meet the 11 Black activists Who deserve more recognition

By: Aleena Khan, Megan Ortwein, and Makena Vass

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In honor of Black History Month, we researched some of the few unacknowledged individuals who changed the course of history.

bessie coleman

On June 15, 1921, Bessie Coleman became the first Black and Native American woman to obtain a pilot’s license. She was first mesmerized by airplanes when her brother, who had returned from World War I, told her that French women could learn to fly. She went from a woman who had lived as a sharecropper and dropped out of college because she could not afford it to being an incredible stunt pilot. To raise money for her dream of owning a plane and opening a flight school, she performed in her plane and spoke at events, though she refused to do so anywhere that segregation was enforced.  She did raise enough money to buy her own plane, but tragically died in a plane crash in 1926. However, she now has many aviation clubs named after her and can be seen on stamps and special quarters.

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Claudette colvin

Nine months before Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin did the same thing, making Colvin the first to take a stance against the law. Although she was arrested for the act, she continued to fight the law by challenging it in the Browder v Gayle court case. She was one of four women to participate in the case and her efforts paid off. The case successfully overturned bus segregation laws in Montgomery and Alabama. However, she is often forgotten because of Malcolm X’s growing presence and her age. Many people did not believe that teenagers had the same influence as adults did at the time, so her actions went unnoticed to many. To learn more about Colvin, Phil Hooze published a book about her efforts to end segregation in his book, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.

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Frannie Lou Hamer

Frannie Lou Hamer is an African American Civil Rights Activist who assisted in the desegregation of the Mississippi Democratic Party. Hamer began working at the age of six due to the amid poverty and racial exploration that surrounded her home. After getting married at 25, she began her civil rights activism after she answered a call from the Student Nonviolent coordinating Committee (SNCC) for volunteers to help challenge the voter registration procedure. The procedure that was in place excluded African Americans by enforcing tests that needed to be passed before voting. She was fired when she attempted to register to vote so she took a job to be a field secretary for the SNCC. After fighting and challenging the voter procedure, she established the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party which helped testify against the credential committee of the Democratic National convention in hopes that the delegation from the Mississippi Democratic Party would be replaced. She began her speech on television in the morning, which was blocked by President Lyndon B. Johnson, so she carried on and recited the same speech in the evening so that the news programs could broadcast it regardless of the president's attempts. Her testimony about the violence and injustices faced moved many, assisting the change of voting processes in Mississippi.

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Mary Jackson, Katherine Johsnson, and Dorothy Vaughan

Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Dorothy Vaughan were few of the many black women hired to be “human calculators” for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (formerly known as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) in the 1950s and 1960s. These women performed complex mathematical calculations by hand, which enabled America to send the nation’s first astronauts to space. Johnson also contributed towards Project Apollo which put the first man on the moon. The 2017 film, Hidden Figures, is based on the true story of these unsung heroes of the Space Race

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Marsha P.  Johnson

Transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson played a pivotal role in the Stonewall riots, the events which effectively launched an international movement for gay and lesbian rights. On the night of June 28, 1969, a police raid occurred in New York at the popular gay bar known as the Stonewall Inn. Johnson was one of the individuals who spearheaded the subsequent confrontation between officers and queer activists. After Stonewall, Johnson was involved in the early stages of the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activist Alliance, but criticized the movement’s exclusion of people of color and the transgender community. Today, the LGBTQ+ community commemorates the significance of Stonewall with annual Pride celebrations. 

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Mary Mahoney

Mary Mahoney became the first black woman to complete nurse training in 1879. Mahoney grew up well educated at the Phillips school in Boston, one of the first integrated schools, which allowed her to become well acquainted with the importance of racial equality. She dreamed of being a nurse throughout all of her teen years so she began administering healthcare to women and children for fifteen years. Years later, the New England Hospital for Women and Children created the first nursing school in the US, prompting Mahoney to apply to the hospital's professional graduate school for nursing. Mahoney, being one of four who managed to graduate, became the first African American in the US to earn a nursing license. Mahoney became a  private nurse and joined the Nurses Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada (NAAUSC) which  helped advocate for the equality of African American nurses. She also co-founded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) and became one of the first black women to vote after the 19th amendment was passed. To learn more about Mary Mahoney, Darraj released a novel regarding her life and her impact on African-American Nurses.

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Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks was born into segregation, but that didn’t stop him from teaching himself to use a camera. His self-taught work earned him a seat in the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information where he learned to take photos of the world’s social condition. His images focused on poverty and discrimination including those of a Harlem gang leader that would earn him his place as the first African American staff photographer for the magazine, Life. However, he also worked in film, musical composition, painting, and nonfiction writing. He became the first African American to write and direct a major film, The Learning Tree and the 1971 hit, Shaft. Until his death in 2006, he used his work to break boundaries and reveal the realities of poverty and discrimination. ​

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Robert Smalls

Robert Smalls was an American war hero who commandeered a Confederate ship that escaped from the South during the Civil War. Smalls was originally a worker on the steamship CSS Planter, a dispatch vessel that carried guns and ammo, at the beginning of the Civil War. After a year of working, Smalls, alongside other enslaved people, took control of the ship in the Charleston harbor. Smalls began to pick others up as he passed through the Confederate checkpoints. He traded the ship, cargo of weapons, and all documents for their freedom to a Union naval group who were blockading the city. Smalls ended up freeing hundreds then and hundreds later when began to help many get equal accommodations for interstate conveyances after he served as a South Carolina House of Representative.

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Carter G. Woodson

Carter G Woodson is known as the “Father of Black History” and was the second black person to ever receive a doctorate from Harvard. Woodson was born December 19, 1875 to illiterate parents and former slaves. He worked as a miner and sharecropper throughout his childhood to help support his family. Up until he entered high school at the age of 20, Woodson was primarily self-taught. He later obtained his master’s degree from the University of Chicago and doctorate from Harvard. Woodson advocated for the study of black history in schools through his creation of Negro History Week in 1926. The original week took place in February to honor the birthdays of President Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Negro History Week is now recognized as a month-long celebration known as Black History Month.