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Her Story: Five Remarkable Women You Should Know

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Representation matters. When we tell herstory, we tell our story. For hundreds of years, Black women have contributed in vital ways to every aspect of American life — science, literature, math, sports, politics, justice, music, entertainment, and the list goes on and on — but too often, their narratives have escaped our notice. Their stories have not been told. 

So in honor of Black History month, which should be every month, let’s tell them. 

I sat down with award-winning filmmaker and writer Deborah Riley Draper, whose film Olympic Pride, American Prejudice tells the story of the 18 African-American athletes who defied Jim Crow — and Adolf Hitler — when they competed in the 1936 Olympics. Her life’s work has been  to find the voices of our past and bring them to our attention. 

“To silence someone’s story because they lack privilege is unjust,” Draper says. “Everyone deserves to have their voice heard.”

I couldn’t agree more, which is why together, we’ve identified five African-American women whose stories have remained unacknowledged for far too long.

Fredi Washington was a writer, actress, casting agent, activist, and an important figure during the Harlem Renaissance. Best known for her role in the 1934 film Imitation of Life, Washington founded the Negro Actor’s Guild of America in 1937 and advocated for a broader range of roles for African-American performers. Later in her career, she was a writer and editor for the People’s Voice, a newspaper founded by Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. She also worked closely with Walter White, President of the NAACP,  to lobby for civil rights.

Tidye Pickett and Louise Stokes were track and field stars during the 1930s.  With their selection to the Olympic team in 1936, they became the first African-American women to represent the United States at the Olympic Games. When Pickett ran the 800-meter hurdles in Berlin, she became the first African-American woman to compete in the Olympics. 

“These two women were incredibly important as early athletes and yet their story has not received the attention of Jesse Owens or the ‘Boys in the Boat’ who competed at the same time,” Draper says. Nevertheless, they spent their lives opening doors for others. Stokes, for example, went on to create the National Colored Women’s Bowling League, creating an environment where other female athletes wouldn’t be marginalized. 

If you’ve ever used Google Maps, thank Gladys West. Born to a family of sharecroppers, she received a scholarship to Virginia State University, graduated first in her class, and became a mathematician. When she was recruited by the Naval Proving Ground in 1956, she was the second black woman ever hired and one of just four black employees. In a career that spanned 42 years, she worked on collecting location data from orbiting satellites and creating mathematical modeling to calculate the shape of the earth. Her work was incorporated in the Global Positioning System, or GPS, and remains a vital part of our everyday lives.

Pauli Murray is one of the most important civil rights activists of the twentieth century. As a teenager, she was arrested for violating segregation laws in the state of Virginia. She coined the term Jane Crow to describe the sexism that mimicked the Jim Cow laws of the American South, denying rights to women on the basis of gender discrimination. Despite graduating first in her class at Howard, she was denied the chance to pursue graduate work at Harvard because she was a woman. Nevertheless, she received her law degree at Yale, becoming the first African-American woman ever to do so. She went on to have an impressive career as an attorney, writing what Thurgood Marshall would call the “bible of the civil rights movement.” Murray also co-founded the National Organization of Women, served on the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, and in 1977, became the first African-American woman ordained as an Episcopalian minister.

We’d need far more than a month to tell the stories of all the Black women who have shaped America. But, if we are to have a more equal future, it’s so important that we give these changemakers their due place in history. After all, inclusion is about opportunity. It’s a way to create a seat at table — or as Draper likes to say, to build a new table, with enough seats for all the women who should be there.

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