Young Bessie Coleman, daughter of sharecropper parents of African and Cherokee descent, found distractions from her toil in the Texas cottonfields.
Pathfinders
Black Paris in the 1920's was deeply divided by language, culture and ideology. Intellectual Paulette Nardal helped to close the gulf.
The 1960's whirlwind of change brought a new form of LGBTQ activism, led by Marsha P. Johnson and other transwomen who made a lasting imprint on the movement.
This glimpse of dancer, jazz singer, and Paris saloon keeper Bricktop is the second in a three-part tribute to Paris Pathfinders by Julia Browne.
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, unsung Black sculptress, is the first of three-part tribute to Paris Pathfinders by Julia Browne.
“Young, gifted and Black.” Those words embodied the prolific light that was Lorraine Hansberry who didn’t live to celebrate her 35th birthday but maximized every moment with pathos and meaning.
More than a witness to history, Clark helped shape it, responding to voter suppression with the indomitable reframe to teach, giving meaning and momentum to the 20th Century suffragists.
Her word artistry was a weapon to dismantle slavery and challenge inequality.
Her dream, to become a doctor, was a far-fetched aspiration in 1944, especially for a third generation Japanese American woman.
When famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass asked readers of the North Star for suggestions on how to improve life in the U.S., she promptly penned, “We should do more and talk less.”