Photo by Joseph Turner Keiley, 1898 (printed 1901). From the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Object number S/NPG.79.26 Native American (Yankton Dakota), Music, Education, Activism Zitkala-Ṡa (Red Bird / Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) (1876-1938) Zitkala-Ṡá wrote several works exploring the tensions of holding Indigenous cultural identities, while operating within a hostile, assimilationist mainstream world. Her books …
Photograph from Anna Julia Cooper Collection, Howard University African American, Education, Activism Anna Julia Haywood Cooper (1859-1964) Dr. Anna Julia Cooper championed education for Black women and working adults. Among the most educated women of her day, she wrote one of the first statements of Black feminist thought. Born in bondage in 1858 in Raleigh, …
Author Charles Waddell Chesnutt at the age of 40. Photo taken by Chesnutt Bros. (Cleveland, Ohio) between 1897 and 1898. From the Cleveland Public Library Image Collection African American, Literature, Folklore, Activism Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932) Charles Chesnutt was an attorney, author and activist who drew on folklore to illuminate the complexities of transitioning into …
Liliuokalani, the last sovereign of the Kamehameha dynasty that ruled the Hawaiian kingdom. ca. 1891. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. LOT 3559, LC-DIG-ppmsca-53150 Native Hawaiian, Music, Activism Queen Lili‘uokalani (Lydia Lili‘u Loloku Walania WewehiKamaka‘eha) (1838-1917) Born Lydia Liliʻu Loloku Waiania Wewehi Kamakaʻeha on the island of Oʻahu in 1838, Queen Liliʻuokalani was the …
Queen Lili‘uokalani (Lydia Lili‘u Loloku Walania Wewehi
Kamaka‘eha) Read More »
Photo by C.M. (Charles Milton) Bell (ca. 1849-1893), taken in 1893 in Washington D.C. From the New York Public Library digital collections. African American, Ethnography, Literature, Activism Charlotte Forten Grimke (1837-1914) Charlotte Louise Forten was born free and raised in the prominent Forten-Purvis abolitionist family in Philadelphia’s elite African American community. Due to segregation, she …