Lugenia Burns Hope was an early 1900s social activist, reformer, and community organizer. Spending most of her career in Atlanta, she worked for the improvement of Black communities through traditional social work, community health campaigns, and political pressure for better education and infrastructure.
New Jersey’s Rebecca Buffum Spring (1811-1911) founded the middle-class utopian communities of The North American Phalanx at Red Bank as well as the Raritan Bay Union at Perth Amboy.
The founder and principal of the Haines Institute in Augusta for fifty years (1883-1933), Lucy Craft Laney is Georgia’s most famous female African American educator.
Aracelis Girmay is the author of the collage-based picture book, changing, changing, and the poetry collection Teeth, for which she was awarded a GLCA New Writers Award.
Yosemite National Park Park Ranger, 1918
Black Panther, university lecturer and poet
Irish traditional musician, step dancer, ballet dancer, teacher, choreographer, and founder of professional ballet in Ireland
She spent her career as a music teacher in the Boston Public Schools, coordinating music programs in schools throughout the city, and receiving several awards for music education.
Tayari Jones is a writer whose stories and literary imagination center on Georgia and its capital city.
Ayse Köksüz has devoted herself to developing and improving services for her community.