Laverne Brackens
A textile artist from Fairfield, Texas, Laverne Brackens represents a long tradition of improvisational quiltmaking among African-American women.
A textile artist from Fairfield, Texas, Laverne Brackens represents a long tradition of improvisational quiltmaking among African-American women.
Linda Goss has blazed a trail in the Black Storytelling Tradition. She is called “Mama Linda” in honor of her mastery as a tradition bearer and premier contributor to the art of storytelling.
Lucille “Sweets” Preston rose to prominence in the 1930s as a vaudeville dancer at the Cotton Club and member of the Slim & Sweets comedy duo.
Margaret Murray Washington rose from humble beginnings to prominence as an educator, reformer, and clubwoman.
Intan Paramaditha, Indonesian of Sumatran-Sundanese heritage, anticolonial feminist academic and writer based in Australia, is one of the co-founders of Sekolah Pemikiran Perempuan (The School of Women’s Thought).
In May of 1854, 90-year-old Elizabeth Mason, a “free woman of color” from Campbell County, Virginia, appeared before a local Justice of the Peace to apply for a military widow’s pension.
No historian has done more to recover the stories of enslaved African-Americans than Annette Gordon-Reed, whose 2008 book The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History, as well as wide acclaim.
Allie Harshaw served with the renowned Tuskegee Airmen and the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only Black Women’s Army Corps (WAC) unit to serve overseas during World War II.
The first African American woman to attain a general officer rank in American military history, Brig. Gen. Johnson-Brown was appointed in 1979 as chief of the Army Nurse Corps with the rank of brigadier general.
Maj. Gen. Marcelite Jordan Harris retired in 1997 as the highest-ranking female officer in the U.S. Air Force and the highest ranking African American woman in the Department of Defense.