Biography On July 19, 1875, Alice Dunbar-Nelson was born to Patricia Wright and Joseph Moore. Shortly after Dunbar-Nelson’s birth, her father left the family. Dunbar-Nelson’s mixed race of African American, Native American, and European American benefitted her greatly because she was able to pass as a Caucasian woman in order to gain entrance in to cultural events that would generally exclude minorities (Low). Her fair complexion and red tinted hair allowed her to associate with the Creole society in New Orleans, where she was given more social opportunities and privileges than the average African American during the late nineteenth century. She was one of the few women with African American heritage to have the opportunity to graduate from college, which she took advantage of and earned a teaching certificate at Straight University. In 1897, Dunbar-Nelson moved to Brooklyn, New York, where she helped establish the White Rose Home for Girls in Harlem. This was a settlement house that offered refuge, shelter, and food to women migrating north from the Southern United States after the Civil War. During her time in Brooklyn, she published a
Dunbar-Nelson describes Manuela as “tall and slender and graceful,” with dark features, while she describes Claralie as “blonde and petite” (Dunbar-Nelson 144). Throughout the majority of the story, Theophile, the man Manuela loves, shows interest in Claralie who exhibits European characteristics. At the end of the story, it is not race that wins Theophile’s affections, but Manuela’s devotion to Saint Rocque. This suggests that Dunbar-Nelson believed that if minority women were passionate and consistent with their beliefs, they could eventually obtain equality with the majority race
many Negros who lived during Moody's early childhood. The home she lived with her mother
Anne Moody’s memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, is an influential insight into the existence of a young girl growing up in the South during the Civil-Rights Movement. Moody’s book records her coming of age as a woman, and possibly more significantly, it chronicles her coming of age as a politically active Negro woman. She is faced with countless problems dealing with the racism and threat of the South as a poor African American female. Her childhood and early years in school set up groundwork for her racial consciousness. Moody assembled that foundation as she went to college and scatter the seeds of political activism. During her later years in college, Moody became active in numerous organizations devoted to creating changes to the civil rights of her people. These actions ultimately led to her disillusionment with the success of the movement, despite her constant action. These factors have contributed in shaping her attitude towards race and her skepticism about fundamental change in society.
Marjorie Stewart Joyner was born on October 24, 1896 in Monterey, Virginia, which was the Blue Ridge Mountain area of the state. She was the granddaughter of both a slave and a slave owner. She was a very strong businesswoman and humanitarian with strong ambition and desires. When she was a teenager, she and her family joined the Great Migration, moving to Chicago, Illinois where so many African-Americans were moving for jobs and a better life. Once she arrived to Chicago, she began to study and pursue a cosmetology career. Marjorie Joyner had a strong message that she carried throughout her lifetime which was: Be proud of who you are and treat yourself as if you care. From this belief, she became an avid supporter of young men and women throughout her life. She attended A.B. Molar Beauty School and became the first African American woman to graduate from the school in 1916. Marjorie made it her mission to become an educator in African American beauty culture. She did that while inspiring many younger African Americans. Marjorie also fought for racial and gender equality during the years of growth for the Black community in Chicago. At the very tender age of twenty she married a man by the name of Robert E. Joyner and opened a beauty salon soon after. Obviously Marjorie Joyner developed an early interest in becoming a cosmetologist so she started a salon in her home. Her mother-in-law was not impressed with the way she did hair and felt that she needed more practice so she suggested that Marjorie study at one of Madame C. J. Walker’s beauty schools. She was a very gracious and generous woman, and even offered to pay the cost for Marjorie to attend the beauty school. Soon after, she was introduced to the very well-known Afric...
When one thinks of prominent figures in African American history the direct correlation is that those leaders lived and died long ago, and are far removed from present-day society. In lieu of Dr. Mary Frances Early’s achievements, she is a “Living Legend” walking amongst the faculty, staff, and students here at Clark Atlanta University.
Anne Moody had thought about joining the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), but she never did until she found out one of her roommates at Tougaloo college was the secretary. Her roommate asked, “why don’t you become a member” (248), so Anne did. Once she went to a meeting, she became actively involved. She was always participating in various freedom marches, would go out into the community to get black people to register to vote. She always seemed to be working on getting support from the black community, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. Son after she joined the NAACP, she met a girl that was the secretary to the ...
Pellow, David W. H. "Anna Julia Cooper." Notable Black American Women. Ed. Jessie Carney Smith. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1992. P. 218-224.
The Author of this book (On our own terms: race, class, and gender in the lives of African American Women) Leith Mullings seeks to explore the modern and historical lives of African American women on the issues of race, class and gender. Mullings does this in a very analytical way using a collection of essays written and collected over a twenty five year period. The author’s systematic format best explains her point of view. The book explores issues such as family, work and health comparing and contrasting between white and black women as well as between men and women of both races.
Anna Julia Haywood was born into slavery to Hannah Stanley Haywood and her master, George Washington Haywood, in 1858.1 At the age of nine, she enrolled in St. Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute for free Blacks. Cooper married St. Augustine graduate George Cooper, in 1877. His death in 1879 "ironically allowed her to pursue a ca reer as a teacher, whereas no married woman—black or white—could continue to teach."2 Cooper received a Bachelor's and a Master's degree from Oberlin College, and was first recruited to teach in 1887. She taught at M Street High School, Washingto n's only black high school, for many years, and was the subject of public controversy because of her educational philosophy.
According to biography.com (2014), Frances Harper was a child of two free black parents. Frances was born in 1825 on september 24th in Baltimore, Maryland. Her mother died when she was three, and had to live with her uncle and aunt. Her uncle ran a academy for negro youth and she attended that until she was thirteen. After that she “ found domestic work in a Quaker household, where she had access to a wide range of literature” (poetryfoundation.org, 2014). Frances soon got older and taught for two years Pennsylvania and Ohio. she then became a traveling speaker on the abolitionist circuit.” She helped slaves escape through the underground railroad and wrote frequently for anti- slavery newspapers, earning her a reputation as the mother of African American journalism” (poetryfoundation.org, 2014).
Kimble, Lionel, Jr. "I Too Serve America: African American Women War Workers in Chicago." Lib.niu.edu. Northern Illinois University, n.d. Web.
To the modern white women who grew up in comfort and did not have to work until she graduated from high school, the life of Anne Moody reads as shocking, and almost too bad to be true. Indeed, white women of the modern age have grown accustomed to a certain standard of living that lies lightyears away from the experience of growing up black in the rural south. Anne Moody mystifies the reader in her gripping and beautifully written memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, while paralleling her own life to the evolution of the Civil Rights movement. This is done throughout major turning points in the author’s life, and a detailed explanation of what had to be endured in the name of equality.
Anna Julia Cooper’s, Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress, an excerpt from A Voice from the South, discusses the state of race and gender in America with an emphasis on African American women of the south. She contributes a number of things to the destitute state African American woman became accustom to and believe education and elevation of the black woman would change not only the state of the African American community but the nation as well. Cooper’s analysis is based around three concepts, the merging of the Barbaric with Christianity, the Feudal system, and the regeneration of the black woman.
Alice Walker is the pride of African Americans, who are considered as the most suppressed community within United States. She was born on 9th February 1944 in Georgia. She started her career as a social worker activist, followed by teaching and writer. She has secured many awards for her unprecedented works. The third novel of Alice Walker “The Color Purple” was published in 1982, which gave the real flight to her publications; as she received massive credits from around the world. Her works basically include short stories, novels and essays that are always evidently centered on the struggles and adversities of black women particularly in United States. Walker uses the writing as her standard to spread her voice and to process experiences of
“Throughout her professional life, [Anna Julia Cooper] advocated equal rights for women of color...and was particularly concerned with the civil, educational, and economic rights of Black women” (Thomas & Jackson, 2007, p. 363).
In the year 1862 she left her home in Afton, New York with the intention of disguising herself as a man and gaining employment as a laborer on the Chicago canal project. She ended up enlisting in the 153rd Regiment of the New York State volunteers under the alias of Private Lyons Wakeman. This was the first step in her short but harrowing life as a female civil war soldier.