10 Reasons Dorothy Height Is My She-Ro

Today many are mourning the passing of Dr. Dorothy Height, one of the trailblazers of the Civil Rights Movement. She had a long and active life, and we have all benefited from being in her era.

1. Dorothy Irene Height was born on March 24, 1912 in Richmond, Virginia and was raised in Rankin, Pennsylvania. Height was admitted to Barnard College in 1929, but was denied entrance because the school had an unwritten policy of admitting only two black students. Instead, she attended at New York University. Height earned a bachelor’s degree in 1932 and a master’s degree in educational psychology in 1933.



2. Height started working as a caseworker with the New York City Welfare Department and, and in 1944 she joined the national staff of the YWCA.



3. When she was 25 she began a career as a civil rights activist when she joined the National Council of Negro Women. She fought for equal rights for both African Americans and women. In 1957, when she was 45, Height was named president of the National Council of Negro Women, a position she held until 1997. During the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Height organized “Wednesdays in Mississippi”, which brought together black and white women from the North and South to create a dialogue of understanding.



4. She also served as National President of Delta Sigma Theta, Sorority Incorporated from 1946-1957. While there she developed leadership training programs and interracial and ecumenical education programs. Height remained active with Delta Sigma Theta Sorority thoughtout her life.


Click Here To Continue

Time To Pay What You Owe

In honor of Women’s History Month, I’d like us to think about the women who have contributed to our collective success. We are endeavoring to stay motivated as we reach our dreams, but our ancestors were motivated to do as much as they could to ensure that we succeeded. We, in effect, were their dreams deferred.

The best way we can honor their sacrifice, determination and hard work is to live the dreams that they held for us, when they knew that future generations would enjoy a level of freedom and achievement that they could not experience. I find it ironic that women in the past were held back by sexism, racism and strict social codes of their time. Yet today, the barriers to our success lie largely within us – low self-esteem, negative self-talk, the internalization of negative messages, and self-doubt.

The sparkling, expansive future that they envisioned for future generations has turned into an existence filled with cubicles, reality TV and escapism. We’re trying to mentally escape from lives that we find unfulfilling, mundane and mediocre. We are our ancestors’ dreams deferred, yet we’re continuing to defer the dreams that we hold inside ourselves. That is not a proper way to honor their legacy at all. Think about the countless sacrifices that the women in your family have made in order for you to be here today. They didn’t do all that they did so we could be living mediocre lives that are designed by default. We owe them our greatness so that their legacy of sacrifice and the greatness they dreamed of for future generations can continue.

I remind myself that my maternal grandmother worked in a laundry and only received an 8th grade education. But she wanted her Booga Boo to go to college, to have a happy marriage, to have healthy children, and to live a life that she was not allowed to live in her lifetime. I’m conscious that I may have some of these things on paper, that I’m striving to achieve the ones I’ve yet to obtain, but that her overall vision for me was a life that is filled with happiness, love, fulfillment and possibility. I cannot let her down. You cannot let your ancestors down, either. We will not allow their sacrifices to be in vain.

You owe a debt of gratitude to every woman in your family who has bled, sweat, and died to make sure that you’re free today. How will you pay that debt and honor their sacrifices, their spirits and their dreams for the greatness that you could live?

50 Black SheRoes: Part 5, Historical Firsts

Part 5: Historical Firsts   This list is a celebration of the black women who have blazed trails and paved the way for us to continue on to further success. My hat goes off to these ladies who boldly went where other black women had not gone before.

 

Madame C.J. Walker	Althea Gibson
Bessie Coleman	Florence Griffith-Joyner

 

• Madame C.J. Walker – businesswoman, hair care entrepreneur, tycoon and philanthropist. She was the first woman to become a self-made millionare. Her empire began with her first business, the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, that produced and sold a line of beauty and hair care products for black women.
• Cathay Williams – the first black woman to enlist in the US Army. She served as a Buffalo soldier after the Civil War under the pseudonym William Cathay.
• Dr. Mae Jemison – physician and astronaut. Jemison became the first black woman in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992.
• Bessie Coleman – pilot. Coleman became the first black woman to earn a pilot’s license and first American of any race or gender to earn an international pilot license. She could not gain admission to American flight schools because she was black and a woman. No black U.S. aviator would train her either. So Coleman studied for and received her licenses in France in 1921. In order to support herself as a professional pilot, she became an exhibition flyer, where she was dubbed “Queen Bess”. In 1989, First Flight Society inducted Coleman into their shrine that honors those individuals and groups that have achieved significant “firsts” in aviation’s development.
• Dr. Sadie T.M. Alexander – became one of the first black women to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1921. During that same year, Georgiana Simpson at the University of Chicago and Eva Dykes at Radcliffe also earned Ph.Ds. Alexander was also the first black woman to earn a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the first black woman to be admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1927.
• Althea Gibson – tennis champion. Gibson achieved many black woman firsts: Grand Slam champion in 1959; played in American Lawn Tennis Association championship; to play and win at Wimbledon; to play in the Ladies Professional Golf Association. Gibson was ranked in the world top ten from 1956 through 1958, reaching a career high of World No. 1 in those rankings in 1957 and 1958. In 1971 Gibson was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
• Florence Griffith-Joyner – track athlete. In 1988 she became the first American woman to win four medals in one Olympics. She holds the world records in the 100 and 200 meter races.
• Rebecca Lee Crumpler – physician. She was the first black woman to become a physician, when she graduated from the New England Female Medical College (now part of Boston University) in 1864.
• Sheila Johnson – team president, managing partner, and governor of the WNBA’s Washington Mystics. She is the first black woman to be an owner or partner in three professional sports franchises: the Washington Capitals (NHL), the Washington Wizards (NBA), and the Washington Mystics (WNBA). She was married to Robert Johnson for 33 years. Together they founded BET which they later sold to Viacom. After her divorce, her net worth was $670 million. Johnson sits on the boards of VH1’s Save the Music Foundation, Americans for the Arts, the Curry School of Education Foundation at the University of Virginia, and the University of Illinois Foundation.
• Sarah Jane Woodson Early – educator. Early was the 1st black woman to become a college instructor. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1856, as one of the first African-American women college graduates. In 1858 she joined the faculty of Wilberforce University.

 

Who are your she-roes? I couldn’t fit everyone onto this list. Who are the notable black woman who should be mentioned?

50 Black SheRoes: Part 4, Civil Rights Leaders

Part 4: Civil Rights Leaders   The pioneers featured for today are not just limited to the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s. During and after slavery, black women were visible advocates for our equal rights. Hopefully this list will inspire you to take part in the ongoing fight that exists today in your local communities.  

 

Mary Church Terrell	Constance Baker Motley
The Little Rock Nine with their advisor, Daisy Bates

 

• Sojourner Truth – abolitionist, women’s rights proponent, minister, lecturer. Her most famous speech, Ain’t I a Woman?, was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.
• Harriet Tubman – abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the Civil War. After escaping to freedom, Tubman made 13 rescue missions and helped 70 other slaves to escape along the Underground Railroad.
• Mary McLeod Bethune – educator and civil rights leader. Bethune started the Literary and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach, Florida in 1904. This school merged with the Cookman Institute for Men, and is now known as Bethune-Cookman University. Next, Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935. She also served as an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• Mary Church Terrell – one of the first black women to earn a college degree. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1884, and went on to earn a Master’s degree from Oberlin in 1888. Terrell worked closely with Frederick Douglass on civil rights campaigns, and was also an active member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1896, Terrell became the founder and first president of the National Association of Colored Women. And in 1909 she was a founding member of the NAACP.
• Constance Baker Motley – civil rights activist, lawyer, judge, and state senator for . During her legal career she worked as the lead trial attorney for the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund. Motley wrote the original complaint for the Brown v. Board of Education case, and was the first black woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court. She was a key legal strategist in the civil rights movement, helping to desegregate Southern schools, buses, and lunch counters. She was the first black woman elected to New York State Senate in 1964. In 1966 Motley became the first black woman to serve as a federal judge.
• Women of the Little Rock Nine -Elizabeth Eckford, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Minnijean Brown, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed, and Melba Beals integrated Little Rock High School in 1957. Segregationists protested and Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to form a blockade and prevent the black students from entering the school. The group was later awarded the Spingarn Medal and Congressional Gold Medal for their courage.
• Daisy Bates – civil rights leader, journalist, publisher, and author. In 1941 she and her husband started their own newspaper, the Arkansas State Press, which became a voice for civil rights issues before a formal movement began. In 1952, Bates was elected president of the Arkansas State Conference of NAACP branches. She advised the Little Rock Nine during their desegregation of Little Rock High School. The Bates’ involvement in the Little Rock Crisis resulted in the loss of much advertising revenue to their newspaper and it was forced to close in 1959. She continued to work in her community. The state of Arkansas honored her by declaring the third Monday in February “George Washington’s Birthday and Daisy Gatson Bates Day” an official state holiday.
• Fannie Lou Hamer – outspoken voting rights activist and civil rights leader. She organized voter registration drives throughout the South and was Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. She also organized the Freedom Summer of 1963. Hamer attended the Democratic National Covention in 1964 as a delegate. Two of her famous slogans are “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free” and “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired”.

 

Tommorrow is the final segment, Part 5: Historical Firsts.

50 Black SheRoes: Part 3, Singers and Actresses

Singing and Acting SheRoes

 

Hattie McDaniel	Dorothy Dandridge
Josephine Baker

 

• Hattie McDaniel – the first black actor to win an Academy Award; she won the Best Supporting Actress award for her role as Mammy in 1939′s Gone With The Wind. About playing the role of a servant, she said, “It’s better to get $7,000 a week for playing a servant than $7 a week for being one.” [she has gotten alot of flack for portraying a stereotypical role; I applaud her for taking lemons and turning them into lemonade, by supporting her community and assisting others in obtaining college degrees through her earnings].
• Dorothy Dandridge – first black woman to be nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award, for the title role in Carmen Jones
• Josephine Baker – the first African American woman to star in a major motion picture [the silent film Siren of the Tropics (1927)], to integrate an American concert hall, and to become a world-famous entertainer. Although she became a French citizen in 1937, she contributed to the Civil Rights Movement in America and the French Resistance during World War II. Baker became a muse for contemporary authors, painters, designers, and sculptors including Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Christian Dior.

 

Ruby Dee	Diahann Carroll

 

• Ruby Dee – actress, playwright and activist, among other things. Her career in acting has crossed all major forms of media over a span of eight decades. She was married to fellow actor Ossie Davis for 57 years. Together they were notable civil rights activists.
• Diahann Carroll – singer and actress. In 1962 she became the first black woman to win a Tony Award for Best Actress, for the role of Barbara Woodruff in the musical No Strings. Carroll is best known for her title role in the 1968 television series Julia, which made her the first African American actress to star in her own television series where she did not play a domestic worker.

 

Marian Anderson	Mahalia Jackson
Aretha Franklin (wasn’t she just a doll!)

 

• Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones – aka “Sissieretta Jones”, was a famous soprano opera singer in her day. She sang for President Benjamin Harrison in 1892 and three consecutive after him, Presidents Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt. She was the first black person to sing at the Music Hall in New York (rename Carnegie Hall) also in 1892.
• Marian Anderson – this opera singer entered the pages of history in 1939, when she was denied permission by the Daughters of the American Revolution to sing at Constitution Hall because she was black. Instead, she sang outdoors on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for a crowd of 75,000 people [First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR in protest of their refusal]. She was the first black person to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1955.
• Dinah Washington – one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century. Washington started singing the blues, but also sang pop and R&B. She won a Grammy in 1959 for her song What A Diff’rence A Day Made; this song and 2 others were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame: Unforgettable and Teach Me Tonight.
• Mahalia Jackson – one of the most influential gospel singers and credited as the first Queen of Gospel music. In 1946, Jackson recorded the song “Move On Up a Little Higher”, which sold more than 8 million copies and was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In addition, this great singer mentored Albertina Walker and Aretha Franklin.
• Aretha Franklin – the ‘Queen of Soul’ has won 18 Grammys, had 20 #1 singles on the Billboard R&B charts, and 45 “Top 40″ hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. In 1987 Franklin became the first female artist to be entered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2008, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Franklin #1 on it’s list of The Greatest Singers of All Time.

 

Be sure to read tomorrow’s post, Part 4: Civil Rights Leaders.

50 Black SheRoes: Part 2, Arts and Fashion

Arts and Fashion SheRoes

 

Toni Morrison	Alice Walker
Maya Angelou	Lorraine Hansberry

• Toni Morrison – in 1982 became the first black winner of the Nobel Prize in literature
• Gwendolyn Brooks – first black winner of the Pulitzer Prize, in 1950 for Annie Allen
• Alice Walker – first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, in 1982 for The Color Purple
• Phyllis Wheatley – the first black published writer; a book of her poems was published in England in 1773
• Sonia Sanchez – a prolific poet and professor, very active during the Black Arts movement
• Juanita Hall - the first black winner of a Tony award, for playing Bloody Mary in South Pacific
• Maya Angelou – poet and widely aclaimed autobiographer; nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for her volume of poetry Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘Fore I Die in 1971
• Ntozake Shange – black feminist, playwright, poet; won an Obie award for her play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow is Enuf
• Lorraine Hansberry – playwright and author; best known for her play A Raisin In The Sun, the first play written by a black woman to appear on Broadway

Donyale Luna covers British Vogue, March 1966
Naomi Sims covers Ladies Home Journal, November 1968	Beverly Johnson covers American Vogue, August 1974

• Donyale Luna – one of the first notable black models and the first black covergirl; first African American to cover British Vogue and named model of the year in 1966
• Naomi Sims – widely regarded as the first black supermodel; notably the first dark-skinned model to receive wide fame
• Beverly Johnson – first black model to land the cover of American Vogue in 1974

Part 3: Singers and Actresses

50 Black SheRoes and Why We Love Them

Black History Month was originally instituted as “Negro History Week” in 1926 by historian Carter G. Woodson. By the time I entered high school in 1994, Black History Month became a time to recite the same often regurgitated facts about Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Malcolm X and a small number of other black history makers. I’m not even sure if kids today include all of these days in their black history month facts.   We have such a rich history as a people. I decided to highlight 50 black women whose contributions to black history and history overall are substantial and various. We love them because of their examples of perserverance, innovation, sacrifice and ultimately success. I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as I enjoyed putting this list together.  

 

50 Black SheRoes and Why We Love Them

 

  Part 1: Political and Activist SheRoes  

 

Shirley Chisholm – In 1968, she became the first black woman elected to Congress; in 1972 she became the first major-party black candidate for President and first woman to run for the Democratic nomination

 

• Stephanie Tubbs Jones – served as a Congresswoman for the 11th district of Ohio for 9 years
• Donna Brazil – political strategist; was the first African American to manage a major presidential campaign (Vice President Al Gore, 2000)
• Sharon Pratt  Kelly – first black woman to serve as mayor of a major city (Washington, DC from 1991-1995)
• The Honorable Frankie Muse Freeman – civil rights attorney; first woman appointed to the United States Commission on Civil Rights in 1964
• Angela Davis – professor, political activist; worked with the Black Panther Party and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
• Patricia Roberts Harris – among numerous achievements, she was the first black woman to serve as an ambassador; Ambassador to Luxembourg from 1965-1967
• Barbara Jordan – served as a Congresswoman for the 18th district of Texas from 1973-1979
• Carol Mosely-Braun – first and only black woman elected to the Senate, Senator for Illinois from 1993-1999
• Ida B. Wells – there is so much to say about Ida B. Wells; women’s suffrage activist, women’s movement activist, early civil rights activist, journalist, anti-lynching crusader and one of the founders of the NAACP.

 

  Part 2: The Arts and Fashion SheRoes