Tarana Burke was born in the Bronx, New York, into a low-income, working-class family. At 7, an 18-year-old man raped her; as a teen, she was sexually assaulted. These events and the support of her mother motivated her to community activism and improve the lives of girls who struggle with extreme hardships. After high school, she attended Alabama State University before transferring to Auburn University in Montgomery. There, she organized protests and press conferences advocating for racial and economic justice. By graduation, Burke joined the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement, an organization promoting youth development. She continued to work for the 21st Century when she moved to Selma, Alabama. At the time, she began to work with survivors of sexual violence, providing support and counseling. In 2003, at 30, Burke co-founded the Jendayi Aza, a program that assists African American girls in their journey to adulthood. Within three years, the program became Just Be, Inc, which provides health and well-being workshops for young women of color. During this time, she began to use the phrase “me too” when talking with survivors of sexual assault. Over time, “me too” developed into a movement to raise awareness of sexual abuse and to provide a safe space for survivors to share their stories. It offered survivors leadership training programs based on “empowerment through empathy.” In 2008, Burke moved to Philadelphia, where she worked at Art Sanctuary Philadelphia, a non-profit that uses black art to build communities and promote cultural understanding. In 2017, following the publication of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse allegations, actress Alyssa Milano encouraged women to post “Me Too” if they had experienced sexual harassment. Overnight, survivors worldwide began sharing their stories using the hashtag MeToo. Burke used this momentum to expand the conversation around sexual violence and its scope and to broaden the movement. While promoting the Me Too movement, she continued to work for her community, serving as the director of the Black Belt Arts and Cultural Center and as special project director at the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute in Selma. Later, she served as senior director of the Girls for Gender Equality organization, which provides personal development programs for young women of color. Today, Burke gives lectures across the US and organizes workshops to educate people about sexual violence, focusing on the unjustified blame and shame survivors take on themselves. Read more...

Viola Davis was born in St. Matthews, South Carolina, and grew up in Central Falls, Rhode Island. The family often struggled to survive because her parents’ incomes were insufficient. She attended Central Falls High School, where she participated in school productions and theatre competitions. These performances earned her a scholarship at the Young People’s School for the Performing Arts in West Warwick, Rhode Island. She continued studying theater at Rhode Island College and furthered her education at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City. In 1992, while still in school, she starred in her first off-Broadway production, As You Like It, by William Shakespeare. Four years later, at 31, she made her Broadway debut in August Wilson’s Seven Guitars, for which she earned her first Tony Award nomination. She continued to perform in various Broadway productions and had television guest appearances before landing the role of Nurse Lynnette Peeler in the TV drama City of Angels in 2000. A year after, Davis returned to Broadway to play Tonya in King Hedley II. For her portrayal of the married woman who advocates for her right to an abortion, she won her first Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. During the early 2000s, she played several small roles in films, mainly Steven Soderbergh’s, including Out of Sight, Solaris, and Traffic. In 2010, she performed in her third August Wilson Broadway play, Fences, which earned her second Tony Award, and made her the second African-American to win the Tony for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play. Later, Davis played in the movie adaptation of the play, for which she won several more awards, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. By then, Davis had become an acclaimed actress, playing roles in various TV shows and films, including The Help, Beautiful Creatures, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby. In 2014, she got her first leading TV role as Annalise Keating in Shonda Rhimes’ How to Get Away with Murder. This character not only made her a household name but also gained her an Emmy award, becoming the first African-American to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Over time, Davis took on various positions behind the camera. With her husband, in 2011, she established a production company named JuVee Production. By 2022 they have released more than a dozen feature films, documentaries, and TV shows, including the political docuseries Two-Sides which explores police brutality towards the African-American community, Emanuel about the mass shooting at the Emanuel AME Church, and The Woman King about the warrior leader of the kingdom of Dahomey in the 19th century. Davis uses her fame and fortune to support and promote causes close to her heart. She donated funds for the public library in her hometown of Central Falls, Rhode Island, and for the theater program of her alma mater Central Falls High School; she also collaborates with the Hunger Is, a program for eradicating childhood hunger in the US. Davis in known for her strong voice, which she often uses to inspire and empower black women and men, communities struggling with poverty, and race and gender equality. Read more...

Born Gloria Jean Watkins in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, one of six children of working-class parents. She discovered her love for books from an early age and performed poetry readings in front of her church community. Educated in the segregated public school system, she was very aware of racism, and being taught by mostly black women shaped her perspective as a girl of color. After high school, she studied English at Stanford University and continued postgraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Later she completed her doctorate at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1976, at the age of 24, she began her long-life academic career. First, she taught English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Southern California, then African and Afro-American Studies at Yale, Women’s Studies at Oberlin College, and English at the City College of New York. In 1978, at 26, she published her first poetry collection titled “And There We Wept” under the name “bell hooks.” The pen name she chose is a tribute to her great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. She persisted in righting the name in lowercase letters to focus the attention on her work and ideas rather than her name and personality. In 1981, she published her first book, which she had worked on since she was 19, “Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism.” In the book titled after Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech, hooks explored the civil rights movement and feminist movements throughout the decades and examined how hundreds of years of racism and sexism affect Black women today. The book was recognized for its contribution to feminist thought and was named “One of the twenty most influential women’s books in the last 20 years.” Three years later, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center was published, in which hooks accused second-wave feminism of racism and argued that the privileged white women’s experiences overshadowed the opportunity for multiracial feminist solidarity. During the 1980s, hooks organized a support group for Black women named the Sisters of the Yam. The group and its name were the inspiration for her 1993 book Sisters of the Yam: Black women and self-recovery, in which she celebrated Black sisterhood. The importance of sisterhood and the call to come together from an empowering point, rather than from a victim position, became a key notion in feminist thinking. After years of exploring and highlighting various aspects of racism in feminist theories, hooks developed a more active approach to solving the problem, as can be seen in her 1995 book Killing Rage: Ending Racism, in which she suggests that rage is a source of love and strength that can lead to positive change. In 2004, at 52, hooks returned to Kentucky to serve as Distinguished Professor in Residence in Appalachian Studies at Berea College. There, she established the bell hooks Institute in 2014 and the bell hooks Center in 2021. Over the years, hooks published more than 40 books, poem collections, scholarly articles, and five children’s books. In her work, she addressed racism, sexism, patriarchy, sexuality, and geographic influences. In her innovative approach, hooks changed common perceptions of the subjects she explored and redefined feminist theories and Women’s Studies. She died of kidney failure at the age of 69. Read more...

Jean Augustine was born in Happy Hill, Grenada. When she was a year old, her father had died, and she and her mother moved in with an older woman in their village that encouraged Augustine to excel in school. After graduating high school, she worked as a teacher for several years. At 23, Augustine immigrated by herself to Canada on the Canada-Caribbean Domestic Program, which required her to work as a domestic servant on her arrival. The family she worked for recognized she was overqualified for the job and found her a clerical position at a billing firm. After taking evening classes at the Toronto Teacher’s College, she became an elementary school teacher at the Metropolitan Separate School Board in Toronto while furthering her education at the University of Toronto, earning a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Education. When she got promoted to principal, she became one of the first black school principals in the country. Upon her arrival in Toronto, she became active in various educational and social organizations, such as the Urban Alliance on Race Relations and the National Black Coalition of Canada, and served as a board member of many of them, including The Hospital for Sick Children, York University, the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Her community work led her into politics, and she became associated with the local branch of the Liberal Party. In 1985, at the age of 48, Augustine was appointed to the transition team for new Ontario premier David Peterson, which named her chair of the Metro Toronto Housing Authority in 1988. During the six years she held the position, she became more involved with the national Liberal Party leadership. In 1993, at 56, Augustine was the Liberal Party candidate for a seat in the House of Commons from the Etobicoke-Lakeshore section of Toronto. When she won the federal elections, she became the first Black woman elected to the Parliament of Canada. During her 13 years in parliament, she chaired numerous committees, including the Human Rights Committee, the Foreign Affairs and International Trade committee, and the National Women’s Caucus. In 2002, she was appointed Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and the Status of Women in Canada, making history as the first Black woman appointed to the federal cabinet. Two years later, Augustine was appointed Assistant Deputy Chair of Committees of the Whole, the first Black person to occupy the Speaker’s Chair in the Canadian House of Commons. In 2007, 70 years old Augustine left the parliament to become the first Fairness Commissioner. In this position, she established new regulatory standards for ensuring access to employment for Canadians with foreign professional credentials. At the age of 78, she retired from her official role and continued working and advocating for many social causes, mainly through the Jean Augustine Centre for Young Women’s Empowerment she established in 2014. Read more...

Mary Violet Leontyne Price was born in Laurel, Mississippi. From an early age, she showed musical talent. At the age of four, she already played the piano, and growing up, she sang with the choir of her community church. At the age of 9, she went on a school trip to listen to Marian Anderson sing. The experience inspired her to pursue a professional music career. She attended Oak Park Vocational High School, where she stood out as a pianist and a member of the glee club, and in her free time, she earned extra money by singing at funerals and community events. After graduation, Price studied music education at the College of Education and Industrial Arts in Wilberforce, Ohio, but later changed to voice studies following the advice of the university president. In 1948, at 21, she moved to NYC and joined the studio of Florence Page Kimball at Juilliard. Her lyric soprano voice gained her many leading roles in school opera productions. Her performance as Alice Ford in Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff caught the attention of the composer Virgil Thomson, who cast her as St. Cecilia in his all-black production of Four Saints in Three Acts, and in 1952, 25 years old Price made her Broadway debut. Only a few weeks later, she sang the opening performance as Bess in George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, for which she received acclaim for both her flawless vocal and her interpretation of the role. Before the show embarked on a European tour, Price married her Porgy, the opera singer William Warfield. The couple divorced in 1973. Even though her voice was praised, she had limited opportunities in formal opera houses as a Black singer, and she mostly performed in duo concerts with her husband. In 1954, she made her recital debut at NYC’s Town Hall, and afterward, she went on a tour across North America as part of the Columbia Artists roster. Price made her TV debut as Floria in NBC’s televised production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca the following year. Afterward, she starred in three more NBC Opera broadcasts, singing the roles of Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Madame Lidoine in Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, and Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. In 1957, at 30, Price performed Verdi’s Aida, which became her signature role. That same year, she finally had her opera stage debut at the San Francisco Opera as Madame Lidoine in Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des carmélites. Her performance made her famous, and she received invitations from the best opera houses and venues in Europe. In 1961, at 34, she made her debut performance at the Metropolitan Opera House as Leonora in Il Trovatore. It was the beginning of her residency as a prima donna at the prestigious establishment, and during the coming decades, she sang a series of leading roles, such as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Minnie in La Fanciulla del West, Liu in Turandot, and Cleopatra in r Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra, a role that was written especially for her. Price became the first African-American prima donna to receive an international reputation, opening the opera season and a box-office sell-out. She was featured on the cover of Time magazine and was paid the highest fee for a woman vocalist. Because of her extraordinary talent, the Met included her in their national tour, which included the segregated South, and in 1964, after a two-year boycott of segregated houses, Price became the first African-American to sing in the Deep South. By 1970, Price had reduced her operatic performances, and in the next two decades, she focused on recitals and concerts both in the US and abroad. In 1985, after 21 seasons with the Met, 16 roles, and 201 performances, she made her operatic farewell in her most recognized role of Aida, for which she received 25 minutes of a standing ovation. She continued performing in recitals that included operatic arias, French melodies, and spirituals. She also gave masterclasses at Juilliard and other schools and recorded numerous award-winning albums. In 1997, at the age of 70, Price officially retired from the stage, but four years later, she made one last performance in a memorial concert for the victims of the September 11 attacks, singing her favorite spiritual, This Little Light of Mine. Read more...

Born Artis Shreve in North Buxton, Canada, and grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. From an early age, she showed interest in art, and during high school, she painted her classmates’ portraits. After graduation, she got a scholarship to the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, Ontario. After receiving her degree, she married Bill Lane, and the couple moved to Detroit, Michigan. She continued her education at Cranbrook Academy of Art, the first woman to be admitted to the institute, and supported her family by painting portraits. Soon, her reputation as a portrait artist grew, receiving commissions from prominent figures, such as Michigan Governor George Romney, Detroit’s mayor Coleman Young, and members of the Ford family. Upon her divorce, she moved to NYC, NY, and met her second husband, Vince Cannon. After spending some time in Texas and New Mexico, she settled in Los Angeles, CA, working with Universal Studios and becoming the portrait painter of celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Nancy Kissinger, and President John F. Kennedy. During the 1970s, the civil rights movement influenced Lane’s work, and she began to depict social issues in her art, as can be seen in the painting Tear on the Face of America. With time, Lane’s art expanded to various mediums, such as oil painting, sketching, and collage. It became more figurative and universal, reflecting her vision of metaphysical truth rather than the specific feature of the persons she depicts. Among the portraits and sculptures of notable people she created are Dorothy Height, Mary McLeod Bethune, Aretha Franklin, Oprah Winfrey, and former President Barack Obama. Two of her most known works are a bronze bust of Sojourner Truth in the US Capitol, which upon its unveiling in 2009 by First Lady Michelle Obama, it became the first statue in the Capitol honoring a Black woman. The second is the bust she created of her great, great aunt, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, which stands in Canada since 2009. Read more...

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to free parents. At 3, both of her parents had died, and she went to live with her maternal aunt and uncle, who were civil rights activists and abolitionists. She attended the Watkins Academy for Negro Youth, which her uncle had founded, and at 13, began to work as a nursemaid for a Quaker family who owned a bookshop. In her free time, she continued her education by herself, reading the books in the shop and sharpening her writing skills. At 14, she began publishing her poems in antislavery journals, such as Frederick Douglass’ The Liberator. In 1845, at 20, she published her first verse collection, titled Forest Leaves. At 26, she moved to Wilberforce, Ohio, where she taught domestic science at Union Seminary, a school for free African-Americans, where she was the first female teacher. After two years, she moved to teach at another school in York, Pennsylvania, joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and continued to publish her poems. In 1854, at 29, she delivered her first antislavery speech called The Elevation and Education of Our People, which received praise. Afterward, she embarked on a two-year lecturing tour in Maine, in which she often recited from her second book, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects. She became a popular orator, and over the next eight years, she gave lectures across the US and Canada. She published essays, novels, and short stories, in which she wrote about the observations of her traveling, expressing her thoughts about racism, abolition, feminism, temperance, and classism. In 1860, at the age of 35, she married Fenton Harper. When he died four years later, she resumed her lectures and began to connect with women’s rights advocates, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In 1866, at the National Woman’s Rights Convention, she gave a speech titled We Are All Bound Up Together, calling for the inclusion of Black women in the suffrage movement, emphasizing that Black women were facing racism in addition to sexism. The next day, the attendees formed the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) to advocate for African-Americans’ and women’s right to vote. In the short time the AERA operated, Harper served on its Finance Committee. In 1870, following the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted Black men the right to vote, Harper began to work with the Freedmen’s Bureau in Mobile, Alabama, to encourage as many people to use their right to vote. She detailed her encounters with the newly freed men and their struggles in her poem collection, Sketches of Southern Life. In the next two decades, Harper was involved in numerous reform organizations. She headed the Colored Section of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, served as the director of the American Association of Education of Colored Youth, and co-founded the National Association of Colored Women alongside Harriet Tubman and Margaret Murray Washington, later serving as its vice president. During this time, she continued to publish her work, including 12 books and countless essays and articles. She died of heart failure at the age of 85. Read more...

Debra Janine Thomas was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, and grew up in San Jose, California. She began skating at the age of five, and at the age of nine, she participated in her first competition, winning first place. It encouraged her to enter competitive skating and take formal lessons. She signed on with coach Alex McGowan, who trained until her retirement. As a black girl in a white-dominated sport, Thomas often encountered discrimination, and judges favored the white contestants and gave better scores to her less-skilled competitors. That has not prevented her from skating, and at the age of 12, she won the silver medal at the national novice finals. Her career took off four years later when she was selected as the Los Angeles Figure Skating Club’s representative. While most professional athletes do not attend college or take a gap year, Thomas continued her training and began her academic education as an engineering student at Stanford University. In her freshman year, 18 years old Thomas won the US national title, becoming the first black skater to hold a national title in ladies’ singles figure skating. This year, she also won first place at the World Championships. In recognition of her achievements, she received the ABC’s Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year award of 1986. Despite suffering an Achilles tendinitis in both of her ankles, Thomas reached second place in the 1987 US Nationals and reclaimed her champion title the following year. At 21, Thomas competed in the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, winning the bronze medal and making history as the first black athlete medalist at this competition. After the Olympics, she added another World Championship to her record before retiring from amateur skating to focus on her studies. She continued to skate as a performer for Stars on Ice and won the World Professional Championships three times. In 1991, at 24, after receiving her bachelor’s degree, she retired from skating to further her education at Northwestern University Medical School. Afterward, she specialized in orthopedic surgery and completed her residency at Charles R. Drew University. After a one-year fellowship at Centinela Hospital’s Dorr Arthritis Institute in Inglewood, Thomas worked at Carle Clinic in Urbana, Illinois, and in 2010 she opened her own practice in Richlands, Virginia. In 2012, she had a psychiatric attack and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Then, her private practice failed, she got divorced, lost custody of her son, and declared bankruptcy. She had to close her practice and sell her Olympic medal to cover some of her debt. In recent years she has been living with her partner in Virginia. In her short six years as a competitive figure skater, Thomas has changed the face of the sport by breaking stereotypes and promoting racial equality. Read more...

Diane Judith Nash was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Since her parents served the country during World War II, her father as a clerk, and her mother as a keypunch operator, she lived with her grandmother until she was seven years old. Growing up, she attended Catholic schools and even considered becoming a nun. After graduating from Hyde Park High School, she studied at Howard University for one year before transferring to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. There, she was exposed to the real impact of Jim Crow laws and experienced racial segregation and discrimination for the first time in her life. She joined workshops and nonviolent protests of the Civil Rights Movement. Soon, she became a leader in the Nashville branch and served as the head organizer of sit-ins at discriminatory restaurants, which began in Nashville and later spread to more than 60 cities across the US. During one of the sit-ins, Nash met her future husband, a fellow protester named James Bevel. In the spring of 1960, Nash, alongside two hundred students, traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina, for a sit-in. There, she co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The organization cooperated with other civil rights organizations, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), in initiating and organizing various protests throughout the country. Over time, she served in many roles for the SCLC under Martin Luther King Jr.’s leadership. Eventually, she left because of its male-dominated leadership structure. On February 6th, 1961, 23 years old Nash and fellow SNCC leaders got arrested after a sit-in in Rock Hill, South Carolina. In her refusal to pay the $50 fine for sitting at a whites-only lunch counter, as a support of the “Rock Hill Nine,” who’d been arrested the week before for the same crime, she led the agenda of “jail, no bail,” and spent 30 days in jail. Two months later, Nash headed the SNCC Freedom Rides, a nonviolent protest in which activists rode desegregated buses through southern states to shed light on the non-enforcement of Supreme Court decisions that determined that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. As more buses traveled into the deep south, rioters attacked them and burned the buses, forcing activists to retreat on May 14th, 1961. Despite the pressure of other organizations’ leaders, Nash insisted that the rides continue as planned, saying that “We can’t let them stop us with violence. If we do, the movement is dead.” Under her leadership, the Freedom Rides continued traveling buses for six more months and were the catalyst for the Interstate Commerce Commission’s decision to illegalize any segregated bus travel and terminal. Later that year, Nash left school and moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where she led SCLC campaigns for desegregating public facilities, mainly schools and buses. In 1962, she got arrested for “contributing to the delinquency of minors,” to whom she taught nonviolent tactics to fight for bus desegregation. Six months pregnant, she faced two years in prison, which eventually reduced to 10 days. Together with her husband, she led the Selma to Montgomery marches, culminating in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Following the successes of the Civil Rights Movement, Nash returned to Chicago and worked in the public school system. She continued her activism in various fields, including fair housing and welfare support. Read more...

Ketanji Brown Jackson was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Miami, Florida. She attended Palmetto Senior high school, where she was a member of the debate team and president of the student body. She studied government at Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude, and then worked for a short time as a researcher and reporter at TIME Magazine. In 1993, at 23, she continued her studies at Harvard Law School, where she served as the supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review. In 1996, the same year she received her law degree, she married Patrick Graves Jackson. For the next decade, she worked in both the private and public sectors. She clerked for several federal judges, including Judge Patti B. Saris of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Judge Bruce M. Selya of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and Justice Stephen Breyer of the US Supreme Court. In 2003, at the age of 33, Jackson returned to work for the government, first as an assistant special counsel to the US Sentencing Commission and then as an assistant federal public defender. In 2009, President Obama nominated her to serve as vice-chair of the US Sentencing Commission for four years. After President Barack Obama’s nomination, she began serving on the US District Court for the District of Columbia in March 2013. In June 2021, following President Joe Biden’s nomination, she was confirmed as a circuit judge for the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. In the following year, President Biden announced her nomination for associate justice of the US Supreme Court, and on April 7th, 2022, 52 years old Jackson became the first black woman in the Supreme Court. She is also the first federal public defender to sit on the court and the first justice in almost 30 years to have represented criminal defendants. Jackson is serving on various boards and committees, including the Judicial Conference Committee on Defender Services, Harvard University’s Board of Overseers, the Council of the American Law Institute, the board of Georgetown Day School, and the US Supreme Court Fellows Commission. Read more...