Laverne Brackens

A textile artist from Fairfield, Texas, Laverne Brackens represents a long tradition of improvisational quiltmaking among African-American women.

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Linda Goss

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.

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Lucille Preston

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.

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Dr Intan Paramaditha

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).

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Elizabeth Mason

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.

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Annette Gordon-Reed

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.

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Dr Allie G Harshaw

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.

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Major Marcelite Jordan Harris

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.

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