Florence Griffith Joyner
Florence Griffith Joyner, better known as Flo Jo, was one of the fastest women in the world in the 1980s, and she had the medals and records to prove it.
Tag Archives: African Descent
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Clementine Barnabet
In April 1912, a young Black woman named Clementine Barnabet confessed to murdering four families in and around Lafayette, Louisiana. Her confession, however, did not align with the timeline of crimes that had gripped America’s rice belt region with fear.
Amy Ashwood Garvey
Jamaican activist, co-founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which was the most influential anti-colonial organisation in Jamaica for decades. Co-founder of the international Negro World newspaper, and one of the first directors of UNIA’s shipping line, the Black Star Line.
Clara Belle Williams
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.
Ada Harris
The first patent for a hair straightener was filed on November 3, 1893 by Ada Harris
Clarice Phelps
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.
Fatima Robinson
Described in the New York Times as “one of the most sought-after hip-hop and popular music choreographers in the world”
Dr Mayme Agnew Clayton
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 Ashley
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.
Charlotte Moton Hubbard
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.