As the sands of time equipped us with fortitudes of rights we developed hearts of love. No longer allowing the grave to be our mentor, our life became a monument of inspirations. Engraving the unsolicited effects that bound our minds, our discourse reined with theaters of solutions. You tried to silence our spirit with your salutations of speeches that were not worthy of swines. Your … Continue reading Our Freedom
Septima Poinsette Clark was a teacher and civil rights activist whose citizenship schools helped enfranchise and empower African Americans. Born on May 3, 1898, in Charleston, South Carolina, Septima Poinsette Clark branched out into social action with the NAACP while working as a teacher. As part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, she set up citizenship schools that helped many African Americans register to vote. … Continue reading Septima Poinsette Clark
Born in 1903 in Norfolk, Virginia, Ella Baker became involved in political activism in the 1930s. She organized the Young Negroes Cooperative League in New York City and later became a national director for the NAACP. In 1957, Baker joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, whose first president was Martin Luther King. Ella Baker was one of the leading figures in the civil rights movement … Continue reading Ella Baker
Audre Lorde was born in Harlem on February 18, 1934, to West Indian immigrants Frederick Byron and Linda Belmar Lorde. She was an introverted child who did not speak until she was five years old. When she began to communicate, she answered questions with poetry that she had memorized. The limitations of her poetic store forced her at 12 or 13 to compose her own … Continue reading Audre Lorde
Height spent decades working for racial equality and women’s rights, and her work often centered the ways in which racism and sexism were inextricably linked struggles for black women. As one of the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Height was the only woman seated on the speaker’s platform. But, as Height told NPR in 2003, the male-dominated planning … Continue reading Dorothy Height
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