Iconic Black Women Black women who made history

By Soreyda B Begley

Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.

Maya Angelou

Dedicated to the Black women of the world.

Cover: “Women with bouquet”. Oil on canvas

Laura Wheeler, 1940

Phillis Wheatley (ca. 1753-1784)

Despite spending much of her life enslaved, Phillis Wheatley was the first African American and second woman to publish a book of poems. Born around 1753 in Gambia, Africa, Wheatley was captured by slave traders and brought to America in 1761.

In 1778, Wheatley married John Peters, a free black man from Boston with whom she had three children, though none survived. Efforts to publish a second book of poems failed. To support her family, she worked as a scrubwoman in a boardinghouse while continuing to write poetry. Wheatley died in December 1784, due to complications from childbirth.

Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song, Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung, Whence flow these wishes for the common good, By feeling hearts alone best understood, I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat... Such, such my case. And can I then but pray Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

“Stagecoach” Mary Fields

Mary Fields was born into slavery in either 1832 or 1833. Standing six feet tall and powerful, many bandits learned to stay clear of Stagecoach Mary in the American Old West. Stagecoach Mary Fields carried a gun, smoked, drank and had a wicked temper. Mary was the first African American woman to carry mail on a Star Route for the United States Post Office Department. During the time that Mary was delivering the mail, she was known to carry both a rifle and a revolver.

Mary spent eight years delivering the mail as a Star Route Carrier. During this time, Mary became beloved by the locals of Cascade, Montana for her fearlessness and generosity, as well as for her kindness to children.

After her retirement, Mary settled into life in Cascade, Montana where she started a laundry business. She also opened an eatery as well as babysat the local children. She remained famous, even becoming the mascot for the town’s baseball team

Mary Fields died on December 5, 1914.

One of the first black cookbook authors was born into slavery in South Carolina in 1832. She learned to cook in plantation kitchens in the South, where she developed her distinctive style. After the Civil War, she moved to San Francisco and opened a preserves business. Those close to her encouraged her to publish a cookbook; because she could not read or write, she ended up carefully describing her recipes to writers who assembled them for her. “What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking” was published in 1881 and included 160 recipes, corn fritters and okra gumbo among them.

Abby Fisher (1832 – 1915)

Elizabeth Keckley (1818–1907)

Born a slave in Dinwiddie County, VA; Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley purchased her freedom in 1855 and supported herself as a seamstress, first in St. Louis and then in Washington, D.C. Her skills brought her to the attention of Mary Todd Lincoln, who hired Keckley in 1861. Keckley became Mary Lincoln’s favorite dressmaker and later her personal companion, confidante, and traveling companion. During her White House years, Keckley organized relief and educational programs for emancipated slaves with the help of Frederick Douglass.

Keckley published her autobiography, Behind the Scenes, Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, three years after Lincoln’s assassination.

Keckley died in Washington in 1907 at the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children.

Francés Thompson (1840 – 1876)

Although born into slavery in Alabama and assigned male at birth, by the age of 26 Frances Thompson was freed and living according to her own gender identity in a booming Black community in Memphis, Tennessee. She kept her face cleanshaven, wore brightly colored dresses, and took in washing for pay. Thompson was jailed in 1876 for “cross-dressing” and died later that year. … even though “behind bars, she suffered but [she] never lost her fight, answering rude questions about her gender by responding, ‘None of your d____ business’”

Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907)

Edmond Lewis was the first sculptor of African American and Native American (Mississauga) descent to achieve international recognition. Her father was Black, and her mother was Chippewa (Ojibwa) Indian. Orphaned at an early age, Lewis grew up in her mother's tribe where her life revolved around fishing, swimming, and making and selling crafts. In 1859 she attended Oberlin College in Ohio, one of the first schools to accept female and Black students. After a series of racist attacks, including being beaten by a white mob for being accused and acquitted of poisoning two white roommates and also being accused of stealing art supplies, Lewis left Oberlin and moved to Boston to begin her career.

In Boston she started to do commissioned artwork. This early work was financially successful, and Lewis earned enough money to finance her first trip to Europe in 1865.

Lewis settled in Rome where she joined a growing community of American artists living abroad. She told the New York Times in 1878, she was, “practically driven to Rome, in order to obtain the opportunities for art culture, and to find a social atmosphere where I was not constantly reminded of my color. The land of liberty had no room for a colored sculptor.”

In 2022 the USPS issued a stamp to honor Edmonia and her artistic legacy.

William Dorsey Swann (March 1860 –c. December 23, 1925). -No photo available. The first known Drag Queen in the US!

Born in Maryland in 1860, Swann endured slavery, the Civil War, racism, police surveillance, torture behind bars, and many other injustices. But beginning in the 1880s, he not only became the first American activist to lead a queer resistance group; he also became, in the same decade, the first known person to dub himself a “queen of drag” or, more familiarly, a drag queen.

In 1896, after being convicted and sentenced to 10 months in jail on the false charge of “keeping a disorderly house”—a euphemism for running a brothel Swann demanded (and was denied) a pardon from President Grover Cleveland for holding a drag ball. This, too, was a historic act: It made Swann the earliest recorded American to take specific legal and political steps to defend the queer community’s right to gather without the threat of criminalization, suppression, or police violence.

Photo 1: Edward Claude Thompson (left) dressed in drag, 1902

Photo 2: Charles Gregory in an

Ida B. Wells. (1862-1931)

To understand the power of journalism, look at the career of Ida B. Wells. Her investigations into mob lynchings in the South put the barbaric practice under national scrutiny for the first time. Even when she became the target of death threats, she never stopped fighting for gender and racial equality. Ida Wells (or Wells-Barnett) is still considered one of the most influential figures in journalism nearly a century after her death.

Wells wrote extensively about issues of race and politics in the South. Using the name "Iola", Wells had a number of her articles published in black newspapers and periodicals. She later became an owner of two newspapers: The Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and Free Speech. In addition to working as a journalist and publisher, Wells worked as a teacher in a segregated public school in Memphis. She was a vocal critic of the condition of segregated schools in the city, and was fired from her job in 1891 because of her criticism.

In 2020, Ida B. Wells was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize "for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching."

Mamie Smith (1883-1946)

Although little is known about her early years, scholars believe that Smith was born Mamie Robinson in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1883.

An actress and performing artist, Mamie Smith made music history in 1920 when she stepped into a studio to lay down “Crazy Blues,” considered by industry scholars to be the very first blues recording. Smith was a glamorous and multi-talented entertainer, performing on stage and in film. Her pioneering musical career paved the way for more successful female blues and jazz artists like “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday.

Listen to Mamie at https://open.spotify.com/track/49oCSOgIc H124b6BO78Zaq See less

Laura Wheeler Waring (1887-1948)

Painter and educator Laura Wheeler Waring was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1887. The fourth child of six born to Reverend Robert Foster and Mary Wheeler, Laura was unusual in some respects because she had the advantage of a superior education and middle and upper class associations. Her father studied Theology at Howard University and received his diploma ten years before Laura’s birth.

Laura’s education was exemplary. She graduated from Hartford High School in 1906 with honors and went on to study for another six years at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, one of the leading art institutes in the United States. In 1914, she received the A. William Emlen Cresson Memorial Travel Scholarship that allowed her to continue her studies of arts in major cities of Europe for a short period of time.

Waring’s most remembered work was her portraiture, which was largely of upper class Negroes and whites including James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. DuBois, Mary White Ovington and Leslie Pinckney Hill. The focus of her painting promoted charges of her being elitist; this is unfair since few people who were not of the upper classes could afford having their portraits done by professional artists.

On February 3, 1948, Laura Wheeler Waring died after a long illness in her home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Zora Neale Hurston. (1891-1960)

“I shall try to lay my dreaming aside. Try hard, But Oh, if you knew my dreams! My vaulting ambition! How I constantly live in fancy in seven league boots, taking mighty strides against the world, but conscious all the time of being a mouse on a treadmill. Madness ensues. I am beside myself with chagrin half of the time; the way to the blue hills is not on tortoise back, it seems to me, but on wings. I haven’t the wings, and must ride the tortoise.”

Zora Neale Hurston was a world-renowned writer and anthropologist. Hurston’s novels, short stories, and plays often depicted African American life in the South. Her work in anthropology examined black folklore. Hurston influenced many writers, forever cementing her place in history as one of the foremost female writers of the 20th century.

Bessie Coleman (1892-1926)

Bessie Coleman was an American aviator and the first Black and Native American woman to earn a pilot's license. Because flying schools in the United States denied her entry, she learned French and moved to France, earning her license from France's well-known Caudron Brother's School of Aviation in just seven months. Coleman specialized in stunt flying and parachuting, earning a living barnstorming and performing aerial tricks. She remains a pioneer of women in the field of aviation.

Augusta Savage (1892 – 1962)

A gifted sculptor, Florida-born Augusta Savage fought poverty, racism and sexism to become a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance, the period of African-American cultural outpouring in New York City during the 1920s and '30s. Her extraordinary talent opened many doors that led to her becoming one of the most influential black teachers of her time and a strong voice for civil rights for blacks.

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” (1939), also known as The Harp (right photo)

Savage’s original 16-foot sculpture was an extraordinary accomplishment that defied systemic period sexism and the institutionalized racism of Jim Crow. It was the only commission at the 1939 World’s Fair from a black woman artist. The sculpture stood prominently near one of the entrances to the fair in the court of the Contemporary Arts Building. One of the most popular works of art at the fair, it was seen by over 5 million visitors and received high praise in the press. Yet the sculpture was destroyed. Savage lacked the funds to cast the original work in bronze and to pay for a facility to store it. It was demolished after the event—smashed by bulldozers as part of the fair’s cleanup. It survives only through small-scale replicas.

Marian Anderson (February 27, 1897 – April 8, 1993)

Marian Anderson was an American contralto. She performed a wide range of music, from opera to spirituals. Anderson performed with renowned orchestras in major concert and recital venues throughout the United States and Europe between 1925 and 1965.

In 1939 Anderson was famously refused desegregated concert space at Washington D.C.'s Constitution Hall, due to its owners, the Daughters of the American Revolution, choosing to enforce a lax city segregated-audience policy.

Marian was the first black person to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and kept on breaking racial stereotypes and prejudice towards a person because of their skin color. She was awarded countless times and helped through the Harlem Renaissance.

Anne Cole Lowe (1898—1981)

Anne Cole Lowe was the earliest African American designer to become part of the New York fashion establishment in 1950. She is best known for designing Jacqueline Kennedy's wedding dress. Ann never repeated a design, every dress was an original.

Lois Mailou Jones 1905–1998

Jones was raised in Boston. After graduating from Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Jones began designing textiles for several New York firms. She left in 1928 to take a teaching position at Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina.

At Palmer, Jones founded the art department, coached basketball, taught folk dancing, and played the piano for Sunday services. Two years later, she was recruited by Howard University in Washington, D.C., to join its art department. From 1930–77, Jones trained several generations of African American artists, including David Driskell, Elizabeth Catlett, and Sylvia Snowden.

“Moon Masque” Oil on Canvas and Collage. 1971.

Josephine Baker, 1906-1975

World renowned performer, World War II spy, and activist are few of the titles used to describe Josephine Baker. One of the most successful African American performers in French history, Baker’s career illustrates the ways entertainers can use their platforms to change the world.

During World War II, she joined the French Resistance. Amid other missions, she collected information from German officials she met at parties and carried messages hidden in her underwear to England and other countries, using her star status to justify her travels.

A civil rights activist, she took part in 1963 in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who made his "I Have A Dream" speech.

Mary Dee Dudley (1912-1964)

Mary Dee Dudley in 1948 broke racial and gender barriers by becoming the nation’s first African American female disk jockey. She launched her daily 15 minute show “Movin’ Around” on station WHOD in Homestead, Pa. Within six months her show was expanded from 15 minutes to an hour, and two years later to two hours. On her show Mary played the latest records by African American artists, introduced local talent, and interviewed national celebrities like Sarah Vaughan, Cab Calloway, and Jackie Robinson. Mary Dee pioneered the basic African American radio format with music, news and community affairs

Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012)

The granddaughter of former slaves, Catlett was raised in Washington, D.C. Her father died before she was born and her mother held several jobs to raise three children. Refused admission to Carnegie Institute of Technology because of her race, Catlett enrolled at Howard University, where her teachers included artist Loïs Mailou Jones and philosopher Alain Locke. She graduated with honors in 1935 and went on to earn the first MFA in sculpture at the University of Iowa five years later.

Grant Wood, her painting teacher at Iowa, encouraged students to make art about what they knew best and to experiment with different mediums, inspiring Catlett to create lithographs, linoleum cuts, and sculpture in wood, stone, clay, and bronze. She drew subjects from African American and later Mexican life.

In 1946, a grant from the Rosenwald Foundation enabled Catlett to move to Mexico City with her husband, printmaker Charles White.

Catlett taught at the National School of Fine Arts in Mexico City from 1958 until her retirement in 1976, producing realistic and highly stylized two- and threedimensional figures.

"Sharecropper”: A linoleum cut print by Mexican-American artist Elizabeth Catlett Mora is a powerful portrait of an anonymous woman that calls attention to the hardships experienced by tenant farmers of the American South, who were required to pay for the land they rented with part of their crop and thus often faced lifelong debt.

Janet Collins (1917-2003)

Janet Collins was the first Black prima ballerina to dance at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera House. In 1951, Collins was invited to join the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company. She was not only the first Black dancer to join the company, but also the first Black artist to perform on the Met stage. Collins danced with the Met until 1954, performing leading roles in ballets such as Aida and Carmen and garnering notable reviews from critics and audiences alike. Despite her prima status, Collins experienced racism when the Met Ballet Company toured throughout the United States. In several cities, Collins’ understudy had to perform her leading roles, and she was not welcome in many hotels and restaurants.

Diane Nash (May 15, 1938)

Diane Nash was born in Chicago. She attended Howard University before transferring to Nashville’s Fisk University in the fall of 1959. By 1961, Diane Nash had emerged as one of the most respected student leaders of the SIT-IN movement in Nashville, Tennessee. She was a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and in 1960 became the designated student sit-in movements chairperson in Nashville. One year later, she was elected coordinator of the Nashville Student Movement Ride, coordinating efforts from Birmingham, Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi, and playing a key role in bringing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Montgomery, Alabama in support of the Freedom Riders. In 1968 she moved to Jackson where she led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s (SCLC) campaign to register voters. In 1962, she was sentenced to two years in prison for teaching nonviolent tactics to children in Jackson, Mississippi, although she was four months pregnant. She was later released on appeal.

Nash played a major role in the Birmingham desegregation campaign of 1963 and the Selma Voting Rights Campaign of 1965, before returning to Chicago to work in education, real estate, and fair housing advocacy. She received an honorary degree from Fisk University and the University of Notre Dame and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022.

Nash continues to advocate for fair housing in her hometown of Chicago, where she practices real estate. She is 84 years old.

Annie Frances Lee (3 March 1935 – 24 November 2014)

Artist Annie Frances Lee was born on March 3, 1935, in Gadsden, Alabama; raised by a single parent, she grew up in Chicago, Illinois, and attended Wendell Phillips High School. Lee began painting at an early age, winning her first art competition at the age of ten. Lee was offered a four year scholarship to attend Northwestern University after high school, but married instead and raised a family.

It was not until age forty that Lee decided to pursue a career as an artist; she enrolled in Loop Junior College and completed her undergraduate work at Mundelein College in Chicago. After eight years of night classes while working at Northwestern Railroad as a clerk in the engineering department, Lee earned her M.A. degree in interdisciplinary arts education from Loyola University. Lee’s railroad job inspired one of her most popular paintings, Blue Monday, which depicts a woman struggling to pull herself out of bed on a Monday morning. At age fifty, Lee had her first gallery show; she allowed prints to be made of four of her original paintings.

Doris A. Davis (1935-2018)

Davis was the mayor of Compton, California (1973-1974) who earned a place in history as the first African-American woman mayor of a metropolitan city in the United States.

Davis, an only child, was born in Waukegan, Illinois to Ruby and Cornelius Collins. Davis, who graduated from Wendell Phillips High School in Chicago, received a B.A. in education from Chicago Teacher’s College followed by an M.A. in educational administration from Northwestern University. While working on a doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1959, she married and then moved to California.

Until 2013, Davis was the only black woman mayor in Compton’s history. On June 4, 2013, Aja Brown was elected as Compton’s 2nd black woman in mayor and the city’s youngest mayor at the age of 31.

Cheryl White (October 29, 1953September 20, 2019)

In June of 1971, at 17 years of age, Cheryl White became the first licensed, black female jockey in the United States.

On September 2, 1971, at Waterford Park, Cheryl became the first black woman to win a Thoroughbred horse race in the United States. As a Thoroughbred jockey, she also became the first woman to win two races on the same day in two states when she won a race in Thistledown in Ohio and then another one at Waterford Park in West Virginia. Cheryl accomplished another historic milestone when, on October 19, 1983 at the Fresno Fair, she became the first female jockey to win five races in one day.

Cheryl graced the cover of the July 1971 issue of Jet magazine and the front page of The Plain Dealer on June 16, 1971 due to her groundbreaking achievements and for breaking the color barrier in horse racing. She is also in the Appaloosa Hall of Fame, has been nominated for the Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame and is a recipient of the Award of Merit by the African American Sports Hall of Fame.

Over the course of her 21-year career as a jockey, Cheryl won over 750 races.

Barbara Jean Lee (1946)

Congresswoman Barbara Jean Lee is an American politician and social worker who has served as a U.S. representative from California since 1998.

Congresswoman Lee was born in segregated El Paso, TX and attended St. Joseph’s Catholic School, where she was taught by the Sisters of Loretto, an order dedicated to promoting justice and peace.

Her father was a veteran of two wars and her mother broke many glass ceilings and racial barriers.

On September 14th of 2001, Congresswoman Lee was the only member of Congress to vote against the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorism after the 9/11 attacks. The resolution, which led to Afghanistan’s invasion shortly after, passed 420-1 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate. The backlash against Lee was swift and brutal. She was harassed and received death threats to the point that she was given around-the-clock security.

Bisa Butler-1973

Bisa Butler was born in Orange, New Jersey, the daughter of a college president and a French teacher. She was raised in South Orange as the youngest of four siblings. Butler’s artistic talent was first recognized at the age of four, when she won a blue ribbon in an art competition. Butler then went on to earn a Master’s in Art from Montclair State University in 2005.

Many institutions and museums have acquired Butler’s work including: The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Perez Museum of Miami, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The NelsonAdkins Museum, 21cMuseum Hotels, The Kemper Museum of Art, The Orlando Museum of Art, The Newark Museum, The Toledo Museum of Art, The Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Hunter Museum of American Art and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

By Bisa Butler Fine Art, 2017. Cotton, organza, chiffon, lace and netting.

Anaya with Oranges

1-Epigraph

2 -Dedication

3- Phillis Wheatley

4-“Stagecoach” Mary Fields

5- Abby Fisher

6- Elizabeth Keckley

7- Francés Thompson

8- Edmonia Lewis

9- William Dorsey Swann

10- Ida B. Wells

11- Mamie Smith

12- Laura Wheeler Waring

13- Zora Neale Hurston

14- Bessie Coleman

15- Augusta Savage

16- Marian Anderson

17- Anne Cole Lowe

18- Louis Mailou Jones

19- Josephine Baker

20- Mary Dee Dudley

21- Elizabeth Catlett

22- Janet Collins

23- Diane Nash

24- Annie Frances Lee

25- Doris A. Davis

26- Cheryl White

27- Barbara Jean Lee

28- Bisa Butler

29- Index

30-31- Referencses

32- About the author

References

- https://npg.si.edu/blog/phillis-wheatley-her-life-poetry-and-legacy

- https://postalmuseum.si.edu/stagecoach-mary-fields

- https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/fisher-abby-1832/

- https://wams.nyhistory.org/a-nation-divided/reconstruction/elizabeth-keckley/

- https://www.hrc.org/news/hrc-honors-frances-thompson-a-black-transgenderhero

- https://wednesdayswomen.com/edmonia-lewis-the-land-of-liberty-had-noroom-for-a-colored-sculptor/

- https://www.thenation.com/article/society/drag-queen-slave-ball/

- https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/barnett-ida-wells-18621931/

- https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/smith-mamie-1883-1946/

- https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/waring-laura-wheeler-18871948/

- https://www.zoranealehurston.com/

- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/obituaries/bessie-colemanoverlooked.html

- https://www.biography.com/artists/augusta-savage

- https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/resources-for-educators/classroomresources/media-and-interactives/media/music/marian-anderson-of-thee-wesing/

- https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/lowe-ann-cole-1898-1981/

- https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/jones-lois-mailou-19051998/

- https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/josephinebaker

- https://medium.com/@teibrown/the-first-african-american-women-dj-on-radioin-the-us-mary-dee-dudley-the-queen-of-the-jukebox-8fa583a0a024

- https://nmwa.org/art/artists/elizabeth-catlett/

- https://www.atlantaballet.com/news/celebrating-black-history-month-spotlighton-janet-collins

- https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/annie-lee-41

- https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/davis-doris-1935/

- https://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com/memorial-at-thistledown-for-cherylwhite-first-black-female-jockey/

- https://www.thecut.com/2021/08/why-barbara-lee-voted-against-the-war-inafghanistan.html

- https://umojafinearts.com/collections/annie-lee

About the Author

Soreyda Benedit Begley is currently a student a Bluegrass Community College in Lexington, Kentucky. She is a fashion designer and community organizer originally from Honduras.

Her inspiration to create this book emerged after watching a collection of interviews with renowned artist Annie Frances Lee for a class assignment. Soreyda had never heard of Annie Frances Lee before, and as an artist herself, she realized that there has been thousands and even millions of black women artist and artisans who have been forgotten. That realization pushed her to start posting photos and information about Black women who have done remarkable things and who’s stories need to be known by the general public.

A special thank you to my African American Studies Professor, Joshua Farrington, for an amazing class