MARCH 24, 2016
African American History The Communicator
Page 7
Women’s History Month...African American Women who’ve Changed History
Jane Edna Hunter
Jane Edna Hunter is most famous for founding the Phillis Wheatley Association (PWA) in 1913. Hunter was born on December 13, 1882 in Pendleton, South Carolina to Harriet Millner, a free-born daughter of freed slaves, and Edward Harris, the son of a slave woman and a plantation overseer. Edward Harris died when Jane was ten years old, and her mother urged her into a loveless marriage with Edward Hunter, a man 40 years older than she was. The arrangement collapsed fourteen months after the wedding, and Jane Edna Hunter never married again. Hunter migrated to Cleveland Ohio, arriving in 1905 as a 23 year old single African American woman. Hunter founded the PWA to aid and assist other single, newly arriving African American women. She led the Association until her retirement in 1946. The PWA was the first institution designed to meet the needs of African American migrants and became, by 1927, the single largest private African American social service agency in Cleveland. The Cleveland PWA also became the largest residence for single African American women in the nation and served as the model for similar projects throughout the urban North. Hunter graduated from the Ferguson Academy and attended the Marshall Law School, passing the Ohio State bar exam in 1925. She was an official in the National Association for Colored Women (NACW), established the Women’s Civic League of Cleveland in 1943, and created the Phillis Wheatley Scholarship Fund. Hunter wrote an autobiography, A Nickel and a Prayer, in 1940. Edmonia Lewis ( 1843-1911)
First successful African-American sculptor, Edmonia Lewis (1843-1911) made her name as a sculptor and attended Oberlin College, where she was attacked by locals who accused her of poisoning her white roommates. She was put on trial and acquitted, yet she was eventually prevented from graduating. Despite her hardships, Lewis continued to sculpt and traveled to Europe with money she earned as an artist. She was recently added to a list of the 100 greatest African American artists. Rebecca Jackson
African-American eldress of the Shaker sect in Cleveland.
Rebecca Lee Crumpler (1831-1895)
She is best remembered as the first African-American woman physician in the United States. Born Rebecca Davis in Delaware on February 8, 1831, she grew up in Pennsylvania, where her aunt provided care for the ill. In 1864, Rebecca became the New England Female Medical College’s only African-American graduate (the school closed its doors in 1873.) A few statistics help put her remarkable achievement in perspective. In 1860, there were only 300 women out of 54,543 physicians in the United States and none of them were African-American. Some historians
have wondered if Rebecca even knew of her status as “the first” given that for many decades in the 20th century that credit was awarded to Dr. Rebecca Cole, an African-American woman who received her medical degree from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1867. The first “historically black” medical school in the U.S., the Howard University College of Medicine, would not open until 1868. As late as 1920, there were only 65 African-American women doctors in the United States. Around the time of her graduation, Rebecca married for the second time. (Her first marriage to Wyatt Lee, from 1852 to 1863, ended with his death in 1863.) In 1864, she married a physician named Arthur Crumpler. The Crumplers began a medical practice in Boston. After the end of the Civil War in 1865, the Crumplers moved to Richmond, Virginia, where, to use her own words, she found “the proper field for real missionary work, and one that would present ample opportunities to become acquainted with the diseases of women and children.” Rebecca worked under the aegis of General Orlando Brown, the Assistant Commissioner of the Freedman’s Bureau for the State of Virginia. In Richmond, Rebecca valiantly ignored daily episodes of racism, rude behavior, and sexism from her colleagues, pharmacists, and many others, in order to treat, as she later wrote, “a very large number of the indigent, and others of different classes, in a population of over 30,000 colored.” In 1869, the Crumplers returned to Boston and they settled in a predominantly African-American neighborhood on Beacon Hill. She practiced medicine there, as well. In 1880, she and her husband moved, once again, this time to Hyde Park, New York. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler died on March 9, 1895, in Hyde Park. BY DR. HOWARD MARKEL
Mrs. George (Hannah?) Peake (1755-18??) First African-American settler of Cleveland
Josephine Baker – dancer, singer, and actress who often was called the “Black Pearl,” “Bronze Venus” and even the “Creole Goddess” Fluent in English and French she became a French citizen in 1937. Baker was the first Black woman to star in a major movie as well as the first to be a world famous entertainer. She was
active during the Civil Rights and though she was loved by all she refused to perform for segregated crowds in America. Josephine started her career dancing on the streets or money to eat where she was noticed and given a role in a vaudeville show, then it was off to New York where she danced at the Plantation Club and sand and danced in the chorus line for Broadway reviews. In 1925 she sailed to Paris to star in her own revue. She became very popular for her nearly nude, erotic dancing. In 1952 she was named NAACP’s “Woman of the Year.” She last performed live in 1975, Prince Ranier, Princess Grace and Jackie Kennedy Onassis were in attendance. Four days later she slipped into a coma at home in bed from a brain hemorrhage and died.
Sarah Mayrant Fossett (1826-1906)
tried to get on a Cincinnati streetcar in 1860. The conductor would not let her aboard. After he dragged her for more than a block, she sued the streetcar company – and won. Her decision made it possible for African American women to ride streetcars in Cincinnati. African American men still were not allowed to ride because they were viewed as the stronger sex and more capable of walking. This speaks to the power of well-coiffed women. Little did the conductor know that Fossett was both married to a conductor for the Underground Railroad and also the hairdresser to the rich and famous in the Queen City. Abolitionists citywide came to Fossett’s defense, but so did white women unwilling to lose access to their stylist.