Queen Nzinga

With thanks to The Open University for allowing us to repost this piece. Originally posted on their website here.

Queen Nzinga managed to call a halt to Portuguese slave raids in her kingdom through clever tactics. Read about her legacy in this article

Charlotte Maxeke

With thanks to The Open University for allowing us to repost this piece. Originally posted on their website here.

A rights activist against the exploitation what was prevalent in South Africa, Charlotte Maxeke was South Africa’s first black female graduate and one of the first female freedom fighters. Find out more about her extraordinary story.

Lisa Perez Jackson: A Life in Balance

Lisa Perez Jackson was adopted as an infant and grew up in New Orleans’s Ninth Ward in the 1960s. The area was a vibrant center of African American culture with a high rate of home-ownership. Her father was a postman and Navy veteran who took great pride in serving his community and his dedication to the public good was passed on to his daughter. As a child in Louisiana, Lisa noticed that pollution deregulation helped the wealthy make more money but it was harsh for the poor who lived near waterways and canals fouled by the oil industry. She came to realize that environmentalism and equality were entwined and that people of color were most likely to bear the burden of environmental degradation. In her own words, “environmental challenges have the power to deny equality of opportunity and hold back the progress of communities.”

Madam CJ Walker

With thanks to The Open University for allowing us to repost  this piece. Originally published on their website here.

As a single woman in the early 20th century making ends meet was no easy feat, so it’s remarkable that Madam CJ Walker became the first female self-made millionaire in America.

Belle da Costa Greene

The Morgan Library, which occupies a large complex on New York’s Madison Avenue, is known internationally as one of the finest collections of books and manuscripts in the world. It was founded in 1906 to house the private library of legendary financier J. P. Morgan, who began to accumulate rare books, illuminated manuscripts, incunabula and examples of fine bookbinding at an almost aggressive rate in the 1890s. Morgan himself, however, was no scholar or connoisseur in the world of bibliophilia, and the expertise and passion which largely shaped the enormous collection belonged to his remarkable personal librarian, a woman of colour named Belle da Costa Greene.

Claudette Colvin

Claudette Colvin’s name has become a footnote in the history of the Civil Rights Movement, superseded by that of Rosa Parks – who was made famous for doing exactly what Claudette had done months before.

Claudette Colvin was born in 1939 and grew up in Montgomery, Alabama – the city which would later become famous for the bus boycott which many consider to be the start of the Civil Rights Movement in America.