Herstory

Jackie Ormes (August 1, 1911 – December 26, 1985) was born Zelda Jackson in a small town outside Pittsburgh. She was a self-taught artist who had several successful comic strips and cartoon characters, and th...

Anna Mac Clarke was the first African American woman to be a commanding officer of an otherwise all European regiment, when the United States military was still segregated. Clarke joined the Women's Army Corps ...

Elizabeth Jennings Graham (March 1827 – June 5, 1901) was an African-American teacher and civil rights activist, who challenged segregation on public transportation, a full 100 years before Rosa Parks did so....

Ella Fitzgerald, known as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella was an extraordinary jazz and song vocalist, who won 13 Grammys. In all, Fitzgerald recorded more than 200 albums and some 2,000 so...

"My desires were to be free as soon as I learned that there had been slavery of human beings." Rosa Parks was nationally recognized as the “mother of the civil rights movement” in America. Her refusal to s...

"We cannot undo the damage that was done to her. But at least we can summon the courage to speak the naked but healing truth that must comfort her wherever she may be." --Thabo Mbeki Sarah Baartman, the "first...

"I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there, I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there, I promoted myself into the business of manuf...

Phillis Wheatley was the first published African-American female poet. She was born in West Africa around 1753, before she was kidnapped and sold into the Maafa (slavery) at the tender age of seven or eight. He...

Sojourner Truth was an African-American abolitionist, women's rights activist, and symbol of Black womanhood. Truth was born into the Maafa (slavery) in New York; enduring nearly 30 years of bondage to four dif...

Ranavalona III was the last reigning monarch of the Kingdom of Madagascar. She ruled from July 30, 1883 to February 28, 1897. During her reign, Queen Ranavalona III tried to stop the colonization of Madagascar ...