African-American ladies who have led the way

One of the founders of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), Fannie Williams worked to address the social and political needs of black women in Chicago and across the nation.

Raised in a racially tolerant town near Rochester, NY, Frances “Fannie” Barrier Williams believed in social equality for blacks and women, and understood first-hand the role of churches in unifying a community. Struck by the ugliness of discrimination in her career pursuits of art and music, she used her position among Chicago’s black elite to remove barriers for others, including securing a place for black voices and interests at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. Williams actively campaigned for black women's suffrage and political participation, established integrated services and societies in Chicago, and spoke often on the need for southern churches to denounce lynching and support racial equality.

Photo credit: The colored American from slavery to honorable citizenship, J. Gibson & W. Crogman, c. 1902. Photo courtesy of the Schomberg Center, New York Public Library.

The first black woman to get a research doctorate in the natural sciences, Ruth Ella Moore studied infectious diseases that still plague our community, including tuberculosis (TB), salmonella, and E. coli. Supporting herself through college at Ohio State University, she earned her PhD in bacteriology in 1933, and went on to work at the Bacteriology department at Howard University Medical College. At Howard, she taught classes of largely black young scientists and continued her research, eventually serving as chair of her department from 1952 to 1957 before her retirement in 1973.

Photo credit: Crisis Magazine, c. 1933. Photo courtesy of African Americans in the Sciences, M. Brown, Univ. of California, Irvine.

Calculating space capsule flight paths by hand in the earliest days of NASA, “when the computer wore a skirt,” Katherine Johnson helped to make sure that the first astronauts landed on time and on target.

A West Virginia native, Johnson graduated college at age 18, after her father worked as a farmer and janitor to send the children 120 miles away to pursue an education beyond 8th grade. After marrying and raising a family, she followed her dream and became a mathematician, earning entry to the all-male flight path engineering team in 1953, and a lasting reputation for accuracy and reliability. Even after retiring from NASA in 1986, Katherine Johnson continues to speak to schoolchildren nationwide about her rewarding career, helping them explore their own potential in math and science.

Photo credit: NASA / Sean Smith. Photo courtesy of NASA Researcher News.

An expert at bridging the gap between people and technology, Linda Gooden worked her way up from software programmer to Executive Vice-President of Information Systems and Global Services for industry-leading technology provider Lockheed Martin.

Gooden studied computer science in her native Ohio, and transformed experience negotiating among her four siblings into the keen managerial skills to match corporate and government clients with her team of 45,000 globally, to the tune of over $12 billion in division sales in 2009 alone. She also works on behalf of engineering education, serving on the University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents, and leading efforts to prepare young people for today’s global technological society.

Photo courtesy of Lockheed Martin.

Seeking a new challenge after mastering executive finance in the high-stakes world of professional football, Adrian Bracy stepped up her game to the realm of philanthropic service.

After a college counselor in Baltimore ignited an interest in accounting, Bracy pursued a career in corporate finance, first working for the Miami Dolphins in her native Florida, before finding a home with the St. Louis Rams in 1995 as vice-president of finance. Although Bracy worked briefly with the Arizona Cardinals, the lure of St. Louis’ African-American cultural institutions, like The Black Rep, brought her back.

Bracy worked in outreach community service during her NFL years as a board member of Girls, Inc., before taking a less-glamorous, but more personally rewarding position as CEO of the Metro St. Louis YWCA. She is currently working on expanding their $31 million budget to improve career, educational & victims’ services for women and girls in the black and Latino communities and beyond.

Photo courtesy of Metro St. Louis YWCA.

Ann-Marie Campbell worked her way up from a $4-an-hour cashier job in a Florida Home Depot to become president of Home Depot’s entire Southern Division.

Campbell is responsible for the needs of 640 stores’ worth of employees and customers – but she doesn’t miss a thing. Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, Campbell spent summers working in her parents’ furniture store and learned to listen carefully to the needs of customers and employees alike.

Challenged by the physical devastation of Hurricane Andrew and the emotional devastation of the ongoing recession, Campbell uses her stores to provide a dependable safe haven and resources for the entire community, including her staff and their families. In her personal life, she also sits on the Board of Directors for the Atlanta Union Mission, a charitable organization supporting the poor and hungry.

Photo courtesy of Home Depot.

Tackling stage and screen, Jill Scott is a renaissance woman of the arts, with ascending careers in film, television, music, and spoken word poetry.

Scott’s soulful singing and lyrical poetry have graced the performances of artists across the musical spectrum, earning numerous accolades for her talent, passion, and often-painful honesty. On screen, Scott combines a forceful determination with underlying vulnerability in her roles, notably including star turns in Tyler Perry’s “Why Did I Get Married?” (and its upcoming sequel) and HBO’s “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” opposite fellow singer-actress Anika Noni Rose.

In honor of her single mother and grandmother, Scott started the Blues Babe Foundation in her native Philadelphia to provide scholarship support to people starting college without financial resources. Scott also speaks out to fans and musicians against negative portrayals of black women in music and music videos.

(AP Photo / Jeff Christensen)

Born in Baltimore, but raised outside of Houston, Lauren Kelley weaves stark, shocking, and sometimes amusing imagery into her new media art pieces reflecting on the outer and inner lives of young black women.

Kelley painstakingly hand-crafts miniature sets and “actors” to examine issues Barbie never dreamed of, including sleazy boyfriends, dead-end jobs, unwanted pregnancy, and negative self-image. Her breakout exhibit, “Soft Brown Narratives”, featuring her short animated film, “Big Gurl”, earned a prestigious award for emerging artists from Altoids and New York’s New Museum, and professional recognition.

Kelley’s sculpture and photograph, “Pickin’”, was recently the cause of considerable controversy when it was used for a Publishers’ Weekly cover story on African-American writers & books. Currently, Kelley is on leave from her gallery curator position at Prairie View A&M, to be an Artist in Residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem, where her new exhibit opens in July.

Still Image from "Big Gurl", courtesy of the New Museum.

Years of dancing in the hip-hop clubs of Los Angeles were as close as Fatima Robinson got to formal dance training, yet her captivating moves earned her the once-in-a-lifetime chance to choreograph Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time” video. Robinson used that opportunity to showcase her choreography talents in a wide variety of media projects, including the 2007 & 2009 Academy Awards, President Obama’s Inaugural Celebration, and the film adaptation of Dreamgirls.

Challenging herself to leave her comfort zone, Robinson takes on unusual projects - she recently worked on an ice-skating exhibition – and forges new paths, from directing to social networking. Her LA studio, Foresight, holds open parties for young dancers to show their stuff and learn from one another, regardless of their style, training, or income.

(Photo by Ben Rose / PictureGroup) via AP IMAGES.

Bridging African folklore fantasy and American adventure science-fiction, Nnedi Okorafor evokes difficult feelings about race, heritage, class, and courage in her young adult novels set in a richly-detailed post-apocalyptic Africa where humans serve at nature’s pleasure. Okorafor writes from her experiences as the child of Nigerian parents in the suburbs of Chicago – socially isolated and outcast in white and black communities for her “exotic” heritage, she found refuge in writing.

A champion of the burgeoning body of African science fiction, although critical of the recent film District 9, Okorafor has won literary awards here and in Africa for her novels Zahrah the Windseeker and The Shadow Speaker. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Chicago State University, and her first novel for adults, Who Fears Death, debuts in June.

Nnedi Okorafor with Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka. Photo courtesy of University of Illinois, Chicago.

Sifting through personal memorabilia and art collections around the country, Tuliza Fleming has developed numerous museum exhibits of commercial and fine art, reconstructing the history of black images in American media. From commercial art featuring sambo and mammy images, to self-reflective artwork from black artists of the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights era, Fleming brings to light the complex narrative of black media images beyond Aunt Jemima and President Obama.

As a curator for the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian, she is currently working on “Ain't Nothing like the Real Thing”, the first major exhibit to focus on the history of the Apollo Theater and its contribution to black history and American culture in general.

Photo courtesy of Tuliza Fleming via Facebook.

The youngest of 12 children and born to tenant farmers, Texas native Ruth Simmons refused to “stay in the background”. As president of Smith College in 1995, she started the first engineering program in an American women’s college, then moved on to become president of Brown University in 2001, becoming the first African-American to head an Ivy League school.

At Brown, she initiated an aggressive fundraising campaign to build facilities and vastly expand full-ride scholarship aid to academically gifted, low-income students. Under her direction, the university has stepped up active recruitment of students of color and first-generation college applicants, enjoying a nearly 50 percent year-to-year increase in black applicants.

A former Fulbright Scholar to France, Simmons is also committed to improving international relations and multi-cultural education in American universities. She serves on the boards of numerous transnational and foreign policy organizations, and speaks on the need to prepare for students for a fully global environment.

(AP Photo / Victoria Arocho)

Alternately praised and reviled by both right and left for her insightful political analysis and in-depth reporting, journalist Gwen Ifill strives to uphold objectivity and integrity in an increasingly partisan news media environment. A minister’s daughter who moved often as a child, Ifill discovered the power of words early.

A newspaper and broadcast veteran, Ifill covered Congress and the White House for the Washington Post, the New York Times, and NBC News, before moving to PBS in 1999. Ifill currently works as a senior correspondent of “The PBS Newshour”, and moderator and managing editor of the weekly roundtable policy and public affairs show, “Washington Week”, which won a Peabody Award for its 2008 presidential campaign coverage.

No stranger to controversy, Ifill raised ire in 2007 when she rebuked fellow journalists for their apparent indifference to Don Imus’ ignorant remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. In 2008, she refused to step down as moderator of the vice-presidential debate despite allegations of potential bias over her recent book, The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.

Photo courtesy of PBS Newshour.

Named 2009 Big East Scholar-Athlete of the Year, junior Maya Moore maintained a 3.7 grade-point average in interdisciplinary studies at the University of Connecticut while leading her team, the UConn Huskies, to a second conference championship after a record-setting, undefeated season. Praised as the best active player in women’s college basketball, Moore has earned numerous awards and honors for both individual and team accomplishments, along with her partner at the net, sophomore Tina Charles.

Originally hailing from Georgia, Moore is currently considering applying for a Rhodes Scholarship to continue her studies abroad, and was recently added to the highly selective pool of candidates for the 2012 Olympic Women’s Basketball team. In her personal time, she lends her time and fame to the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, visiting patients and participating in fundraising efforts.

Maya Moore with Iowa State's Chassidy Cole. (AP Photo / Al Behrman)

During her 14-year tenure as the first African-American president of Planned Parenthood until she retired in 1992, Faye Wattleton expanded the organization to provide medical and health education services to families and individuals of all incomes and backgrounds. She was instrumental in growing the group’s annual budget to $500 million, making it the seventh-largest non-profit group in the nation, and enabling their expansion into developing nations.

A St. Louis native, Wattleton obtained a nursing degree from Ohio State University, and a Masters in maternity health from Columbia University. Currently, she serves as president of the Center for the Advancement of Women, a non-partisan women’s advocacy group that she co-founded in 1995, which published the landmark survey, “Progress and Perils”, illuminating issues facing women today.

Photo courtesy of the Center for the Advancement of Women.

Ushering in a fresh new era for the venerable civil rights organization, Roslyn Brock is the youngest person chosen to head the NAACP as Chairman of its National Board of Directors.

Brock started working with the NAACP while attending Virginia Union University, and quickly took on a leadership role in order to raise awareness of issues relevant to younger black people. She successfully lobbied the NAACP Board to acknowledge health care as an ongoing civil rights issue, and in 2005 co-founded the “Leadership 500 Summit”, a training and mentoring conference designed to recruit leaders for a new generation of activism.

An expert at fundraising, Brock has raised millions in support from private foundations and individuals for NAACP initiatives on health, community relations, and idea exchanges with international rights groups. Her plans include strengthening relations with other civil rights organizations, including the National Urban League and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and ensuring that the NAACP remains relevant and beneficial for another hundred years.

(AP Photo / Mary Altaffer)

A North Carolina native and one of six children in a military family, Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) gained an appreciation for community and responsibility that have served her well as Representative of Maryland’s 4th Congressional District. Working constantly on behalf of progressive causes, Rep. Edwards was a co-founder of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and was executive director of the Arca Foundation, a progressive policy think-tank, until her 2008 campaign.

Despite previously working for former Congressman Albert Wynn, Rep. Edwards twice challenged Wynn for his seat on the basis of his voting record, including several controversial breaks with the Congressional Black Caucus over the Iraq War and the estate tax. After defeating Wynn in 2008, Rep. Edwards has used her position to bring greater awareness to causes she supports, including a notorious arrest during a protest at the Sudan embassy over the Darfur genocide. Recently, Rep. Edwards was selected by Democratic Party leaders to assist in their “Red to Blue” campaign to take Republican Congressional seats in 2010.

Rep. Donna Edwards with Rep. Elijah Cummings. (AP Photo / Lawrence Jackson)

Taking a stand for her beliefs is a way of life for Rev. Dr. Christine Wiley, co-pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Southwest Washington, D.C. and powerful advocate for gay marriage rights and HIV/AIDS testing in the black community.

With her husband and co-pastor, Rev. Dr. Dennis Wiley (son of late civil rights pastor Rev. H. Wesley Wiley), Rev. Wiley has been a crucial public, religious voice in the gay rights movement, including officiating union ceremonies of same-sex couples at Covenant. Such practices have met with considerable opposition within the socially conservative Black Church community, but Rev. Wiley counsels parishioners and pastors alike in acceptance over exclusion.

Reverend Wiley views health care as an extension of her ministry. As a former nurse, Rev. Wiley saw the rise of AIDS first-hand in the halls of D.C. General Hospital in the 1980’s. With some of the highest HIV infection rates in the country found in Washington, D.C., Rev. Wiley takes a hands-on approach to raising education and awareness, encouraging even her elderly parishioners to be tested for HIV, and being tested publicly herself at the pulpit, along with her husband of nearly 30 years.

Photo courtesy of the Covenant Baptist Church, Washington D.C.