February is the one month of the year in which we honor and celebrate the contributions of African Americans throughout history - men and women alike. However, there are many African American female leaders and innovators who we do not think of or even know to be mothers. They have given so much of themselves to humanity, overcoming major obstacles and making advances in various industries. They’ve accomplished amazing things, and among them was raising children. We continue to celebrate these extraordinary women and many more during WOmen's History Month.
Here are eleven phenomenal women who have made history that you may or may not know about.
Charlayne Hunter-Gault is a mother.
Charlayne Hunter-Gault, an award-winning journalist, author, was the first African American woman to integrate the University of Georgia (UGA). Initially denied admission, she and another black student challenged the segregationist policies of the University of Georgia in court with the help of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Septima Poinsette Clark was a mother.
Often called the Queen Mother of the Civil Rights Movement, Septima Poinsette Clark was the epitome of a community teacher and intuitive fighter for human rights. She was a teacher when South Carolina passed a statute in 1956 that prohibited city and state employees from belonging to civil rights organizations. After 40 years of teaching, her employment contract was not renewed when she refused to resign from the NAACP. In 1976, the governor of South Carolina reinstated her teacher’s pension after declaring that she had been unjustly terminated in 1956.
Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin, are both mothers.
By refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus in 1955, black seamstress Rosa Parks helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States. Parks earned notoriety for this act, but many do not know that nine months earlier in March 1955, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin did the exact the same thing. Eclipsed by Parks, her act of defiance was largely ignored for many years.
Sojourner Truth was a mother.
Sojourner Truth was a former slave who became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women’s rights in the nineteenth century. Her Civil War work earned her an invitation to meet President Abraham Lincoln in 1864.
Katherine Johnson is a mother.
Katherine Johnson, a brilliant mathematician at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia featured in the movie Hidden Figures, is a mother. Johnson helped make human spaceflight possible. Her calculations were counted on to send John Glenn into orbit in 1962 and Apollo 11 to the moon in 1969.
Diane Nash is a mother.
Diane Judith Nash is an acclaimed American civil rights activist. She was prominently involved with integrating lunch counters through sit-ins, the Freedom Riders, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Selma Right-to-vote movement and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She was also a part of a committee that promoted the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Nash later became active in the peace movement and continues to advocate for fair housing in her hometown of Chicago, where she practices real estate.
Jane C. Wright was a mother.
Jane Cooke Wright was one of the first African American graduates of Harvard Medical School. She went on to become a pioneering cancer researcher and surgeon noted for her contributions to chemotherapy. In particular, Wright is credited with developing the technique of using human tissue culture rather than laboratory mice to test the effects of potential drugs on cancer cells.
Toni Morrison is a mother.
Toni Morrison is the author of eleven novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to God Help the Child (2015). She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award in 1988 for Beloved. The novel was adapted into a film of the same name in 1998. Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
Michelle Obama is a mother.
Michelle Obama is a lawyer, writer, and the wife of the 44th President, Barack Obama. She was the first African-American First Lady of the United States. Through her four main initiatives, she has become a role model for women and an advocate for healthy families, service members and their families, higher education, and international adolescent girls education. Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era.
Helen Octavia Dickens was a mother.
Before becoming the first African American woman to be admitted to the American College of Surgeons, Helen Octavia Dickens, MD became the first to be a board-certified OB/GYN in Philadelphia. Interested in helping young women with their sexual health, her research helped with teen pregnancy, cervical cancer, and lowered the rate of STIs.
However motherhood looks for you, your job is important and necessary. Whether you're an at-home mom, a mom working outside the home, a mom with a home business, a single mom, or an empty nester, your contribution to the world is great. As mothers, we put in long hours contributing to the needs of our children and families, many of us while simultaneously making strides outside of the home. We put our entire hearts and souls into raising our children and then we send these beautiful, brilliant lights out into the world. You may not have launched a movement (yet), wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book (yet), or changed the way cancer is treated (yet), but every breath you take, every lunch you make, you contribute to the world. Never underestimate the value of who you are and what you do. Whatever it is, let's be sure to celebrate that all year long.
#HERSTORY
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