Originally published on March 28, 2024 Claudette Colvin passed away on January 13, 2026. We honor her life, courage, and enduring legacy in the Civil Rights Movement. Claudette Colvin—young, courageous, and defiant in the face of segregation—sparked one of the most infamous movements of the 20th century. In the heart of Montgomery, Alabama, she took…
Born into slavery in Raleigh, North Carolina, Anna Julia Cooper transformed the limitations imposed upon Black women into fuel for her relentless pursuit of education and justice.
When we think of the Civil Rights Movement, names like Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis dominate the narrative. Dorothy Cotton, an unsung architect of racial justice, embodied the period of protest and change.
Musical royalty, they were all late 19th Century contemporaries who staked out their legendary portraits: the First Lady of Blues Mammie Smith, the Mother of Blues Ma Rainey, the Empress of Blues Bessie Smith.
When famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass asked readers of the North Star for suggestions on how to improve life in the U.S., she promptly penned, “We should do more and talk less.”
Black women were leaders in the fight for women’s suffrage-- yet they’ve been erased from movement history