By Sis. Shirley Tarpley, NDG Religion Editor
As Women History Month 2013 continues, don’t forget to appreciate a woman in your life; a mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, friend, neighbor, niece or a cousin. Women have made history by walking in the path that God had for them. For complete happiness, learn to walk in the path that God has for your life.
Marian Anderson (1897–1993). The first African American to be named a permanent member of the Metropolitan Opera Company; she was also the first to perform at the White House. Anderson first sang in church choirs, and then studied with Giuseppe Boghetti. Her concert career began in 1924 and her first great successes were in Europe. Her rich, wide-ranged voice was superbly suited to opera, lieder, and the spirituals that she included in her concerts and recordings. In 1939, when the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to allow her to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her DAR membership in protest and sponsored Anderson’s concert at the Lincoln Memorial. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Josephine Baker (1906–1975), a dancer and singer was born as Freda Josephine McDonald. In 1923 and 1924 she appeared in Broadway chorus lines. She became a sensation in Paris in La Revue négre (1925), renowned for her jazz singing, dancing, and exotic costumes. Naturalized as a French citizen in 1937, she worked for the Resistance in World War II. She died in Paris after 14 triumphant performances of Josephine, celebrating her 50 years as a performer in Paris.
Rebecca Cole, a physician, was born in 1846 and was the second Black woman to graduate from medical school (1867). She joined Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first white woman physician, in New York and taught hygiene and childcare to families in poor neighborhoods.
Lorraine Hansberry (1930–1965). An American playwright; in 1959 she became the first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway when A Raisin in the Sun opened to wide critical acclaim. The play dealt in human terms with the serious and comic problems of a Black family in modern America. Hansberry died of cancer at 35. A collection of her writings, To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, was published in 1969.
Lois M. Jones was a premier African American artist of the 20th century. Her paintings incorporate African, Caribbean, and African-American influences and themes. They are featured in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the National Portrait Gallery, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the National Palace in Haiti.
Mary Eliza Church Terrell was a civil rights and women’s rights activist. Her parents were born slaves but eventually became wealthy through business and real estate dealings and provided their daughter with the best education available to women at that time. She attended Oberlin College in Ohio, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1884 and a master’s degree in 1888. After a two-year tour of Europe, she settled in Washington, DC, and became active in the suffragist movement, founding the Colored Women’s League in 1892. In 1896 this club merged with the National Federation of Afro-American Women to become the National Federation of Colored Women; Church Terrell was elected its first president. In 1895 she became the first Black woman appointed to the District of Columbia Board of Education. A charter member of the NAACP, she was a popular lecturer on equal rights for women and Blacks and served as a delegate at various international women’s rights congresses.
