Lena Richard was born and raised in Louisiana. Growing up, her mother and aunt worked as domestic servants for the Vairins, a prominent family in New Orleans, and she used to help them in the kitchen after school. Alice Vairin, the family matron, noticed Richard’s talent in the kitchen, and once a week, she let her prepare unique dishes. After Richard graduated high school, the Vairins hired her as a full-time cook and sent her to the prestigious Fannie Farmer cooking school in Boston, where Richard was the only woman of color. On her return to New Orleans in 1918, at the age of 26, she started a catering business and married Percival Richard. In 1937, at 45, Richard and her daughter Marie opened a cooking school. She specifically invited black students, wanting to teach them the art of food preparation and service, giving them the chance to have a career and earn a good living in a city that was, at the time, discriminatory against its black population. Richard began to collect and record the cooking traditions of the local Creole cuisine. In 1939, she independently published a collection of more than 350 recipes titled Lena Richard’s Cook Book, becoming the first African American to publish a cookbook of the New Orleans Creole cuisine. Her book came to the hands of the Houghton-Mifflin publications, which reissued it under the name New Orleans Cook Book. The book was a best-seller, and Richard went on a nationwide publicity tour, in which she was often invited to give private cooking lessons. In 1941, at the age of 49, Richard returned to New Orleans and opened her restaurant, named Lena’s Eatery. Four years later, she opened a frozen food business that offered packaged cooked meals delivering nationwide. In 1949, 57 years old Richard opened her last business, a restaurant named Lena Richard’s Gumbo House, which was among the few fine-dining establishments in the city owned by a black person. The restaurant became a gathering place for the black community and welcomed the white people who defy the segregation laws of the Jim Crow era. In that same year, Richard began to host a cooking show at the new New Orleans television station, WDSU, becoming the first African-Americans to host a cooking show. The Lena Richard’s New Orleans Cook Book, aired for 30 minutes twice a week, in which Richard and her assistant, Marie Matthews, instructed the audience how to cook Creole dishes based on the recopies from her book. Her show celebrated the black roots of Creole cuisine and reshaped the public understanding and opinions about its origins. In the following year, Richard passed away unexpectedly, when she is only 58 years old. Read more...

Bridges was born in Tylertown, Mississippi, just a few months before the US supreme court ruled that segregating schools is unconstitutional. The southern states continued to resist integration and did not follow the ruling. When she was four years old, the family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1960, when Bridges was 6 years old, the federal court ordered Louisiana to desegregate all the state’s public schools, so, to keep black students out of white schools, the Orleans Parish School Board administered entrance exams for the new students. Her parents accepted the request from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and Bridges took the test. She was one of six children in New Orleans who passed it and the only one to attend to the all-white William Frantz Elementary School.   On November 14th, 1960, 6-year-old Bridges became the first African-American to attend an all-white elementary school in the south. It was a significant milestone in the civil rights movement. On her first day, people gathered outside of the school, they were shouting, throwing things, and screamed slurs at her, and from that day till the end of the year, she was escorted to school by four federal marshals. White kids’ parents pulled their children out of the school, and Barbara Henry was the only teacher who agreed to teach her. For more than a year, Bridges was the only student in her class. It was not only her sacrifice but her family as well. They were banned from their regular grocery store, her father got fired from his job, her grandparents were evicted from their farm, and eventually, her parents separated. Bridges continued to study in integrated schools until her graduation. Afterward, she became a travel agent for 15 years, until she quit to take care of her four boys. At the age of 45, she established the Ruby Bridges Foundation – an organization dedicated to the elimination of segregation and racism and promoting equal education to all. She and her elementary school teacher, Mrs. Henry, travel around the country, talking about her story and how to eliminate racism. Read more...

Born in Philadelphia to a wealthy family. Her mother died five weeks after she was born, and her father remarried a few years later. She and her two sisters were homeschooled. They lived catholic life and were well known for their philanthropic work, regularly distributing food and clothing as well as rent assistance. The family used to travel throughout the US and Europe, where Kathrine became aware of the difficulties of the Native Americans and African-Americans in the country. After the death of her stepmother and her father very soon after, she was seeking for missionaries in Europe, to mission the Indian-Americans, and was offered by Pope Leo XIII to become one herself. At the age of 29, Drexel decided to become a nun, devoting herself as well as her inheritance to serve God and help the Indian-Americans and African-Americans in the US. She joined the Sisters of Mercy Convent in Pittsburgh, and at the age of 33, professed her vows, took the name ‘Mother Katharine’, and established a religious congregation called the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored. By the time she died, Mother Katharine had established 145 missions, 62 schools for African-Americans and Native-Americans, and assisted in establishing the Xavier University of Louisiana – the only historically black Catholic college in the US. In 1988, 33 years after she passed away, Pope John Paul II beatified Katharine Drexel, and on October 1, 2000, she was canonized, one of the few US-born saints and the second natural-born US citizen Saint. Read more...

Born in NYC to Jewish parents of British descent. She married Dr. Aaron Cohen, and they had five children. After her eldest son died from measles, Elizabeth decided to become a doctor and devote her life to helping mothers keeping their children alive. At the age of 34, she admitted to the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania – the first women’s medical school in the US. After graduation, Magnus Cohen moved with her husband to New Orleans and opened a private clinic in the French Quarter, where she treated mostly women and children. That was a period of recurring yellow fever and smallpox epidemics, and Magnus Cohen was called to treat patients at list once a night. Although she had an M.D degree, the city directory listed her as a midwife. Only in 1876, after 20 years of practicing medicine, Dr. Magnus Cohen received the title of a physician. She retired at 67. Outliving her husband and children, she admitted as a resident in the Department of the Aged and Infirm of the Touro Infirmary. During her stay, she volunteered to manage the hospital’s sewing and linen room. Read more...

At the age of 25, after her husband died, Eliza Rudolph became the first woman to operate her own pharmacy in Louisiana. Her admittance application to the Medical College of Louisiana University was declined, so she learned the trade as an apprentice for several years. Afterward, Rudolph was allowed to take the license examination test, and in 1880 she became the first woman licensed pharmacist in the state. After two years, and due to her professional record, she was accepted into Louisiana’s pharmaceutical association, the first woman to become a member. Rudolph was also the first woman admitted to the Tulane University of Louisiana, and in 1890, she became the first woman to receive a certificate of proficiency. Five years later, she became the first woman to earn a Master’s Degree in pharmacy. Later on, Rudolph served in many key positions, first as the secretary of the Orleans Pharmaceutical Association, then as the corresponding secretary of the Louisiana State Pharmaceutical Association, and finally as the association’s recording secretary, a position she held until she died in 1897. Read more...

Born to a Creole family in Madisonville, LA, the second of 13 children. She moved to New Orleans to attend school since in her hometown there was no catholic school for African-Americans. After high school, she managed two amateur boxers and worked as a waitress, then she established her love for food and feeding people. At the age of 23, she married the jazz musician Edgar “Dooky” Chase II, and the couple had four children. Dooky’s parents owned a street corner stand selling lottery tickets and homemade po’boy sandwiches. Chase worked in the stand’s kitchen, and over time, she and her husband took over and turned the place into a restaurant named “Dooky Chase.” She started serving her family Creole dishes on white tablecloth tables, which were available at whites-only restaurants. During the 1960s, it became a gathering center for civil rights activists and was one of the few places in New Orleans where people from different races could meet without segregation. Throughout the years, the restaurant hosted many important figures, among them are Martin Luther King Jr., Ernest “Dutch” Morial, A. P. Tureaud, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. During the Civil Rights period, Chase began collecting paintings and sculptures of African-American artists and displayed them at her restaurant. She also wrote three cookbooks and received many achievements and awards. Dooky Chase is considered a premier restaurant for authentic Creole Cuisine in NOLA and has received professional recognition over the years, including “one of the 40 most important restaurants of the past 40 years” given by Food & Wine magazine. Read more...

Born in New Orleans when it was a small town of about 6,000 residents, serving as the capital of the Spanish colony of Louisiana. When Micaela was 15 years old, her mother arranged her to marry her cousin Célestin Delfau de Pontalba. She moved to France for him and became the Baroness Pontalba. Almonester was mistreated by her father in law and lost two fingers when he tried to kill her. She separated from her husband and secured the legal rights for her wealth. After a short return to New Orleans, she agreed to her husband’s request to take care of him back in France. She did so for 23 years until her death. Micaela Almonester is famous in New Orleans for conceiving the Pontalba Buildings, an architectural landmark on Jackson Square. When the complex was finished in 1851, it contributed to revitalizing the center of the city. She inherited the land at the age of three from her father, who was considered to be the richest man in town. She endures as one of the most recalled and dynamic personalities in the city’s history, though she lived most of her life in Paris. Read more...

Born to an affluent family near Pearlington, Mississippi, Eliza Jane Poitevent developed her passion for reading from magazines. She started writing and publishing poetry about nature and love under the pen name Pearl Rivers, a tribute to the river which flows not far from where she grew up. Poitevent moved to New Orleans and before the age of 30 became the literary editor of the Picayune newspaper. Soon after, she married the newspaper’s owner Alva Holbrook, who was 29 years her senior. Four years after their marriage, Holbrook died, and Eliza Jane inherited the paper, with its debts. She took on the challenge, made editorial changes, adding book reviews, gossip column, and a serial novel. She also promoted female journalists and ensured they get equal pay. In addition to serving as the owner and publisher, she continued writing essays and poetry. She then married the newspaper’s business manager, George Nicholson, 23 years her senior. Together they turned Picayune into the most popular newspaper in the region. She died at the age of 52 from flu, 11 days after her husband. She was survived by two sons and over 200 poems. In 2018, the Eliza Jane Hotel opened in New Orleans, paying homage to the 20 year career of the country’s first female publisher of a major metropolitan newspaper. Read more...

Together with her sister Jean, Kate Gordon was an active promoter of many civic reforms, improving the lives of New Orleans residents. Gordon contributed to the opening of the New Orleans Anti-Tuberculosis Hospital, co-established the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and campaigned for a modern sewerage system in town. In their public actions, the Gordon Sisters served as role models of influential progressive women. Kate M. Gordon was also a controversial suffragist. She served as a president of the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference, and founder of the Equal Rights Association (ERA). Ironically, despite its name, Kate was blatantly advocating for white supremacy and opposing to the equal rights of African-Americans. Hence, she called for women’s suffrage by amending each state’s constitution, and not the US Constitution. She even went as far as actively campaigning against the passage of the 19th Amendment. Read more...

Marie Laveau is an iconic spiritual figure in the history of New Orleans, with her life stories as famous and colorful as a fictional tale. She offered her ceremonies and consultations, a combination of Voodoo and Roman Catholic beliefs, to people of all races. In the black community, in particular, her practice and position were considered politically empowering. She was described as both a good businesswoman and a charitable person, and enjoyed an exceptional position of respect and power, rare for a woman of color in her time. Long after her death, a local tradition has developed around her – tourists would be directed to her tomb in the St. Louis Cemetery #1, and mark an X on it for good luck. The pilgrimage was very popular even though there is no certainty that it is her grave. The custom was criticized as unwelcome behavior which is damaging the tomb. Recently, an International Shrine of Marie Laveau was built to honor her legacy.   Read more...