Calendar

Funk singer, model, futuristic fashionista, and second wife of Miles Davis, Betty (1944-2022) was known for her raw lyrics, powerful voice, and innovative blend of funk, soul, and rock. During their brief marriage, Betty was Davis' muse and profoundly influenced his musical direction and sense of style. “Miles was pure energy, sometimes light but also dark. He was driven inspiring and also angry. Everyday married to him, was a day I earned the name Davis.”

The WPA Slave Narratives are a collection of oral histories gathered from formerly enslaved people between 1936 and 1938 by the Federal Writers' Project (FWP), a division of President Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA)

This "parade" of 10,000 on 5th Avenue was one of the first major demonstrations by the African American community. It was organized by the NAACP to address violence and discrimination and most acutely, it was a response to the East St. Louis riots of 1917.

Attorney, educator, and author, Hill (1956) is most well known for her public testimony during the 1991 Senate confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Hill, who had worked under Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), accused him of sexual harassment.

Lacks (1920-1951) is the source of the HeLa "immortal" cell line, one of the most important human cell lines in the history of medical research. Lacks's cells, taken without her knowledge or consent, transformed the landscape of modern medicine, while Lacks herself remained long deprived of recognition and recompense.

Sarah Louise Keys Evans' refusal to give up her bus seat led to a landmark Interstate Commerce Commission ruling that banned segregation in interstate travel. In 1952, Evans, a Women's Army Corps member on leave from Fort Dix dressed in full military uniform, boarded a Carolina Trailways bus in Trenton, New Jersey heading home to Washington, N.C. Around midnight in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, a new driver took over. The new driver went down the aisle to check tickets and ordered her to give up her seat to a white Marine, despite the 1946 Morgan v. Virginia Supreme Court ruling that banned segregation in interstate travel. When Evans refused, the new driver had all of the passengers except Evans depart the bus and move to a different bus.

Cartoonist whose strips and panels infused fashion and refinement with social and political elements.

Mayor of D.C.

NASA Astronaut, Electrical Engineer, and the third black woman to travel into Space.

 Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson was born on August 5, 1946, in Washington, D.C. She earned both her B.S. in Physics (1968) and her Ph.D. in Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics (1973) from MIT, becoming the first Black woman to receive a doctorate from the institution. She is also a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. In 1995, President Bill Clinton appointed her as Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where she served until 1999. She was the first woman and the first African American to hold that position.

Nurse and Memoirist

On August 7, 1920 the New York Age published a story about four Black women who had been accepted by the New York Public Library for training. Catherine Latimer was one of the four. She became New York Public Library's first Black librarian.

Suffragist

Owner of Rose Meta House of Beauty in Sugar Hill & A founder of NY's only black owned commercial bank, the Freedom National Bank.

The Voice!

Modernly, Cooper has been referred to as the Mother of Black Feminism after her book A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South sparked a new era of Black feminist thought, challenging the prevailing narratives of race, gender, and class.

Breed (1974) was the first Black woman elected Mayor of San Francisco, California.

"It seems I was born different. At least, I always thought I was."