Clara Belle Williams became the first African-American graduate of New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now New Mexico State University) in 1937. But she was not allowed inside the classrooms, forced to take notes from the hallway because of her race.
The first patent for a hair straightener was filed on November 3, 1893 by Ada Harris
Clarice Phelps was a nuclear engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s High Flux Isotope Reactor when, in 2008, she helped isolate and purify 22mg of berkelium, which collaborators used to create a new element: tennessine, element 117.
Described in the New York Times as “one of the most sought-after hip-hop and popular music choreographers in the world”
A librarian, historian, and prolific collector of African American materials, Mayme Agnew Clayton spent much of her career in the western United States.
Eliza Jane Burnett Dodson Ashley spent more than thirty years as the cook in the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion, serving from the administration of Francis Cherry to Bill Clinton. Her 1985 book Thirty Years at the Mansion garnered her national attention.
When Charlotte Moton Hubbard was appointed deputy assistant secretary of state for public affairs in 1964, she became the highest-ranking Black woman in President Lyndon Johnson’s administration, a testament to her many years of work in education, community relations, and government service.
Jennie Moton served briefly as director of Tuskegee’s Department of Women’s Industries and later was a field agent for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) and president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW).
American farmer and community activist who became the first African-American appointee to a state board and was later appointed to a variety of federal organizations by President Richard M. Nixon.
American lyric soprano