Beyond Rosa Parks: Influential Black Women Through History
Updated: Apr 4, 2022
By Sam Low and Hannah Vanlandingham
How many influential Black women do you know? What are their names? What have they done? Below is a handful of Black women who have altered the path of history. This short list gives a few examples of some women we authors wanted to highlight that society has consistently attempted to erase, alter, or reattribute their work. As descriptive representation has told us, we can not be what we do not see. From Vel Phillips disrupting all-male political institutions and bringing concerns to the table that previously were never even thought about to Marsha P. Johnson refusing to let society define a group of humans as violent and immoral because they don't conform to a socially constructed conception of gender--Black women have been leading change since the beginning. Now, let's take a look at some of that change...join the conversation and add your favorite Black women activists and politicians in the comment section below!
Sam:
Molara Ogundipe
Dr. Ogundipe is a Nigerian feminist theorist, writer, professor, and activist, leaving a legacy integral to feminist thought and acting as a role model to all, combining theory and academia with activism. She founded many organizations addressing the economic, social, and political rights of women from Nigeria and internationally including The Association of Women in Research and Development (1977), Women in Nigeria (1982), and the Foundation for International Education and Monitoring. Molara famously altered feminist discourse with her concept of STIWA or STIWANISM (Social Transformation Including Women in Africa), an African-centered feminism that moves us “away from defining feminism and feminisms in relation to Euro-America or elsewhere, and from declaiming loyalties or disloyalties.” STIWANISM is radical, asking for a social transformation to address the colonial effects that institutionalized patriarchy.
Check out Dr. Ogundipe’s work!
Re-Creating Ourselves: African Women And Critical Transformations (1994)
Vel Phillips
Vel Phillips was a woman of many firsts, fighting against the hierarchical and discriminatory realities of the society she experienced. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Phillips became the first Black woman to graduate from UW-Madison Law School in 1951 and the first woman and first Black person to be elected to the Milwaukee Common Council (the powerful lawmaking body of the city) in 1956. In 1971, Phillips was appointed the first woman judge in Milwaukee County, making her the first Black judge to serve in Wisconsin’s judiciary. To round out the legacy of “firsts” in her story, she was the first Black woman elected to a statewide office–the position of Secretary of State of Wisconsin in 1978. The positions she held, though impressive, merely scratch the surface of her work in her various offices, where she worked closely with the NAACP to address housing discrimination, tirelessly introducing bills that had never been on the table before her presence.
Phillips on her “firsts”
“All it means is that I'm old, and I'd been around to break down all these barriers before anyone else got there…Be sure to tell them that [I] was the first woman to use the men's bathroom in the Common Council chambers. They put up a sign. But [I] just ignored it.”
Dorothy Lee Bolden
As did many Black woman activists, Dorothy Lee Bolden saw the systemic racism playing out in “color-blind” policies long before the term was coined. Bolden, like the majority of Black women in the U.S. at the time, was confined to employment in domestic fields, earning appalling wages, getting arrested for “talking back to white women” when refusing to work overtime hours, and otherwise having zero protections that the U.S. Labor Movement and related policies claimed to advocate for. Such labor policies intentionally left out domestic and agricultural workers (those fields where the majority of Black Americans worked) in order to garner the support of racist legislators and “labor activists.” Bolden, motivated by seeing the action of Rosa Parks on television, volunteered with SNCC working on school desegregation, housing, and voter registration but she was reminded of her fellow domestic workers. Although she had worked her way up to earn a relatively good wage for herself and had a husband willing to take on child-care chores in order for her to pursue activism, she realized that the work that they were doing meant nothing to the Black women (and therefore demobilized Black women) who worked “thankless jobs for very little money.” So, Bolden took to the buses, understanding that domestic workers only had time to themselves during transit to and from work, in order to consciousness-raise and, thus, organize. She used this time in transit to encourage women to meet each other, share their stories, and support each other. Soon, Bolden had encouraged hundreds of women that a union for domestic workers was needed. By 1968, they had created, with Bolden at the head, the National Domestic Workers Union of America (NDWUA), which focused on teaching individual domestic workers how to be her own advocate for better wages and conditions, creating change not only in the material conditions of domestic workers but also in how they felt about themselves, gaining confidence and self-worth in and outside of their work. As Bolden expected, improving the material lives as well as the personal feelings of Black women domestic workers would lead them to care about and address other important social and political issues which the NDWUA advocated for, becoming a powerful voting bloc in its time.
“I don’t want to be out here pushing for you and you not registered to vote. We aren’t Aunt Jemima women, and I sure to God don’t want people to think we are. We are politically strong and independent.”
Hannah:
Shirley Chisholm
“If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” -Chisholm *iconic*
First Black woman to be elected to congress. She was a strong advocate for early education and child welfare policies. In addition to being the first Black female congresswoman, she was also the first Black candidate to run for president.
Marsha P. Johnson
Marsha P. Johnson is self-defined as “gay, as a transvestite, or simply as a queen” using she/her pronouns. She played a key role in the Stonewall riots against police brutality toward members of the LGBTQ+ community. Although people are not sure who threw the first brick, many believe that it was Johnson, and because of her, the LGBTQ+ pride movement is what it is today.
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