Sports
She is an American professional tennis player who is ranked No. 1 in women's singles tennis. The Women's Tennis Association has ranked her world #1 in singles on six separate occasions.
Serena Williams
This African American woman has her own network. Her net worth is 3 billion dollars.
Oprah Winfrey
She is an American politician and attorney who is the 49th and current Vice President of the United States. She served as California’s attorney general for 6 years and the as a US Senator. She is the United States' first female vice president, the highest-ranking female elected official in U.S. history.
Kamala Harris
She was the first African American woman to publish her own writings. She spoke of her experience during slavery.
Phyllis Wheatley
She was the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize. She is best known for her poem entitled Still I Rise.
Maya Angelou
She is an American professional basketball player for the Dallas Wings of the Women's National Basketball Association. She was drafted 3rd overall by the Tulsa Shock in the 2013 WNBA draft.
Skylar Diggins
She is is an American actress and producer. She won the 2001 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role as Tonya in the original production of King Hedley II, and the 2010 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her role as Rose Maxon in the revival of Fences. In 2014, she began starring as Annalise Keating on the ABC drama How to Get Away with Murder, and in 2015 she became the first African American woman, as well as the first black woman of any nationality, to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.
Viola Davis
The first African-American woman to become provost of Stanford University. She was also the youngest person to ever become appointed as provost. Additionally, she was the first woman to ever to become a National Security Adviser. In 2004, President George W. Bush announced this woman would be nominated as Secretary of State. On January 26th, 2005 she became the first African-American woman to become Secretary of State.
Condoleezza Rice
She was an American writer, radical feminist, womanist, lesbian, and civil rights activist. In her own words, she was a "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet"
Audre Lorde
This woman is often credited as the first black woman millionaire. She was a marketing genius, developing a beauty system specifically for black women and advocating for those same women through charitable contributions, like the scholarships she funded at Tuskegee Institute. Committing to her cause, she employed over 3,000 people and rewarded them for giving back to their communities.
Madame C.J. Walker
She is an American former professional women's basketball player who played in the WNBA. She is a three-time WNBA MVP and a four-time Olympic gold medal winner.
Lisa Leslie
She was an American jazz singer often referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz and Lady ___.
Ella Fitzgerald
She was the Democratic nominee in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, the first black female major party gubernatorial nominee in the United States. She lost the general election to Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp. In June 2018 she joined the 9th annual Augusta Pride festival and talked about her campaign. She received a single vote from Rep. Kathleen Rice for the 2019 election for Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. In early February 2019, she became the first African-American woman to deliver a State of the Union response to President Trump's earlier delivery. She is now nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Stacey Abrams
She was mostly ignored during White House news conferences, until John F. Kennedy became President. That’s when Jet Magazine, in 1961, ran the headline, “Kennedy In, Negro Reporter Gets First Answer in Two Years,” according to The Poynter Institute, a journalism school and think tank. She graduated from Kentucky State University and taught for 18 years before moving to Washington. In 1947, she became chief of the Associated Negro Press and the first African-American woman accredited to cover the White House, according to the Kentucky Commission on Women Foundation.
Alice Allison Dunnigan
This woman began studying at Stanford University when she was just 16 years old. She earned a degree in chemical engineering and in 1981 a doctorate in medicine from Cornell University. She was chosen for NASA’s astronaut program in 1987 and became the first black woman to travel in space in 1992 after launching with the Space Shuttle Endeavour crew.
Mae Jemison
She is one of the most decorated track and field athletes in history with nine Olympic medals — a record she shares with Jamaican sprinter Merlene Ottey. Six of her Olympic medals are gold, the most of any female track and field star.
Allyson Felix
She is not only a musician, she is a mogul. Her incredibly successful brands, Fenty Beauty and Savage X Fenty, have made her a fortune, and for good reason. Both brands focus on inclusion of all sizes, shapes, cultures, gender identities, and more — or "beauty for all." Her Fenty brand foundation comes in 40 different shades from light to dark, a huge step for representation in a generally whitewashed beauty industry. She is also the world's richest female musician, valued at $600 million.
Rihanna
Raised in poverty in San Francisco, she made her way to the top of government to become the city's 45th mayor, and the first black woman mayor, in 2018.
London Breed
She is the executive editor at Out magazine — the first transgender woman ever to hold a leadership position at the publication in its 26-year history. In 2018, she was named a Soros Equality Fellow by Open Society Foundations and created Black Trans Circle, which focuses on promoting leadership for black trans women in the South and Midwest.
Raquel Willis
She is a California-based education innovator. She pioneered a new method of introducing meditation into the curriculum for students who have suffered traumas.
Crystal Williams
She is a retired undefeated American professional boxer. She is the daughter of retired heavyweight boxing legend.
Laila Ali
She is a Mexican-Kenyan actress and film director. She was born in Mexico to Kenyan parents, and raised in Kenya. She attended college in the United States, earning a Bachelor's degree in film and theater studies from Hampshire College.
Lupita Nyong'o
She is CNN's senior political correspondent and anchor of Inside Politics Sunday, an hour-long in-depth conversation on the week's most important political storylines, with a diverse set of analysts and news-making interviews. She joined the network in 2017 to cover the Trump Administration and served as White House Correspondent through 2019. In January 2020, she moderated CNN's Democratic Presidential Debate in Iowa. She also anchored special coverage of Election Night in America surrounding the 2020 election, which lasted several days until CNN was the first news outlet to project Joe Biden as the winner.
Abby Phillip
She is from the Bronx. She founded the #MeToo campaign in 2006 (later became known in 2017), when she used the phrase to illustrate the nature of sexual violence that can happen in the workplace. She was recognized as one of the "Silence Breakers" named as Time's Person of the Year in 2017. She continues to fight for survivors, writing a recent Time article on the importance of political candidates recognizing sexual assault victims as voters.
Tarana Burke
She joined the prestigious American Ballet and in 2007 became their second black female soloist and the first in 20 years. She was named their principal dancer in 2015, the first black woman in the company's 75 year history.
Misty Copeland