Shirley Crisholm: “Unbought and Unbossed”

Shirley Chisholm was a nonstop shero whose own sense of empowerment spread to everyone who came in contact with her. In 1968, Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman to be elected to Congress, a historic triumph for her gender and race. Four years later, she ran for president in the primaries.

Born in the borough of Brooklyn, New York, in 1924, she spent seven years in Barbados with her grandmother, Emily Seale. She credits the “stiff upper lip” yet excellent education she received in Barbados as giving her an advantage when she returned to the United States. Shirley garnered many scholarship offers upon high school graduation, choosing Brooklyn College to study psychology and Spanish with the intention of becoming a teacher. She got involved with the Harriet Tubman Society, where she developed a keen sense of black pride. Acing every course, she received a lot of encouragement to “do something” with her life. A Caucasian political science professor urged her to pursue politics, a daunting idea at the time. But the seed was planted.

After an arduous job search, Shirley finally found work at the Mount Cavalry Child Center; her magna cum laude degree didn’t seem to offset her color for many potential employers. She also took night classes at Columbia, where she met Conrad Chisholm. They married soon after, giving her a stable foundation upon which to build her house of dreams. She continued to work in early childhood education, becoming director of several day care centers and private schools.

In the sixties, Shirley stepped into the political arena, campaigning for a seat in the state assembly in her district. She won the Democratic seat in 1964 and began the first step in a history-making career, winning again in ’65 and ’66. Then she decided to run for the U.S. Assembly. Even though she was up against a much more experienced candidate with deep-pocketed financial backing, Shirley prevailed; she was aware that there were 13,000 more women than men in the district and quickly mobilized the female vote. She also underwent surgery for a tumor at this time, but went back to work immediately, quickly earning a reputation as one of the most hard charging black members of the Assembly.

Even in Congress, the race issue reared its head. She was assigned to the Agricultural Committee to work with food stamp distribution because she was a black woman. Shirley didn’t take this lying down and fought to get off that committee, moving on to Veteran’s Affairs and, finally, Education and Labor where she believed she could really do some good. Known for her straight-shooting verbal style and maverick political ways, she always saw herself as an advocate for her constituency, seeking to be the voice of those traditionally overlooked by politics: Hispanics, Native Americans, drug addicts, and gay activists.

As a presidential candidate for the 1972 Democratic nomination, she placed women’s rights at the center of her campaign, claiming that she was not a “gimmick” candidate, but a serious contender. Although she failed to get the nod, it did make her a national spokesperson for the civil and women’s rights movements. Since then, she helped create the National Political Congress of Black Women and taught, lectured, and authored two books, Unbought and Unbossed and The Good Fight. Shirley Chisholm was at the forefront of obtaining real political power for African American woman.

“I’m the only one among you who has the balls to run for president.”

— Shirley Chisholm to the Black Caucus members at the Democratic convention

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media

Mary McLeod Bethune: A Dollar and a Dream

In 1904 Mary McLeod Bethune started a school on $1.50 and dreams on the grounds of a former dump. “I haunted the city dump retrieving discarded linen and kitchenware, cracked dishes, broken chairs, pieces of old lumber,” she remembered later. The humble beginning has now blossomed into Bethune Cookman College in Daytona, Florida.

She wasn’t daunted by the idea of all the hard work it would take to make her dreams come true; she was used to picking 250 pounds of cotton a day and pulling the plow when the family mule died. The fifteenth of seventeen children born to former slaves, Mary was brought up as a strict Methodist to believe in the sweat of the brow and faith in God. At the age of twelve, she was given a scholarship by the Quakers to be educated at an integrated school in North Carolina, later going on to Moody Bible College. From these experiences, she had a profound respect for education, particularly for its value in helping her people rise from poverty.

Mary’s school succeeded through her combination of penny-pinching abilities and excellent fundraising skills (she even got J.D. Rockefeller to contribute). She trained the students to pick elderberries to make into ink, used burned wood for chalk, and bartered free tuition for food for her students. Soon she added an infirmary on the site when she realized blacks couldn’t get medical treatment within 200 miles of that part of the Atlantic Coast; eventually that grew into a training hospital for doctors and nurses. By 1922, the school boasted 300 students, and Mary stayed on as president of the college until 1942.

She had a strong commitment to African Americans, particularly women. While running the school, she led the campaign to register black women voters, despite threats from the KKK. Her civil rights activism and humanitarianism brought her into contact with many people, including Eleanor Roosevelt, with whom she became good friends. Bethune ended up serving people in many leadership roles, including as the founder and president of the National Council of Negro Women, the leading member of the “Black Cabinet” who were advisors to FDR on African American needs and interests, and the Director of the Office of Minority Affairs of the National Youth Administration. When she was seventy-seven, concerned over the inability of blacks to get life insurance, she started the Central Life Insurance Company, becoming the only woman president of a national life insurance company in the entire United States.

For these and other accomplishments, Mary McLeod Bethune was regarded as the most influential black woman in America until her death in 1955. Mary’s rise from poverty to national leadership is sheer sheroism.

“I leave you. I leave you hope…I leave you racial dignity.”

— Mary McLeod Bethune

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media

Sojourner Truth: “Ain’t I a Woman?”

Sojourner Truth’s name alone suggests sheroism. It fits her perfectly—she was a fire-breathing preacher, suffragist, and vigilant abolitionist. Unschooled and born to slavery, she didn’t allow these disadvantages to prevent her from becoming one of the most charismatic and powerful orators of the nineteenth century. In fact, like many African Americans of the day, hardship seemed to make her only stronger, like a blade forged by fire.

She hailed from Dutch country in upstate New York and grew up speaking Dutch. Christened Isabella, she was sold away from her parents as a child and was traded many times, until finally landing with John Dumont for whom she worked for sixteen years. At fourteen, she was given to an older slave to be his wife and bore five children. In 1826, one year before she was to be legally freed, Isabella ran away from Dumont and hid with a pacifist Quaker family.

Upon hearing that one of her sons had been sold into lifetime slavery in Alabama, Isabella sued over this illegal sale of her son and, remarkably, won the case. Isabella moved to New York in the 1830s and worked as a maid for a religious community, the Magdalenes, whose mission was the conversion of prostitutes to Christianity.

By 1843, the extremely religious Isabella heard a calling to become a traveling preacher. She renamed herself Sojourner Truth and hit the road where her talent for talking amazed all who heard her at revivals, camp meetings, churches, and on the side of the road, if the occasion arose. She kept her sermons to the simple themes of brotherly love and tolerance. In Massachusetts, Truth encountered liberals who enlightened her on the topics of feminism and abolition. Her autobiography, as told to the antislavery forerunner William Lloyd Garrison, provided a powerful weapon for the cause of abolition when published. Her story, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, was one of the first stories of a woman slave to be widely known and was retold many times, including the charmingly entitled version, “Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl” by Harriet Beecher Stowe, which was published by the Atlantic Monthly.

Sojourner then put her religious fervor into the message of abolition, a holy mission into which she threw all her formidable will and energy. Her call to end the slavery of human beings in this country was powerful. There is a beloved story showing her quick tongue and even quicker mind and spirit: when the great Frederick Douglas openly doubted there could be an end to slavery without the spilling of blood. In a flash, Sojourner replied, “Frederick, is God dead?”

By the middle of the nineteenth century, Sojourner was preaching the twin messages of abolition and women’s suffrage. She was unwavering in her convictions and made the eloquent point that “if colored men get their rights and not colored women, colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as before.” She threw herself into the Civil War efforts helping runaway slaves and black soldiers. President Lincoln was so impressed with the legend of Sojourner Truth that he invited her to the White House to talk. Sojourner Truth worked, preached, and fought right up to her dying day in 1883. She lived long enough to see one of her fondest hopes—the abolition of slavery—be realized and, along with the estimable Harriet Tubman, is one of the two most respected African American women of the nineteenth century. Was she a woman? Yes, indeed. And a shero for all time!

“I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman?”

— Sojourner Truth

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media

Annie Easley: Girls Who Code

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Easley

Annie Easley was an African-American computer scientist and mathematician as well as an actual rocket scientist. After joining NASA in 1955, she became a leading member of the team that wrote the computer code used for the Centaur rocket stage. Easley’s program was the basis for future programs that have been used in military, weather, and communications satellites. After taking college courses first one and then two or three at a time, she had to take three months of unpaid leave in 1977 to finish her degree; NASA normally paid for work-related education, but every time she applied for aid, she was turned down. But once she finished her bachelor’s degree, personnel decided she had to take yet more specialized training to be considered a “professional,” despite this discrimination. Easley continued as a NASA research scientist until 1989, making contributions in many areas, including hazards to the ozone layer, solar energy and wind power, and electric vehicles. She also worked concurrently as NASA’s Equal Employment Opportunity officer, a position where she could address discrimination problems in the agency and work for more fair and diverse employee recruitment.

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Katy Ferguson: Earth Angel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Ferguson_(educator)

Born a slave in 1779, Catherine Ferguson accompanied her mistress to church on Sundays until she was freed at sixteen by a White woman benefactor who paid $200 for Ferguson’s emancipation. Two years later, she married; by the time she was twenty, her husband and two infant children were dead. Ferguson, a fantastic baker, made wedding cakes and other delicacies to support herself.
On the way to market to sell her baked goods, she would see dozens of poor children and orphans who pulled at the strings of her heart. The indomitable Ferguson started teaching these waifs church classes in her home on what is
now Warren Street in Manhattan, until a Dr. Mason lent her church basement in 1814. This is believed to be the origin of what we now call Sunday school. Ferguson’s classes were so popular that droves of poor Black and White children came to learn. Soon, many young, unwed mothers started showing up, too, who she took home to care for and teach them self-reliance. Ferguson died of cholera in 1854, but her work carried on in the Katy Ferguson Home for unwed mothers, where kindness, good works, and good learning are the helping hands to a better life.

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Black Women by Becca Anderson and MJ Fievre, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Changemakers in the Military and Public Service

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Howard

Black women were making surprising contributions to the military and to public service while the country was still shape-shifting from thirteen colonies into the union we know today. After the Civil War ended, many Black women
moved north and west to escape the oppression in the South. They followed the expansion westward, pushing up against the boundaries of territories, and were pioneers who contributed to the wellbeing of often-untamed lands. These next women were pioneers in their own rights, brilliant trailblazers who were the first of their kind.

• “Stagecoach” Mary Fields became the first Black American woman to hold a star-route delivery contract with the United States Postal Service.
• Carolyn R. Payton became the first Black American and first woman appointed director of the US Peace Corps when she was appointed to the position by President Jimmy Carter.
• Lisa P. Jackson became the first Black American to be named administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. She was appointed to the position by President Barack Obama.
• The first Black American woman four-star admiral was Michelle J. Howard. She was the first woman to rise to the rank of four-star admiral in the US Navy. Howard was also the first Black American woman to command a US Navy ship, the USS Rushmore. When she retired, she was serving as both commander of US Forces in Europe and as the commander of US Forces in Africa. She was the first woman to command operational forces for the US Military.
• Lorna Mahlock became the first Black American woman to hold the rank of brigadier general in the United States Marine Corps.
• Loretta Lynch was the first Black woman to become US attorney general.
• Paulette Brown became the first Black American woman president of the American Bar Association.
• Carla Hayden became the first woman and first Black American to be the librarian of Congress.
• Andrea Jenkins became the first openly transgender person of color elected to public office in the United States.
• Stacey Abrams of Georgia became the first Black American woman to be a major party nominee for state governor.
• Ilhan Omar became the first Somali American Muslim person to become a legislator when she was elected to Congress representing Minnesota.

Black women have proved their worth through their service to country and community. Often balancing the difficulties of home life with a successful career, they have excelled in military and public service. Let’s not forget, these are fields that are dominated by White men. When asked to picture a brigadier general, chances are the last thing that comes to mind is a Black woman. But Black women can be brigadier generals too. We can be anything we set our minds to becoming.

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Black Women by Becca Anderson and MJ Fievre, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Molly Williams: Volunteer Eleven

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Williams

Molly Williams became America’s first female firefighter by working with New York’s Oceanus Engine Company starting in 1818. Williams was the slave of a wealthy merchant who was a volunteer for the Oceanus Company. When influenza and cholera epidemics broke out, and many of the men were too ill to respond to calls, Williams stepped in. She became known as Volunteer 11 and was known to be as effective as any of the men in her fire station at fighting fires. Williams was enslaved by a man named John Aymar. Not much is known about her. We have an old illustration of Williams dressed in a calico dress with a scarf wrapped around her neck, pulling a pumper that held water to douse the flames in deep snow while White men are running away from the flames. What is known about Williams is that she and her husband bought their freedom from Aymar, though she continued to serve as his domestic servant, helping raise his eight children long after she was free. Her husband owned a successful tobacco shop, and the two of them had a son who served as a pastor in his church.

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Black Women by Becca Anderson and MJ Fievre, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Nannie Helen Burroughs: The Practical Prophet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nannie_Helen_Burroughs

NAACP pioneer William Picken described Nannie Burroughs this way: “No other person in America has so large a hold on the loyalty and esteem of the colored masses as Nannie H. Burroughs. She is regarded all over the broad land as combination of brains, courage, and incorruptibleness.” Born in the Gilded Age in 1879, Nannie Burroughs was fortunate to be born into a family of ex-slaves who were able to establish a comfortable existence in Virginia, affording young Burroughs a good education. She applied for a job as a domestic science teacher and wasn’t hired because she was “too dark.” Later, she was turned down for a job as a government clerk because she was a Black woman.

Burroughs began dreaming of a way to prepare Black women for careers that freed them from the traps of gender and bias. She worked for the national Baptist alliance for fifty years, starting as a bookkeeper and secretary. In her spare time, she organized the Women’s Industrial Club, providing practical clerical courses for women. Through the school she founded in 1909, the National Training School for Women and Girls, she educated thousands of Black American women as well as Haitians, Puerto Ricans, and South Africans, to send them into the world with the tools for successful careers. Her program emphasized what she called the three Bs: the Bible, the Bath, and the Broom, representing “clean lives, clean bodies, and clean homes.”

An advocate of racial self-help, Burroughs worked all her life to provide a solid foundation for poor Black women so they could work and gain independence and equality. She practiced what she preached. At one point she wrote to John D. Rockefeller for a donation to her cause. He sent her one dollar with a note asking what a businesswoman like her would do with the money. She purchased a dollar’s worth of peanuts and sent them to him with a note asking him to autograph each one and return them to her. She would then sell each one for a dollar.

She founded The Harriet Beecher Stowe Society as a vehicle for literary expression, and was also active in the anti-lynching campaigns. She gave Sojourner Truth a run for her money with dramatic speeches and stirring lectures such as a headline-making speech in 1932: “Chloroform your Uncle Toms! What must the Negro do to be saved? The Negro must unload the leeches and parasitic leaders who are absolutely eating the life out of the struggling, frightened mass of people.”

One of her students once said that Burroughs considered “everybody God’s nugget.” Her pragmatic “grab your own bootstraps” approach to racial equality offered that chance to everyone who came into her purview.

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Black Women by Becca Anderson and MJ Fievre, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Diane Nash: Freedom Rider

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Nash

Diane Nash is a civil rights activist and was a leader and strategist of the student wing of the civil rights movement. She cofounded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was instrumental in many of the student-led civil rights protests of the era. Nash was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in a Catholic neighborhood. After graduating from high school, she attended Howard University before transferring to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. In Nashville, Nash experienced Southern-style racial segregation for the first time in her life. She took part in the 1959 lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville that led Tennessee to become the first Southern state to desegregate its lunch counters. In 1960, she helped organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which would become a major force in the civil rights era. In 1961, she helped coordinate and participated in the Freedom Rides across the Deep South. Later that year, she became a full-time instructor, strategist, and organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) which was led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She married and moved to Mississippi. There she helped organize voter registration drives and desegregation campaigns in the schools for the SCLC. She was arrested dozens of times for her actions in protests, and in 1965, she received the Rosa Parks Award from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1966, she joined the Vietnam Peace Movement. In the 1980s, she fought for women’s rights. Nash continues to be an outspoken advocate for change even now.

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Black Women by Becca Anderson and MJ Fievre, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Betty X: Activist Scholar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Shabazz

Betty Shabazz, also known as Betty X, was an educator and civil rights leader. She was married to Malcolm X. Betty grew up in Detroit, Michigan. Her foster family did not discuss race relations with her, and as a result of this sheltered upbringing, she was unprepared for the hardships of racism when she moved to Alabama to study at the famed Tuskegee Institute. There she experienced the harsh reality of racism. Unwilling to allow herself to be treated as a second-class citizen, Betty moved to New York City, where she studied nursing. She met Malcolm X at a Nation of Islam dinner, which led to a courtship, and they were married in 1958. After Malcolm X’s assassination in 1965, Betty was tasked with raising her six daughters on her own. She was able to survive thanks to royalties from Alex Haley’s book The Autobiography of Malcolm X, but also returned to school and pursued a doctorate in higher education and curriculum development. She also began to speak nationwide at colleges and universities about civil rights, and began teaching at Medgar Evers College. Betty was active in the civil rights movement her entire life, and was prominent in the NAACP and Urban League. She befriended Myrlie Evers-Williams and Coretta Scott King (the widows of Medgar Evers and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., respectively), with whom she shared the common experience of losing their husbands to violence. Betty died after sustaining severe burns in a house fire in 1997.

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Black Women by Becca Anderson and MJ Fievre, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.