Art & Literature
This self-taught folk artist from Louisiana painted scenes of Southern Black life and plantation history.
Clementine Hunter
At just 15 years old, this activist refused to give up her bus seat months before Rosa Parks.
Claudette Colvin
This legal scholar coined the term "intersectionality" to explain overlapping systems of oppression.
Kimberle Crenshaw
This mathematician's work helped make GPS technology possible.
Dr. Gladys West
This woman was the first president and a founder of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.
Nellie May Quander
This author wrote The Color Purple, a novel centering Black women's resilience and voice.
Alice Walker
This civil rights leader emphasized grassroots democracy and collective leadership over charismatic leadership.
Ella Baker
This woman was the first Black female Supreme Court Justice in U.S history.
Ketanji Brown Jackson
This engineer became the first Black woman to race in the Indy 500.
Brehanna Daniels
This organization became the first historically Black Greek-letter sorority, founded in 1908.
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.
This poet and activist famously said, "Your silence will not protect you".
Audre Lorde
This Mississippi activist famously declared, "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."
Fannie Lou Hamer
This abolitionist and women's rights advocate delivered the speech "Ain't I a woman?".
Sojourner Truth
This NASA mathematician helped calculate trajectories for space missions during the Space Race.
Katherine Johnson
This AKA initiative focuses on global health, education, and family empowerment.
International Program
This Harlem Renaissance writer explored race, gender, and folklore in works like Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Zora Neale Hurston
This co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) focused on voter registration in the South.
Diane Nash
This journalist helped launch the anti-lynching movement in the United States.
Ida B. Wells
This chemist developed innovations in hair-care products and held multiple patents.
Madam C.J. Walker
This educator and activist believed Black women's leadership should uplift entire communities.
Mary McLeod Bethune
This novelist and Nobel Prize winner wrote Beloved, examining memory and slavery's legacy.
Toni Morrison
This activist and author became a symbol of Black liberation and resistance in the 1970s.
Assata Shakur
This Black woman became the first female U.S. Vice President.
Kamala Harris
This physicist was the first Black woman to earn a PhD from MIT.
Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson
This women founded Bethune-Cookman University and advised multiple U.S. presidents.
Mary Mcleod Bethune