Influential African American Women by Madison Hobbs

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955)

mademoiselleois — 2013-02-26 14:28:39 UTC

Born in South Carolina as the fifteenth of seventeen children born of ex-slaves, Mary McLeod Bethune was a civil rights activist and educator famous for founding a school for African Americans in Daytona Beach, Florida in 1906. Originally for Negro girls, the school merged will the all-male school in Jacksonville to become the Bethune-Cookman college, a school that rivaled white schools in its excellence. Bethune served as college president for a total of ten years, one of the few women in the world to hold such a position in her time. In 1932 she worked for FDR's election and became an important member of his Black Cabinet. In 1935, she founded the National Council of Negro Women to advance opportunity and quality of life for African American women.

Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005)

mademoiselleois — 2013-02-26 14:46:43 UTC

Shirley Chisholm was born in Brooklyn, New York to immigrant parents, sharing her childhood between New York and Barbados. After receiving her MA in elementary education from Columbia University, she became the director of Hamilton-Madison Childcare Center. She later became the first African American Woman elected to Congress, representing New York from 1969 to 1983. In 1792, she became both the first major-party black presidential candidate and the first woman candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Maya Angelou (1928-present)

mademoiselleois — 2013-02-26 15:07:35 UTC

Angelou is most known as a widely-celebrated poet and autobiographer, but that's hardly the limit to her accomplishments. Among her other occupations include nightclub singer and performer in Europe, journalist in Ghana and Egypt, restaurant cook, prostitute, actress, dancer, composer, playwright, movie and TV producer, director, first Black female San Francisco streetcar conductor, university professor, and civil rights leader alongside Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was published in 1969, receiving international acclaim. She is recognized especially for challenging and expanding the traditional confines of the autobiography and being a spokesperson for Black people and their culture.

To hear her reading of one of her own poems, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=UT9y9HFHpU0