Charity Still: Who twice liberated herself from the Maafa
Charity Still, the mother of William Still, twice liberated herself from the Maafa/Atlantic slavery with her children. After her first self-liberation, she was recaptured with...
Category : Sistory
Black Women’s History
Ona Judge: The First Lady’s personal maid who freed herself from bondage and was ‘Never Caught’
Ona Judge, known as Oney Judge Staines after marriage, was a bondwoman who worked on George Washington’s Mount Vernon labor camp/plantation, in Virginia. Beginning in...
Ten Iconic Black Women of the Maafa
“Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh. It is a particular, specific enslaved woman, whose mind is as active as your own, whose range...
Jackie Ormes: The first professional African American woman cartoonist
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...
Anna Mac Clarke: A Military Pioneer
Anna Mac Clarke was the first African American woman in the U.S. Army to command an otherwise all‑white unit while the military was still formally...
Elizabeth Jennings Graham: A 19th Century Rosa Parks
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...
Ella Fitzgerald: The First Lady of Song
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...
Jo Ann Robinson: Organizer of the Montgomery bus boycott
Jo Ann Robinson was a civil rights activist who organized a city bus boycott by African Americans in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 that changed the...
Rosa Parks: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement
“My desires were to be free as soon as I learned that there had been slavery of human beings.” [dropcap size=small]R[/dropcap]osa Parks was nationally recognized...
Sarah Baartman: The “first” known Black female victim of trafficking
“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...