Black History Month - Celebrating Black Women and Girls Now and Always

Black History Month celebrates and honors the achievements of Black people, and is a time for recognizing their central role in U.S. history. It’s also a time to honor and celebrate Black girls who make invaluable contributions to their communities. Empowered girls change their world, and the whole world too.

Listed below are familiar and maybe a few unfamiliar faces of Black women in history. Take a moment to learn about their place in history. And also learn about the teens who are making a difference in their communities today.

Celebrating Black Girls & Young Women Today

Marley Dias

Marley Dias is tackling underrepresentation in Black youth literature. She started the #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign when she was 10 years old to collect books featuring Black girls as protagonists. Years later, she continues to fight for inclusive literature.

Trude Lamb

Lamb and her classmates successfully campaigned to change the name of their high school. She was the fastest runner on (formerly) Robert E. Lee High School’s cross country team, but she refused to wear a uniform with the Confederate leader’s name on it. Her letter to administrators made her the face of the movement to change the school’s name, and eventually the school board complied, renaming it Tyler Legacy High School.

Dasia Taylor

Taylor invented color-changing sutures to detect infections as a part of her high school state fair, regional, and national science fairs. The sutures sense the status of a wound by changes in electrical resistance and relay that information to the smartphones or computers of patients and doctors.

Grace Moore

Moore is one of the youngest composers for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. She composed an original piece inspired by the global Black Lives Matter protests happening within the coronavirus pandemic, and it was performed by one of the top orchestras in the world.

Najah Aqeel

After being disqualified from a junior varsity volleyball game for wearing a hijab, she worked with the ACLU of Tennessee to urge the state’s volleyball association to change its rules. The state association agreed, and the National Federation of State High School Associations followed suit, clearing the way for hijabi athletes nationwide.

Aalayah Eastmond

As a survivor of the Parkland school shooting, Eastmond co-founded a non-profit called Team ENOUGH, a youth-led gun violence prevention organization. Her hope is to open the conversation beyond mass shootings to also address the ways that gun violence, police brutality, and poverty impact the safety of Black communities.

Chanté Davis

Davis urged lawmakers to take climate action. She’s a lead climate organizer for the Sunrise Movement, and she recently led a rally at the Texas capitol to confront state leaders about the role of climate change. She strives to make the movement equitable and inclusive to the historically oppressed through her One Oysean campaign.

Amanda Gorman

Amanda Gorman was the National Youth Poet Laureate at the Biden-Harris inauguration, as the youngest poet to ever do so. She recited her poem “The Hill We Climb”. 

Honoring Black Women in History

Shirley Chisholm

Chisholm was the first Black woman to be elected to the United States Congress in 1968. Chisholm served seven terms in Congress and made inroads by helping to expand the food stamp program. She also introduced legislation to benefit racial and gender inequality, and became a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Nina Simone

Simone had a massive impact on the jazz community, as well as the civil rights movement. Between 1958 and 1974, Simone recorded more than 40 albums, leaving her mark on music.

Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai was the first Black African woman to receive a Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts in environmental conservation. In the 1970s, she founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-gov organization focused on environmental conservation and women’s rights.

Aretha Franklin

The “Queen of Soul" was ranked No.1 in Rolling Stone’s “200 Greatest Singers of All Time” and it’s been said that no one understood soul music better than Aretha Franklin.

Ida B. Wells

Wells was a prominent Black investigative journalist, educator, and activist in the early civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the NAACP, and led a powerful anti-lynching crusade in the U.S. in the 1890s.

Audre Lorde

The author made incredible contributions to feminist literature. In her writings, she highlights her experience being a Black lesbian woman and confronts issues of racism, homophobia, classism and misogyny, giving voice to other Black female writers and activists.

Mae Jemison

Jemison was the first Black woman in space. On Sept 12, 1992, she boarded the space shuttle Endeavor with 6 other astronauts to orbit Earth. Before becoming an astronaut, Jemison served as a medical officer in the Peace Corps.

Michelle Obama

The first African American woman to serve as the first lady of the United States, but she also continues to be a source of inspiration through her efforts to promote health and wellness for kids in America. 

Harriet Tubman

The American abolitionist is best known for her efforts to move slaves to liberation in the Underground Railroad, a network of antislavery activists. Her legacy is indelible in the movement to abolish slavery, as she is documented to have made approximately 13 trips through the Underground Railroad.

Ruby Bridges

An American activist who helped the civil rights movement. She was the first child to desegregate William Frantz Elementary School, an all-white school in Louisiana. She is celebrated as a courageous Black woman who continues to fight for equal rights.

Ketanji Brown Jackson

Jackson is the first Black woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in April 2022. Jackson graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, and attended Harvard Law School, serving as editor of the "Harvard Law Review."

Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris is the 49th vice president of the United States. She stands as the first female vice president in American history, the highest-ranking female official in US history — and is the first Black and Asian American to hold the position.

Bessie Coleman

As a Black woman in the 1920s, getting a pilot's license in the U.S. was nothing short of impossible. That didn't stop Coleman. She learned to speak French, then left to train in France, where Black people were permitted to become aviators. Within seven months, Coleman officially became a pilot, making her the first Black woman to do so.

Rosa Parks

A trailblazer known for her courageous participation in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rosa Parks ignited the movement against racial segregation on public transit. 

Tarana Burke

She is best known for organizing the #MeToo movement in 2006 as a means for victims of sexual violence to share their experiences with others, forming an alliance among survivors. 

Maya Angelou

Black writer and activist who left a legacy with her large body of work, including memoirs, poems, essays and plays. 

Sources: Mashable.com, Today.com, Smithsonian Magazine, ESPN.com, DoSomething.org