 15-year-old Claudette Colvin did the same. On March 2, 1955, Colvin was taking the bus home from high school when the driver ordered her to give up her seat, . Colvin refused, saying she paid her fare and it was her constitutional right, but was then arrested by two police officers. Colvin later became the in the federal lawsuit Browder v. Gayle, which ended segregation on public transportation in Alabama.
6
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy
And before both Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks, there was Irene Morgan Kirkaldy. In July 1944, Morgan Kirkaldy was arrested after she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Virginia. She was convicted in a County Circuit Court, but appealed the decision to the Virginia Supreme Court and later to the Supreme Court. With the help of lawyers from the NAACP, including Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court of Morgan Kirkaldy on June 3, 1946. While Southern states largely ignored the ruling, Morgan Kirkaldy's case was a pioneer in civil rights law. Morgan Kirkaldy received the Presidential Citizens Medal from President Bill Clinton in 2001.
7
Anna Arnold Hedgeman
Hedgeman was an advocate who worked with religious organizations and within the government to mobilize the civil rights movement. Hedgeman became the first African-American graduate of Hamline University in 1922. She later worked for a number of religious organizations, most notably the Young Women's Christian Association. Hedgeman also held various roles in the government, including working on Harry S. Truman's in 1948 and serving in the cabinet of New York Mayor Robert F. Wagner from 1954 to 1958, the first African American woman to do so. Hedgeman was also instrumental in the planning of the historic March on Washington in 1963.
8
Amelia Boynton Robinson
Boynton Robinson has been recognized for her tireless civil rights advocacy in recent years — including a portrayal in 2014's "Selma" — but many may not know just how pivotal a figure she was. Boynton Robinson began her civil rights activism in the 1930s, when she started advocating for voting rights after becoming one of the few Black women registered to vote in Selma, Alabama. Boynton Robinson became the to run for Congress in 1964 and the following year, she helped Martin Luther King Jr. plan the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama for March 7, 1965, now known as "Bloody Sunday." Boynton Robinson and the roughly 600 demonstrators were attacked by state troopers with tear gas, billy clubs, and whips. Boynton Robinson was hospitalized after the march and a horrific photo of her injuries was widely circulated. Later, in 1965, Boynton Robinson was invited to the White House when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. In 1990, she received the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Medal.
9
Daisy Bates
Bates was a civil rights activists best known for her work on behalf of the Little Rock Nine. Bates and her husband founded the Arkansas State Press, a weekly African-American newspaper that advocated for civil rights. In 1952, Bates became the president of the NAACP's Arkansas branch and in 1957, Bates fought for the Little Rock Nine, the nine Black students who were attending an all-white school as part of the schools desegregation. Bates escorted and advocated for the students amid intense opposition, and is honored by the with a state holiday on the third Monday of February.
10
Diane Nash
Of the many accomplishments Nash has made in her lifelong commitment to civil rights activism, her most famous contributions include her work organizing and leading Freedom Rides and sit-ins. Nash, who was born in Chicago, got involved with the civil rights movement when she enrolled at Fisk University in Nashville in 1959. In April 1960, she helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Nash also coordinated the Nashville Student Movement Ride, which was part of the Freedom Rides in 1961, coordinating between her fellow students, the media and the Department of Justice. She engaged in sit-ins herself, even spending time in jail in February 1961 in solidarity with the "Rock Hill Nine," nine students that were imprisoned after a sit-in. Nash also played a crucial role in the desegregation campaign in Birmingham in 1963, and received a Rosa Parks Award from the SCLC along with her husband in 1965.
11
Ella Baker
Baker was a civil rights activist who worked for a number of organizations throughout her lifetime. After graduating as valedictorian from Shaw University in North Carolina, Baker moved to New York City to help start the Young Negroes Cooperative League. She started working for the NAACP in 1940, and co-founded the organization In Friendship to fight against Jim Crow laws in 1955. In 1957, she was asked to help organize Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and also helped form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, which became one of the biggest in the country.
12
Dorothy Height
Height has been called the matriarch of the civil rights movement and often worked outside of the public eye. After receiving two degrees from New York University in the 1930s, Height worked for the New York City Welfare Department and then became the assistant executive director of the Harlem Y.M.C.A. She was involved in anti-lynching protests, brought public attention to the exploitation of African-American women working in "slave markets," and escorted First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to the National Council of Negro Women, a council she served on for more than 40 years. In the 1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower to take an aggressive stance on school desegregation issues. Height also worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and she stood on the platform with as he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech in August 1963.
13
Shirley Chisholm
Chisholm was a pioneer for Black women holding major roles in the government. Chisholm first served as an educational consultant for New York City's bureau of child welfare and ran for New York State Assembly in 1964. In 1968, Chisholm was elected as the first African American congresswoman, and later became one of the of the Congressional Black Caucus. Chisholm made history once again in 1972 when she became the first Black woman of a major political party to run for the Democratic party nomination.
14
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Before Brittany Howard, there was , a queer Black woman from Arkansas. Born in 1915 to cotton pickers Katie Bell Nubin and Willis Atkins, she and her mother settled in Chicago in the 1920s, where they performed religious concerts. On the scene before Johnny Cash and Little Richard, she spent the late 1930s and 1940s experimenting with her distinctive guitar style that fused jazz, blues and gospel music. After two marriages, Tharpe met her partner Marie Knight in the 1940s and the duo collaborated extensively together, although they later split. Known as the Godmother of Rock ‘N’ Roll, Tharpe , Chuck Berry, Aretha Franklin and countless others.
15
Loïs Mailou Jones
Loïs Mailou Jones was a highly regarded artist and teacher whose career spanned seven decades. Influenced by the Harlem Renaissance movement, Jones . Born in Boston in 1905, Lois settled in Washington D.C. where she taught at Howard University. Through countless international trips and research into a variety of art forms, Jones broadened the idea of what Black art can be. Known as one of the first Black artists to , Jones influenced generations of Black modernists.
16
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw is a lawyer, activist, scholar and philosopher who developed the much-debated . Coined in 1989, intersectionality how class, race, gender and other identifiers “intersect” and overlap, potentially causing their effects to compound.
17
Gwendolyn Brooks
Although the calls Gwendolyn Brooks “the most highly regarded, influential, and widely read poets of 20th-century American poetry,” I only found her work through a recommendation from thriftbooks.com. That is to say, this Pulitzer Prize-winning poet – she is the first Black woman to earn this distinction – . She began writing through the encouragement of her mother. After winning her Pulitzer in 1950, she went on to serve as a poetry consultant for the Library of Congress and the poet laureate of the United States. Her work examined the ordinary lives of Black people, often reflecting her political consciousness and the ongoing struggle for civil rights.
18
Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler
Dr. Crumpler was the first African-American woman physician in the United States. Born in 1831, Dr. Crumpler first worked as a nurse in Massachusetts between 1852 and 1860. She was accepted to New England Female Medical College and earned an M.D. in 1864. She practiced medicine in Boston and Richmond, Virginia, primarily working with the poor, who had limited access to medical care. In 1883, Dr. Crumpler published a renowned book, Book of Medical Discourses In Two Parts, which many believe is the first medical text written by an African-American author.
