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She was a former kindergarten teacher who joined the Louisville Police Department after local officers mistreated her son. She petitioned the department to be appointed as a police officer and was allowed ---- but only to work with other blacks in the community. Officer Bertha Whedbee joined Louisiana Metro Police Department in 1922, decades before the Civil Rights movement and only two years after women got the right to vote. Almost a century after changing the course of history for the city's police department, Louisville's first African-American policewoman is finally getting the recognition she deserves. Sometime around 2017, now retired Louisville Police Sgt. Chuck Cooper came across mention of Officer Bertha Whedbee's story on Facebook. He found out she had become the first African-American female officer in March 1922 after having a petition signed by voters requesting she be appointed. After some digging, Cooper and some other police officers discovered Whedbee and her husband were buried in an unmarked grave at Louisville Cemetery. "We thought that was terrible," Cooper said. "She is one of our police family, and we take care of our family." Along with a group of eight other officers, Cooper organized a campaign on GoFundMe, a crowdfunding website, to raise money to get a headstone for Whedbee and her husband, Ellis Whedbee, a doctor who co-founded Louisville's Red Cross Hospital and Nurse Training Department in 1899. "She was a trailblazer," Cooper said. "She served at a time when there was a tremendous imbalance in power of the races." The police department started seeing many changes in the 1920s as women and African Americans began joining the ranks, according to a section about the Louisville Police Department in the Encyclopedia of Louisville. Whedbee and other female officers were hired under the stipulation that they would "only be allowed to work with members of their own race." The oath, pictures and a summary of Mrs. Whedbee were found in the collection of police artifacts put together by Morton Childress, acting historian and retired Louisville Police Department captain. He passed away in 2017. His late wife, was proud to let local media borrow a book written by Childress describing some of the hardships Whedbee had faced. For example, she not allowed to arrest white people. Female officers at the time were restricted to patrolling dance halls, apprehending thieves in downtown department stores, working with children, and performing female body searches. Though she cleared the path for female and minority officers, those hired in the following years were not without obstacles. A Courier Journal article in 1938 reported that Louisville's four policewomen, two African-American, were fired because there was "no work for them to do." "We are discharging them for the 'good of the service,'" Safety Director Sam McMeekin told Courier Journal at the time. "They have no specific duties and practically do nothing... We are not finding fault with their work, there just doesn't seem to be any valid work for them to do." By employing the women, McMeekin said the department was "being deprived of four able-bodied young men." The fired policewomen told Courier Journal their work had consisted of searching female prisoners, assisting in "wayward girl problems," smoothing over family quarrels, making arrests on occasion and investigating. White officers would not ride in police cruisers with African-American officers until 1965, and official policy providing equal opportunities to every officer regardless of race or gender was not established until 1973, Childress wrote. Currently, 72 percent of the 1,246 LMPD sworn members are white males, and about 11 percent are white females, according to a department demographics report this month. About 11 percent are black males, and less than 2 percent are black females. “Because of her I am,” retired LMPD officer Yvette Gentry said. “I retired from the police department almost five years ago, and black females only made up about 1 percent of that police agency.” Gentry said she thought about what it must have been like for Whedbee to work as an officer in that environment. According to estimates in 2017 from the U.S. Census Bereau, 23 percent of Louisville's population is black. Of the 246 in ranks higher than officer, 79 percent are white males, and 6 percent are black males. Less than 10 percent are white females, and 1 percent are black females. Through near-freezing cold and overcast skies, dozens of people gathered to commemorate Whedbee. Sniffles were drowned by bagpipes playing “Amazing Grace,” and worn grave markers surrounded Whedbee’s new headstone. The headstone, which displays both Bertha and Ellis Whedbee’s names and stories, is at Louisville Cemetery near the intersection of Poplar Level Road and Eastern Parkway. 'Trailblazer': First black policewoman may finally get her gravestone, written by Emma Austin (Courier Journal) June 2018; wfpl.org: City Pays Tribute To Louisville’s First Black Female Police Officer article by Kyeland Jackson (Nov. 2018); wave3.com, Late, but not forgotten: A memorial for Louisville’s first female African American police officer, written by Natalia Martinez (Nov. 2018); Kentucky Center for African American Heritage; Louisville Public Safety Museum

Though born in Kentucky, she spent her formative years in Evansville, where she graduated from Clark Street High Schoolin in 1910. Following graduation she moved to Chicago and was active in the Alpha Suffrage Club, the city's most important African American suffrage association founded by Ida B. Wells. The Alpha Suffrage Club canvassed neighborhoodsn to register and educate voters, as well as worked to elect African American women to office after Illinois women earned the right to vote in state and local elections in 1910. They also were countervailing force to those suffrage organizations that tried to deny black women's rights to vote even as they fought for white women's suffrage. Miss Fortson also served as the Alpha Suffrage Club's second vice-president and co-founded the University Society of Chicago. She died of tuberculosis in 1917 at the age of 26. Indiana Women's Suffrage

Miss E.B. Slaughter, of Louisville, Kentucky, is a young lady who deserves more than a passing mention. She is engaged in the millinery business, and has built up a splendid trade among white and colored patrons. Miss Slaughter learned her trade in the Millinery Department of Armour Institute in Chicago, Illinois. where she, in part, worked her way through that institution. Her store is well and neatly furnished, and she keeps on hand a line of goods that will please the best class of patrons among both races. I regard her work of great interest from the fact she is one of the first among colored ladies who have made an effort along this line. We publish a splendid picture of Miss Slaughter in this edition in the hope that it, along with this short sketch of her work and success, may inspire some other young lady to start in business of some sort. When colored people, and especially ladies, are engaged in different business enterprises, such as women take up as a means of support, white people will then be compelled to see them not only as cooks and washerwomen, but as business women and competitors. Then, too, when colored ladies can operate successful millinery stores, that in itself will at least have a tendency to make white women engaged in such business treat their colored customers with more consideration. Miss Slaughter is a graduate from the schools of this city. She is very highly respected, and I am sure that the better class of colored ladies are proud of the fact that Louisville has a colored milliner. While she was building her business, Slaughter became involved with and eventually engaged to John V 'Mushmouth' Johnson, a notorious Chicago gambler and businessman. In 1903, Slaughter moved to Chicago, lived with an aunt and opened her shop, the Green-Lilly Millinery Company. A local newspaper described her as "an expert in making all kinds of art or fancy needle work." In 1907, "Mushmouth" Johnson died without a will and with an estimated worth of $800,000. Following his death his sister Eudora Johnson was accused by Slaughter of maliciously slandering her character. Accusing her of being, "kept woman," "a dirty whore," "was nothing but a harlot," "a dissipated, low, and vulgar woman," and that "she was the reason for the families unhappiness." Because of this Slaughter sued his sister for $10,000 for libel and slander. The case went to trial and Slaughter was awarded $8000. During the trial it was revealed that on two occasions in 1903 and 1904 Slaughter became pregnant by Johnson. Both pregnancies ended in a miscarriage. A little over a decade later in an article in the Chicago Defender, January 13, 1917, was an announcement that Miss Elizabeth Slaughter married Mr. T. L. Douglas on December 27, 1916 at St. Monica's Catholic Church. Her new husband was a dapper, self-assured gentleman whose full name was Terrevous LaFayette Douglas, originally from the Bahamas. Starting off as a dentist, he arrived in Chicago where he opened up a "billiard parlour" (not a "pool hall") and then he started a cigar-making factory, and later a dental laboratory. While wooing the lovely and high-spirited Ms. Slaughter, Mr. Douglas also wrote a play, "The Carib" which played for over fifty performances at the Pekin Theater in Chicago. In 1920, the couple moved to the city of Evanston, Illinois where they opened the "South American Art Novelty Store," where he made and imported "many South American art novelties and handmade Brazilian ebonite specialities, such as bracelets, finger rings and all kinds of jewelry, of exquisite beauty and charm for gifts of esteem." According to the newspaper article, they employed "one or two extra men and one young colored women" to manufacture the finger rings, "which he sells in 500 to 1000 lots to some of the leading retail jewelry stores in the down town district." The business was a success, and after Douglas' untimely death in 1931 at the age of fifty-five, Elizabeth took over and continued it well into the next decade. Elizabeth died, August 5, 1956 in Evanston. She's buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Worth, Illinois next to her husband. The couple had no kids. Sources: Evidences of Progress Among Colored People by G.F. Richings (11th edition, 1904); The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia edited by Gerald L. Smith, Karen Cotton McDaniel, John A. Hardin

The above portrait is of activist and suffragist, Virginia L. Molyneaux Hewlett Douglass (1849-1889), photographed by G.H. Loomis, in Boston, circa 1869 (Boston Athenaeum). She was the daughter of the professor of gymnastics at Harvard University, Aaron Molyneaux Hewlett, and the wife of Frederick Douglass, Jr. The couple had two sons, Frederick Aaron and Charles Paul Douglass. Mrs. Douglass portrait is part of a rare collection of 19th-century photographs, belonging to a slavery survivor, abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor, are now available online through the Boston Athenaeum. With one click, people from all over the world can now view Harriet Hayden’s historic portrait albums. “This is a part of living history,” John Buchtel, curator of rare books and head of special collections, told the Banner. “Almost all of the photographs in these albums were free African Americans in 1860s Boston, they were heavily involved in the abolition movement and in civil rights causes. And we hope that we’re able to actually connect with descendants of some of these folks. But we’re also hopeful that their stories, as we learn more about who they were and what they did, we’re hoping that those stories will be a source of inspiration for people.” Buchtel said that the Athenaeum acquired the albums in November of 2019. Ever since, librarians and catalogers have been working to digitize the albums and make them accessible to the public. All 87 photos were sent first to a conservation lab to examine and treat them before being photographed for the Athenaeum website. “The remarkable thing about this collection is that not only do we know who owned it, but we know the names of almost every person in the albums,” said Buchtel. It was likely Harriet Hayden herself who wrote the names of everyone in the margins, he added. “It’s just an incredible window into the social networks, into the lives of these people,” he said. “It some cases, this may be the only known photograph of some of these people.” Alongside the anonymous faces, however, are famous African Americans. The photos include the first African American man to earn a Harvard law degree, George Lewis Ruffin; the famous attorney Robert Morris; and the esteemed poet and suffragist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. The photos of these prominent figures wouldn’t exist without the efforts of Hayden herself. Alongside her husband Lewis Hayden, who in 1873 became one of the first black legislators in Massachusetts, Hayden fled Kentucky and escaped slavery in 1844. They traveled to Canada, but soon discovered that their bravery was required elsewhere. Sources: The Bay State Banner (Feb. 2020) A 19th Century Photo Album Comes to Life, article by Kenneal Patterson

Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times. With a fortune built largely from operating boarding homes in Brooklyn and beyond, Elizabeth A. Gloucester was considered by many to be the richest black woman in America at her death at age sixty-six on August 9, 1883. Attending her funeral was “a congregation of people such as has seldom come together,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, made up of “richly dressed white ladies, fashionably attired gentlemen and a number of well-known colored people.” Whether her fortune of about $300,000 (the equivalent of about $7 million today) actually made her the nation’s wealthiest black woman may be impossible to prove. But Gloucester was notable for more than just her money. She was linked — for a time dangerously so — to the antislavery firebrand John Brown, whom some blamed for leading the nation into the Civil War. She also led efforts to raise money for New York’s Colored Orphan Asylum, which would be set afire in the deadly draft riots of 1863. In her final year she even managed to land a cameo role in a high-society scandal that made headlines across the country. Though The New York Times did not, for whatever reason, take note of Gloucester’s death, it did bring up her “richest” reputation seven years later in a brief obituary about her husband, the Rev. James N. Gloucester. Elizabeth Amelia Parkhill was born in 1817 in Richmond, Virginia, to a freedwoman who may have served as a cook. Little, if anything, exists regarding her father’s identity, but census records listed Elizabeth as “mulatto,” suggesting that she had white ancestry. Her mother died when she was young. She was then placed in the Philadelphia home of the Rev. John Gloucester Sr., who founded America’s first African-American Presbyterian church. His youngest son would become Elizabeth’s husband in 1836, and they would have eight children, two of whom died before reaching adulthood. They soon moved to New York, then a separate city from Brooklyn. James Gloucester “did not have a dollar in the world, but he had a good education, and a good-looking, business-like wife,” The New York World later wrote. Elizabeth Gloucester began selling secondhand clothing, and then ran a furniture store on West Broadway. Acquiring boarding homes, which often offered furnished rooms, may have been a natural next step. She would eventually run 15 or more of them. Her husband took a teaching job in New York but soon moved into the ministry and, in 1849, founded the Siloam Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn (which still stands). Elizabeth Gloucester helped pay to build it. The family moved to Brooklyn in 1855. In 1857, after hearing John Brown lecture in Brooklyn, the Gloucesters invited him to stay with them whenever he was in town. By then, Brown had already drawn blood for the abolitionist cause when he led an attack on a proslavery settlement in Kansas. The Gloucesters marveled at Brown’s spirit, the historian Stephen B. Oates wrote in a 1970 biography of Brown, “To Purge This Land by Blood,” and “promised to help him raise money and enlist support among New York City’s 15,000 black residents.” Brown was apparently so impressed by Elizabeth Gloucester that he told her, “I wish you were a man, for I’d like to have you invade the South with my little band.” She responded with concern, “Perhaps you will lose your life.” He replied that he was an old man; his life wasn’t worth much. Soon after, in hopes of inciting a slave rebellion, Brown and his men raided the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry in what is now West Virginia, but they were quickly overwhelmed. In all, 16 people died in the assault, including two of Brown’s sons. Brown was hanged on Dec. 2, 1859. Found in his carpetbag after his capture were many letters from his supporters, including one from Elizabeth Gloucester. It had come with a small contribution and had been personally delivered by Frederick Douglass, also a longtime friend of the Gloucesters’. Some of those named in the letters feared prosecution or worse, but no harm came to the Gloucesters. Elizabeth Gloucester soon turned her attention to helping the Colored Orphan Asylum, taking a leading role in an elaborate fund-raising fair. The newspaper The Weekly Anglo-African gave the event glowing coverage, singling out Gloucester’s delegation for wearing nearly identical striped calico gowns. But The Eagle seemed dismissive of the gathering. Apparently referring to Gloucester, it said, “The principal table is presided over by a big old colored lady, as downright in earnest as if she was disposing of clam-soup in Fulton Market.” Putting aside its racist tone, the article may have actually left us a portrait of Gloucester at her best: energetic, focused, in charge — and making lots of money. Three years later, with the Civil War well underway, the Orphan Asylum, at 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, was set afire and destroyed during the riots that had erupted over the institution of a military draft. The children escaped without injury. Some years after the war, Gloucester spent a reported $3 million in today’s dollars to buy the elegant building that housed the Hamilton Club, an elite gathering place, at Remsen and Clinton Streets in Brooklyn Heights. The structure, which was renamed the Remsen House and later paired with an adjoining structure, was repurposed as a boardinghouse, attracting an affluent, largely white clientele. The Gloucesters made it the family’s home as well, and Elizabeth became its live-in landlady. Community groups sometimes held meetings there; Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and her brother, the clergyman Henry Ward Beecher, were said to be in attendance. In early 1883, Elizabeth Gloucester, was ailing with congested lungs. The Remsen House kept operating for a time after her death under the direction of two of her daughters; it has long since been demolished. Of course, wealth could not entirely shield Gloucester from the sting of discrimination. That was made clear three years after her death, when her name surfaced in an Eagle article concerning criticism of a “color line” in place at the Park Theater in Brooklyn. In defending the policy to a reporter, the theater’s owner, Col. William E. Sinn, recalled confronting Gloucester one evening when she had arrived with two tickets for the orchestra section. “I called her aside in the lobby and told her that I would rather she would not use those seats and I would refund the money,” he said, “as many of my patrons objected to sitting in that part of the house with colored people.” Gloucester became indignant, but “decided I was right,” Colonel Sinn insisted, after he asked if she would allow a black couple to “sit at the table with her white boarders.” It was all, he concluded, just a matter of business. Source: NY Times article written by Steve Bell (Sept. 2019) w/ contributed research by Alain Delaquérière

Mothers and widows of soldiers killed in action during World War I were invited by the United States government to take a pilgrimage to view the burial places of their sons and husbands in Europe. Of the 17,389 women eligible for the pilgrimage, 624 were African American. Even though the sacrifices of their sons and husbands were equal, the travel accommodations for the mothers were not. African American Gold Star mothers sailed to France aboard the American Banker in 1933, on a mission to visit the graves of their loved ones killed in World War I. After World War I, women who lost a child during the war received special recognition as Gold Star Mothers. Between 1930 and 1933, the government sponsored Gold Star Mother Pilgrimages overseas for the mothers of soldiers buried in European graveyards. African American Gold Star mothers weren’t allowed to sail on the same ship with the white Gold Star mothers, but instead traveled separately on a “second-class vessel.” Black male journalists outraged by the program’s segregationist policies wrote articles with the hopes of pressuring the government to give African American mothers the same treatment as white mothers. Approximately 25 women canceled their reservations and never made the pilgrimage. 279 mothers and widows comprised six all-Black groups that traveled between the years of 1930 and 1933. Sources: Dick Lewis/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images; American Battle Monuments Commission; timeline.com; Smithsonian/National Museum of African American History and Culture

In 1921 Coleman became the first Black woman in the United States to earn a pilot’s license, then barnstormed around the country thrilling audiences and inspiring later generations. [George Rinhart, photographer (1923) / Corbis, via Getty Images] Since 1851, many remarkable black men and women did not receive obituaries in The New York Times. With Overlooked , they've added these stories to their archives. By Daniel E. Slotnik / Sheelagh McNeill, Researcher NY Times Dec. 11, 2019 Bessie Coleman learned how to fly in France after no pilot in the United States would give her lessons. Bessie Coleman was the first African-American woman to earn a pilot’s license, thrilling crowds by performing dangerous maneuvers in a rickety airplane and representing, literally, the heights that African-Americans could attain. But before all that, she was working as a manicurist on Chicago’s South Side in 1919 when her brother John showed up drunk one day and began taunting her about her job. John had served in the Army in France during World War I and often teased his sister about how women there had more opportunities. Women in France were so liberated, he said, they could even fly planes. Black “women ain’t never goin’ to fly, not like those women I saw in France,” he said, as retold in “Queen Bess: Daredevil Aviator” (1993), a biography of Coleman by Doris L. Rich. “That’s it!” Coleman replied, smiling. “You just called it for me.” Determined to prove him wrong, Coleman reached out to several pilots for lessons, but none would accept her as a student. So she decided to go to France, where she thought her race and gender would not be insurmountable impediments. To prepare for the trip, Coleman studied French, solicited benefactors to help finance the venture and found a higher-paying job managing a chili restaurant. On Nov. 20, 1920, she set off for Europe aboard the liner S.S. Imperator, then enrolled at the flight school founded by the aviation pioneers Gaston and René Caudron at Le Crotoy in the Somme in northern France. There she began a seven-month course in flying a Nieuport Type 82, a 27-foot-long biplane with a 40-foot wingspan. The plane was fragile, and Coleman had to inspect every part of it each time she went aloft. The Type 82 in which Coleman trained had one cockpit for an instructor and another behind it for a student. There was no steering wheel; there weren’t even brakes. The instructor, and soon Coleman, handled a large wooden stick to control the plane’s pitch and roll, and moved a rudder bar with his feet to control its yaw. To stop the plane, the pilot would land, then drag a metal skid on the tail along the ground. Coleman learned aerial maneuvers like loop-the-loops, banking and tail spins. She also witnessed an accident that killed another student. “It was a terrible shock to my nerves, but I never lost them,” Coleman was quoted as saying in “Queen Bess.” “I kept going.” On June 15, 1921, Coleman received her pilot’s license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, an organization that oversees airborne sports. The license granted her the right to fly anywhere in the world. Upon her return to New York City in September, The Associated Press heralded her as “a full-fledged aviatrix, said to be the first of her race.” Coleman was awarded her pilot’s license in 1921 by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. The license lists her date of birth as 1896. Coleman was prone to exaggeration and often said she was younger than she was. Coleman began barnstorming the country in 1922. She dazzled spectators by walking on the wings while aloft or parachuting from the plane while a co-pilot took the controls. Her stunts were widely covered in the press, especially in black newspapers, and she cut a glamorous figure. She enjoyed the attention so much that she decided to try acting and was cast as the lead in a film based on her life story. But she turned down the part after learning that the movie began with her character appearing in rags, which she found demeaning and undignified. “No Uncle Tom stuff for me!” she told Billboard magazine. Coleman saw aviation as a way to empower black people in America and dreamed of opening a flight school. She never did, but future pilots said they had been inspired by her, and flight clubs have been named in her honor. “I shall never be satisfied until we have men of the Race who can fly,” she told the black newspaper The Chicago Defender in 1921, adding, “We must have aviators if we are to keep pace with the times.” Coleman borrowed planes at first, but in time she saved up enough to buy one of her own, a military surplus Curtiss JN-4, known informally as the Jenny. Coleman went to Santa Monica, Calif., to pick it up. While in California she planned to perform an air show near Los Angeles, but as she took off to fly to the fairgrounds, her motor stalled, and she nose-dived from 300 feet, breaking a leg, fracturing her ribs and destroying her plane. She begged the doctor at the scene to “patch her up” so that she could get to the show. He called for an ambulance. “Tell them all that as soon as I can walk I’m going to fly!” Coleman wrote in a telegram to her fans. It took her months to recover, and it was two years before she was flying regularly again. Coleman lived in Chicago and then Houston, staging air shows all around Texas but increasingly spending time on the lecture circuit, a safer and more remunerative way to make a point about social uplift. By April 1926, Coleman had saved enough money to buy another plane — another surplus Jenny. She scheduled an air show for May 1, and on April 30 she and her co-pilot, a mechanic named William Wills, took a practice flight in the new plane. Coleman sat in the second cockpit, unharnessed so that she could peer over the side and identify a good place for a parachute landing during the show. Wills flew the plane at about 2,000 feet for five minutes, then climbed to 3,500 feet. Witnesses said the plane accelerated suddenly, nose-dived, went into a tailspin and flipped upside-down about 500 feet in the air. Coleman fell from the plane and plunged to the ground, dying on impact. She was 34. The plane also crashed, killing Wills, his body pinned under the plane. As rescuers tried to move the plane off him, one lit a match for a cigarette, igniting gas fumes and wreathing the wreckage in flame. Bessie Coleman never started a flight school, as she had hoped to do before she died, but future pilots said they had been inspired by her, and flight clubs have been named in her honor. Officials determined that a loose wrench had become jammed in the plane’s control gears, causing it to go out of control and crash. The mainstream press barely noted Coleman’s death, focusing instead on Wills, who was white. But many black newspapers gave front-page coverage to her death. Coleman’s body lay in state in Florida and in Chicago, where about 10,000 people paid their respects. The journalist Ida B. Wells, who crusaded against lynching, led the ceremonies. Bessie Coleman (she sometimes used the name Elizabeth) was born in Atlanta, Texas on January 26, 1892, to Susan and George Coleman. Her parents worked as day laborers, farmers and cotton pickers. George Coleman managed to save enough money to buy a plot of land in Waxahachie, Tex., in 1894 and built a shotgun house, where he and his wife had several more children. In 1901 George, who was part Native American, left for Indian Territory in Oklahoma, where he thought he could avoid the racial oppression in Jim Crow Texas. He asked Susan and the children to come with him, but Susan chose to stay in Waxahachie and raise four of their children by herself, earning money as a domestic worker. Coleman studied in a one-room schoolhouse and, like many families in Waxahachie, picked cotton when the crop was ripe, work that she hated. She left Texas in 1910 to enroll in the Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Langston, Okla., but she ran out of money and returned home after only a semester. In 1915 she moved to Chicago and became a manicurist. By night she went to clubs in the Stroll, the center of Chicago’s black community, where she saw performances by Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith and other luminaries. On January 30, 1917, she married Claude Glenn, who was fourteen years her senior. Her story has been told in books, television programs, a French documentary and, earlier this year, an irreverent episode of Comedy Central’s “Drunk History,” with the actress and comedian Lyric Lewis. In 1995 the United States Postal Service issued a stamp in Coleman’s memory as part of its black heritage series. A middle school in Texas and several roads around the country, usually near airports, bear Coleman’s name. But it took time for Coleman to achieve recognition beyond the black community in her day. Mae Jemison, who in 1992 became the first African-American woman to go into space, wrote in an afterword to “Queen Bess: Daredevil Aviator” that she had felt “embarrassed and saddened that I did not learn of her until my spaceflight beckoned on the horizon.” “I wished I had known her while I was growing up,” Jemison continued, “but then again I think she was there with me all the time.” In one way Coleman was indeed with her when she left the Earth. Jemison carried a picture of Coleman with her into space, flying far higher than Coleman had ever dreamed.

Marie A.D. Madre, born in 1865, wore many hats. Educated in Washington DC schools, in 1892, she was hired as an elementary school teacher in the D.C. Colored School system, where she would remain for most of the next forty-five years of her life. In 1897 and 1898, Marie attained law degrees ---- a bachelor's and a master's from Howard University. Up to this point, she was only the third known woman of color to have graduated from Howard Law School. She was the only woman in her graduating class of thirty-one, and she was the valedictorian. She was the first woman elected president of the prestigious Bethel Literary and Historical Society, a position she held for several terms. A consummate club woman, she also served in the leadership of several organizations where she shared the spotlight with other female luminarie such as Nannie Helen Burroughs, Ida B. Wells Barnett, Mary Church Terrell and Mary McLeod Bethune. In 1918, she married James H. Marshall, a minister who pastored many prominent churches in the area which included Shiloh Baptist in Alexandria, Virginia, First Baptist in SW, DC and St. John Baptist Church in Arlington, Virginia. She passed away after a brief illness on March 8, 1938, in Freedman's Hospital (now Howard University Hospital) in Washington, D.C., She was interred at Harmony Cemetery in the District. Graves were later relocated to National Harmony Memorial Park in Hyattasville, Maryland. Sources: Centennial of the Encyclopedia of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, by Richard R. Wright, Jr., (1916); Historically African American Leisure Destinations Around Washington, D.C. by Patsy Mose Fletcher (2015)

One of the first black women to reach millionaire status did so by launching a hair care empire — and her name wasn’t Madam C.J. Walker. Entrepreneur Annie Turnbo Malone reached this milestone at the end of World War I, and she just so happened to give beauty mogul Walker her start in the cosmetics industry. Since her 1957 death, however, Malone’s tremendous achievements have been widely overlooked. John H. Whitfield, the author of the biography A Friend to All Mankind: Mrs. Annie Turnbo Malone and Poro College , spoke to Vox about Malone’s work and legacy. “Mrs. Malone’s legacy is a merging of women’s health and economic independence,” Whitfield said. After starting a hair care line inspired by Malone’s products, Walker became one of the wealthiest Americans of the early 1900s. She’s since become a staple of Black History Month lessons, and there’s a Netflix show in the works about her life starring Octavia Spencer. Even people who aren’t very familiar with Walker likely know that she made a killing in the hair care business, but a mention of Malone outside St. Louis, where her business was first headquartered, is likely to elicit blank stares. The website of the State Historical Society of Missouri admits as much. “Annie Turnbo Malone’s legacy as a pioneer in the African American beauty and cosmetic business has largely been overshadowed by the success of her former employee, Madam CJ Walker,” it states. “This is beginning to change, however, and Malone is now being recognized for her role in launching the industry.” When hair salons were still anomalies, Malone helped to popularize cosmetology schools, through her own Poro College, and teach women about the importance of scalp health. And before corporate responsibility became a buzzword, she modeled the idea that business owners should give away much of their wealth. It’s also not hyperbole to suggest that without Annie Malone, Madam C.J. Walker would not have become a household name. Malone, after all, gave Walker, then working as a laundress, her first job as a hair care sales agent. Walker lived a shorter and, arguably, more dramatic life than Malone did, one reason why she eclipsed her former mentor to reach almost mythological status after her death. But history shows that both of these women, and their interconnected stories, deserve attention more than a century after they became two of the most influential entrepreneurs in the United States. Annie Malone was born in Metropolis, Illinois, to formerly enslaved parents in 1869. As a girl, she was fascinated by hair and by chemistry, but illness forced her out of high school. In spite of this setback, Malone continued to experiment with chemistry. With the guidance of her herbalist aunt, she began to make hair products catered to black women. One of her first products was a liquid shampoo, but Malone was particularly interested in finding a way to straighten hair that didn’t damage the hair follicles. At the turn of the century, women often used bacon grease, heavy oils, and butter to straighten hair. Some also used a mixture of lye and potatoes. All of these methods were harmful to hair and scalp, so Malone experimented until she found a hair straightening formula that wasn’t so harsh. She called it her Wonderful Hair Grower. In 1902, Malone moved from Southern Illinois to St. Louis, Missouri, which was hosting the 1904 World’s Fair. She figured during this time she could attract major business in the city, which also boasted one of the nation’s largest black populations, and opened a shop on Market Street. At some point, likely in 1903, she met her most famous client — Madam C.J. Walker — who then went by the name Sarah Davis or Sarah McWilliams. Walker had battled hair loss for years due to dandruff and psoriasis of the scalp, then known as “tetter.” Malone knew that the harsh alcohol-based tonics marketed for the condition only made tetter worse and recommended that Walker regularly wash her hair, use a sulfur-based treatment, improve her diet, and practice scalp massage to remedy her follicular woes. Malone’s motto was “clean scalps mean clean bodies” because the method worked. Before long, Walker’s hair grew from shorter than her ears to past her shoulders. “Mrs. Malone’s Poro system was not based on hair styling as much as it was on scalp hygiene,” according to Whitfield. When Walker moved to Denver in 1905, she began to sell her own products, which were clearly modeled after Malone’s. She, too, had a product called Wonderful Hair Grower, for example. A furious Malone took out an ad in the Colorado Statesman warning readers to “beware of imitations,” but Walker’s career continued to soar. Though Annie Malone and Madam CJ Walker were business rivals, both women achieved great wealth after finding their niche in the hair care business. Walker died of kidney failure at age 51 in 1919 with a net worth of roughly $600,000, according to her great-great-granddaughter’s biography, On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam CJ Walker. By this time Malone was already a millionaire, but Walker is the mogul who was (wrongly) labeled the first female “self-made millionaire.” After her untimely death, Walker was also falsely credited with inventing chemical hair relaxers and the hot comb. In fact, neither she nor Malone invented the hot comb. That honor goes to a Frenchman named Marcel Grateau, who reportedly created the hair tool in 1872 for white women seeking to wear their hair in sleek Cleopatra-style bobs. When Grateau came up with his invention, both Walker and Malone were small children. But Walker’s death turned her into a legend of sorts. “The story of Madam CJ Walker was popularized, justifiably, from photographs demonstrating the growth of her wealth, albeit short-lived, and the appeal of her ‘rags to riches’ experience,” Whitfield said. “The story of Mrs. Annie Turnbo Malone exemplified a different focus — self-help and personal dignity.” “The story of Madam CJ Walker was popularized, justifiably, from photographs demonstrating the growth of her wealth, albeit short-lived, and the appeal of her ‘rags to riches’ experience,” Whitfield said. “The story of Mrs. Annie Turnbo Malone exemplified a different focus — self-help and personal dignity.” While Malone was formally educated in the North, Walker was born on a Louisiana plantation and spent just a few months in the classroom as a child. She married at 14, had a daughter a few years later, and was widowed at 20. In spite of these odds, she went from washerwoman to businesswoman. That amazing trajectory, combined with Walker’s PR savvy — she was married to adman C.J. Walker — is likely one of the reasons she reached almost mythological status. But there’s room enough in history to honor Malone and Walker, especially since the former’s business expertise led to the rise of the latter. One generation removed from slavery, these two black women both ran wildly successful business empires unimaginable to even the average American, let alone to average black women, who worked mostly as domestics during the turn of the century. Malone’s life, on the other hand was hardly as dramatic as Walker’s. While both women were orphaned as children, Malone hadn’t experienced abject poverty in the South or widowhood, as Walker had. In short, her life was not as sensational, and thus, not as headline-grabbing as her former client’s was. Malone’s long life was another reason her story wasn’t mythologized. She lived to be nearly 90 years old. She saw her business through the Great Depression and managed to keep it under her control after her costly divorce from her second husband. By the 1950s, 32 branches of her Poro cosmetology school were up and running across the country. Today, Malone may not be the household name that Walker is, but Whitfield says that she lives on through her philanthropic efforts. “Mrs. Malone has already received the attention she desired through the continued work of Annie Malone Children and Family Service Center, which provides a myriad of support opportunities for St. Louis-area youth,” he says. “There is also an annual Annie Malone parade in St. Louis. I have confidence that one day Mrs. Malone will be more widely recognized.” Sources: vox.com, article by Nadra Nittle (Feb 15, 2019); Photograph of Annie Malone from a souvenir booklet about Poro College Company, 1920-27;

The descendant of enslaved grandparents, Annie Mae Hunt was born in 1909 near Brenham, Texas. She picked cotton near Navasota for 50 cents a day in conditions she compared to “slavery times,” meaning that she, her mother, and sister endured intimidation, beatings, and sexual assault by white and sometimes black men. Even so, she declared, “a man never beat me up and got away with it!” Married at 15, she later left her husband and moved to Dallas with her three children. There she married Marvin Hunt. Without access to birth control, she had 20 children and lost 7 of them. With a 5th-grade education, Annie Mae Hunt earned a living as a domestic worker and sold home-made pies and, later, Avon cosmetics. She bought her own house and retired to an active life in Democratic Party politics that took her to President Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. The historian Ruthe Winegarten published Hunt’s oral history in 1983. Called “I Am Annie Mae,” it sold 1,000 copies in three months. Winegarten and composer Naomi Carrier later transformed the book into a musical that reverberated with rock-and-roll, gospel, jazz, and blues songs. It was staged 20 times. Through the spread of her story, Annie Mae Hunt became a celebrity, enjoying what she called being “a Queen Bee.” She died in 2003, survived by her husband and 69 descendents. U.S. Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson read a tribute to Hunt into the Congressional Record in her honor. Sources: Women in Texas History; Winegarten, Ruthe, ed., I Am Annie Mae: An Extraordinary Woman in Her Own Words—The Personal Story of a Black Texas Woman. Austin: Rosegarden Press, 1983. Reprinted as I Am Annie Mae: An Extraordinary Black Texas Woman in Her Own Words. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996

Mrs. A. W. Rysinger was the proprietor of Rysinger's Central Millinery Emporium in Austin, Texas from around 1900 to 1919. She sold custom dresses, hats, notions, and cosmetics. Al and Addie Rysinger developed one of the early black owned businesses in Austin around the turn of the century. Stylish women began their fashion search downtown on East 6th Street at Rysinger's Central Millinery Emporium. Starting with only a bonnet and a few boxes, Mrs. Rysinger built a custom dressmaking department and carried a complete line of sewing goods. She made hair braids and hats to sell, along with hair preparations, rouge, and face powder. Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph by Ruthe Winegarten (1995)

Beginning with a resource of five dollars, Dr. Julia P.H. Coleman (1873 - 1950), a licensed pharmacist, founded the Hair Care-Vim Chemical Company in Washington DC., in 1911. She produced a composition marketed as "Hair-Vim" and opened the Hair-Vim Vogue and School. Coleman was the earliest African American woman to open a drugstore in the nation. Hughes was a pharmacist, entrepreneur, social activist, and business executive. She was also the first African-American woman pharmacist to successfully own and operate her own drug store; much later, she was the first African-American woman to run for elective office in the state of New York. Hughes was born in Melville, North Carolina, the sixth of eight children of John and Mary (Moore) Hughes. She was educated in local schools, and attended Scotia Seminary in Concord, North Carolina (later named Barber-Scotia College) where she graduated in 1893. After teaching school for a couple of years, she enrolled at the "Pharmaceutical College" (now the College of Pharmacy) at Howard University in Washington DC., she graduated with the degree of Pharm.D in 1897. After graduation, Hughes moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she ran the pharmacy of the Frederick Douglass Hospital (later Mercy-Douglass Hospital) while taking post-graduate work at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy (now the University of the Sciences). In 1899 she opened her own drug store at 937 Christian Street in South Philadelphia, called the Hughes Pharmacy. She was the first African-American woman to have done so. A contemporary newspaper account states, "With every prospect of success Miss Julia P. Hughes has opened an elegantly appointed establishment...and is already doing a profitable business." On February 16, 1900, Dr. Hughes married newspaperman James Harold Coleman, a native of Richmond, Virginia; the couple moved to Newport News, Virginia where, for four years, she operated her own pharmacy. In 1912 James Coleman was employed as a "colonization agent" for black settlers for a projected all-black town in Chaves County, New Mexico eighteen miles from Roswell, New Mexico called Blackdom. Coleman went to New Mexico, while his wife moved to Washington, D.C., to live with her stepmother and other relatives; by 1916, the couple had divorced. There were no children. By the time of her divorce, Dr. Julia P. H. Coleman had given up her drug store and with T. Thomas Fortune in March 1914 founded a weekly newspaper, the Washington Sun. While working on the newspaper, she had been experimenting with various other ways of making a living, and had developed another career as a hairdresser. Being an experienced chemist, she experimented with various concoctions designed to grow and straighten kinky hair and eradicate dandruff; she also developed shampoos, soaps, powders and lotions. In 1909, Dr. Coleman and her then husband had formed the Columbia Chemical Company, whose purpose was to produce and market a hair preparation she called "Hair-Vim." The company was dissolved in September 1910. Then after returning to Washington, and with five dollars in her pocket, Dr. Coleman established the "Hair Care-Vim Chemical Company," with herself as "president and manager." The company was devoted to the production and sale of "a composition marketed as 'Hair-Vim'." She first set up shop at 643 Florida Avenue, N.W., and then moved the business to her stepmother's home at 1234 U Street, N.W. in Washington, D.C. Dr. Coleman's business venture was very successful. She was soon able to sell her newspaper venture and devote herself full-time to the production and sale of her hair lotions, soaps, face creams, "corn salves" and shampoos. In July 1916, she expanded the company's activities to nearby Baltimore, Maryland. Although running well behind such leaders in the field as Madame C. J. Walker and Annie Turnbo Malone, Dr. Coleman was able, by shrewd marketing, to keep Hair-Vim in business for almost thirty years. She provided beauty parlors with free products and encouraged the owners of the shops to use them on their clients. She also emulated Madame Walker and Mrs. Malone in developing "Beauty Culture" schools promoting the "Hair-Vim" way of doing hair. On May 25, 1918, Dr. Coleman decided to take a trip to Baltimore, Maryland via the Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Electric Railway, but was forced to give up her seat in the first class car because of her race. When she reached Baltimore, she secured the services of local African American attorney W. Ashbie Hawkins and sued the railroad. She won her case and was awarded damages totaling twenty dollars. In 1919, according to the NAACP magazine The Crisis, Julia Coleman decided to "establish a branch (of the Hair Care-Vim Chemical Company) in New York City. She purchased a five story brownstone in Harlem at 118 West 130th street for $30,000 and moved the operations of the company there. This would be her home for nearly the rest of her life. After settling in New York City, Dr. Coleman, along with overseeing the activities of her company, became active in many social and progressive movements. She was a member of the National Medical Association, serving for a time as the "pharmaceutical secretary". She also was active in the National Council of Negro Women, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the local chapter of the National Urban League as well as several church groups and local civic groups. For example, in December 1927, she was elected president of the Federation of Colored Women's Clubs of New York City; she was elected in part, as a contemporary newspaper account states, due to her successful tenure as "head of the business department of the State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs.' In 1920, with a number of black leaders, including William Pickens, Chandler Owen, Robert S. Abbott, and John E. Nail, she signed a letter to Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty urging the vigorous prosecution of black nationalist Marcus Garvey on charges of mail fraud. Garvey attacked them, calling them "race traitors" and singling out Dr. Coleman as "a hair straightener and a face bleacher." Dr. Coleman also became involved in local politics, being affiliated with the Republican Party. In September 1924, she ran for the Republican Party nomination for the New York State Assembly from the Nineteenth District, stating that "she expects to arouse the colored woman as never before to their political duty." She, however, lost the primary election to Abraham Grenthal, an attorney and the Republican party boss of the district. On August 12, 1930, in Washington, Dr. Coleman married the Reverend John Wallace Robinson, pastor of St. Mark's Methodist Episcopal Church in Harlem, and after his retirement, pastor of Christ Community Church of Harlem, founded in 1935. They were married for eleven years, until Reverend Robinson's death in November 1941. After Reverend Robinson's death, Julia Coleman-Robinson gradually withdrew from both the business and social worlds, and passed away in September 1950. She is buried next to her second husband at Frederick Douglass Memorial Park on Staten Island, New York. Sources: Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University ; Sheldon Green: Up from Washington: William Pickens and the Negro Struggle for Equality, 1900-1954; The Entrepreneurial Spirit of African American Inventors, by Patricia Carter Sluby

Born on March 31, 1838, to John and Fanny Briggs, active Black abolitionists in New Bedford, Martha Bailey Briggs (1838-1889) realized at a young age that education was essential to ending slavery. Her life is a testament to the leadership that African American women provided in the field of education during the 19th century. Her father, John Briggs of Tiverton, Rhode Island, was a well-known abolitionist and friend of Frederick Douglass. Her mother, abolitionist Fanny Bassett Briggs of Martha’s Vineyard, died when Martha was a young child. John encouraged Martha to study hard and arranged for her to be privately tutored. At the age of 12, Martha entered New Bedford High School in 1850 and became one of the first African American women to graduate from the school. Martha soon began teaching in her father’s home on Allen Street conducting day classes for young students and evening classes for adults, including those with ties to the Underground Railroad. One of her first teaching positions was on Martha’s Vineyard teaching the Gay Head and Mashpee Wampanoags on the reservation. She was then hired to teach in Newport at a private school by George T. Downing, a Black abolitionist and entrepreneur with restaurants in Newport and New York City. His own children attended the private school to avoid the segregated public schools. It was in Newport where her reputation as a teacher came to the attention of abolitionist educator Myrtilla Miner who invited her in 1859 to join the faculty at the Miner Normal School in Washington, D.C. Martha’s father did not support her moving south at the time due to the increased tensions between the North and the South and fear for Martha’s safety, so she declined Miner’s offer. Martha continued to work for the educational advancement of African Americans, and her move south would eventually become a reality. In 1866, she was one of 40 New Bedford educators to travel south to teach freed Blacks after the Civil War. In 1869, after 10 years of teaching in various positions, Martha accepted a full-time teaching position in the public schools of Washington, D.C., where she was recognized for her leadership and soon became principal of the Anthony Bowen School until 1873. From 1873 until 1879, she joined the faculty at the Normal and Preparatory Department of Howard University, now the School of Education at Howard. In 1879, 20 years after Martha’s first invitation to the Miner Normal School, she became its third principal and remained there through 1883. In June 1880, Briggs received the commendation of the Board: “We express the belief and hope that the Miner Normal School, whose first year has proven so successful under the earnest and faithful charge of its principal, Miss Martha Briggs, will eventually not only supply the colored schools of the district with educated and earnest teachers but that it will in measure contribute to supply the demand of the South for colored teachers for the colored race.” The Miner Normal School was known for training African American teachers to teach African American students in the District and other southern locations. During her four years as its principal, Martha led about 80 student teachers through successful program completion to graduation. In 1883, Martha left the Miner Normal School and returned to Howard University to serve as principal of its Normal Department until 1889. Her extensive experience as both teacher and administrator was invaluable in the development of teacher training programs in Normal schools, the predecessors of education departments in today’s colleges and universities. Because of illness in 1883, Briggs elected to end her service as Miner Normal School Principal and returned to Howard University’s Normal Department. The Catalogue records her as “Principal of the Normal Department.” Briggs died March 28, 1889, at the age of fifty. The District of Columbia Certificate of Death records the cause of death as a tumor. Over the years since her death, the District of Columbia Board of Education named two elementary schools in her honor. Both have subsequently been demolished. However, Briggs’ contributions to the preparation of teachers have been more permanently enshrined in the history of the Minor Normal School. By an Act of Congress in 1930, it became Miner Teachers College. Housed in a Gregorian structure still standing at 2565 Georgia Avenue, N.W., this building served Miner Normal School (1913-29) and the District of Columbia Teachers College (1955-77). Today it houses some of the teacher preparation programs on the University of the District of Columbia. She was returned to New Bedford, Massachusetts, her birthplace, for burial. A memorial to her life and service was held by the Bethel Literary and Historical Association. Furthermore, Howard University memorialized her with a tablet placed on the wall of Andrew Rankin Chapel on the campus. In its March 1934 Founder’s Day program, Miner Teacher’s College celebrated her service as the third principal of Miner Normal School. New Bedford Historical Society; Lighting the Way, Historic Women of the Southcoast; Lighting the Way: Historic Women of the Southcoast, article written by Lee Blake; Notable Black American Women, Book 2 By Jessie Carney Smith

Alethia Browning Tanner was an enslaved woman who ran her own vegetable market in Lafayette Square in front of the White House during the late 1700s and early 1800s. She was highly successful, counting President Thomas Jefferson among her customers. By 1810 she had saved enough to purchase her freedom: $1400. She continued to be successful in business, and was an important member of the early free black community of Washington, DC. Alethia Tanner was remembered by her contemporaries as someone who's character and philanthropy gave her a remarkable prominence and commanded the respect of all who knew her. Throughout her long life she consistently beat the odds. Alethia "Lethe" Browning Tanner was born about 1785. Alethia Browning and her sisters Sophia (1770-1856) and Laurena, grew up enslaved on the plantation of Rachel Pratt near the Patuxent River, Maryland. Alethia in the ancient Greek means truth or sincerity. Rachel Pratt was the mother of a Governor of Maryland, Thomas George Pratt (1804-1869). Little is known of Alethia Browning Tanner's early life or childhood. We do know, however, that like her older sister Sophia Browning Bell, Alethia possibly met her husband at a local market or on a visit to one of the nearby plantations. The two most likely married young in a slave ceremony. Her husband is said to have died early, the couple had no children, and Alethia remained a widow for the rest of her life. It is possible that Alethia may have met African American mathematician and astronomer Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806) while Benneker was with a survey party near their cabin measuring the boundaries of the nation's new capitol. Alethia's sister Sophia Browning Bell had kept a small garden for some time where apparently, with the consent of Rachel Pratt, she was able to grow produce for her family and more importantly she was able to sell any extra vegetables in the local markets of Alexandria and the District of Columbia. Through such endeavors, Sophia was able to gather enough money to purchase her husband George Bell's freedom from his owner the Addison family for $400.00 and then George was able to reciprocate and buy Sophia's freedom. Alethia Tanner's gardening and entrepreneurial skills gave her the ability to adopt a similar manumission strategy. Tanner also sold produce at one of the City's markets and it was at the Washington Market that she may have met President Thomas Jefferson. President Jefferson often visited the market located right outside the White House, where he selected produce and recorded the prices of thirty-seven varieties of vegetables available. Alethia Tanner would have been able to meet some of Washington, D.C.'s other elite, because many of the City's leaders, like Chief Justice John Marshall, frequented this market to purchase their own produce. Historian and genealogist, Dorothy S. Provine, has found in her research that Alethia Tanner was able to buy her freedom from her owner Rachel Pratt for $1400.00. Tanner made her last payment of $277.00 on June 29, 1810 and received her manumission papers on July 10, 1810. Tanner's purchase price was substantial and it must have required considerable effort, saving and sacrifice for her and her husband to amass such a sum. In 1810, fourteen hundred dollars was the equivalent of at least three years wages for a skilled tradesman. Over the next four decades Alethia Tanner helped manumit her family, including her sister Laurena Browning Cook, her husband, the couple's children and numerous nephews and grandnephews, and friends of her family. Among her sister Laurena Browning Cook's children was John Francis Cook (1810-1855), who became an educator, a clergyman and later established the Union Seminary for black students seeking preparation for ordination. John F. Cook later became the first black Presbyterian minister in the District of Columbia. Cook was a favorite of Alethia Tanner who listed Cook in her 15 May 1847 will as her principal heir; sadly John F. Cook predeceased his aunt. Alethia Browning Tanner like her sister and brother-in-law George Bell and Sophia Browning Bell was a recognized leader in the early African American community of the District. Like many blacks Alethia Tanner may have been attracted to the moral tone and concerns of the early Methodist Church. She first worshiped at Ebenezer Methodist church, on Capitol Hill. One of the things that attracted blacks like Tanner to the Methodist church fold was the Methodists strong critique of slavery. Early Methodists held with their founder, John Wesley, that there was an essential equality of all believers before God. Over time, however, this changed and many white congregants retreated from their earlier egalitarianism, and most African Americans resented being confined to the galleries of the church as they found that the church itself no longer welcoming. It's worth emphasizing that this church segregation process was not unique to Washington, D.C. or to the Methodist Church. Indeed, similar processes were going on throughout most denominations and in most American cities. In the 1820's, Alethia Tanner, John Francis Cook, and George and Sophia Bell along with numerous other black parishioners, decided the time was right for them to move to another church of their own. As a result, they helped found the Israel Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. At one point the fledgling church was nearly sold at auction by the creditors who held the mortgage and it was Alethia Browning Tanner with her brother-in-law George Bell and sister Sophia Browning Bell who stepped in to pay the mortgage and save the church. In addition to striving for equality within the church, Althea was much concerned with education. In 1807, her brother-in-law George Bell, along with Nicholas Franklin and Moses Liverpool announced they were starting a school for Black children. The school which became known as "the Bell school," was the first in the District of Columbia open to free Black children. Bell, Franklin, and Liverpool may have been illiterate, however, each would have known from their own personal experience how important education was to attaining equality and economic prosperity. George and Sophia Bell are said to have been the school's principal financial supporters. At this time Alethia Tanner may have been only able to provide moral support as she was building up enough capital to purchase her freedom. From the evidence of her will, Alethia Tanner could sign her own name and perhaps like Michael Shiner, she may have been able to learn the basics of reading and writing at a Sunday school offered by the Methodist church.10 The Methodists emphasis on reading "God's word" gave many African Americans their first real opportunity to become literate. The Bell School survived for just a few years due to lack of steady funding and the fact that in 1807, the District of Columbia's "free colored" population consisted of only 494 individuals. Thus the small student base may have doomed their venture from the start. Still, the Bell family and Alethia Browning Tanner, combined with other daring members of the community and made another try in 1818 with the Resolute Beneficial Society School. In their announcement for the new school, the sponsors made considerable efforts to placate white fears of the Black population learning to read and write. The sponsors also made clear their policy of never assisting slaves to write any type of communication less they be implicated in assisting slaves to evade capture by forging travel passes and like documents. The Resolute Beneficial Society School eventually succumbed to the shear realities of a segregated society. The District's black population however, never gave up and their support efforts along with sympathetic white support, continued to open private schools for black children. Alethia Tanner was extraordinarily successful in navigating her way through the legal and slave codes of the District of Columbia and seemed to have been skillful in adapting and negotiating for the freedom of her family and friends. But no matter how successful she and other leaders became, danger was always present whether it involved slave catchers eager to take someone without the necessary freedom certificate or travel papers or the periodic racial violence that was inflicted on the African American community such as the "Snow Riot "of 1835. This 1835 riot began on August 11, 1835 as a labor strike at the Washington Navy Yard. It rapidly morphed into a race riot, as young WNY mechanics and apprentices decided to take their frustrations and fears out on free blacks such as Beverley Snow, a free black man who was the owner of a popular oyster restaurant. Other black businesses were also attacked. Black schools and churches were attacked with special zeal as the rioters sought Alethia Tanners' nephew John Francis Cook, who by 1835 had become an established figure in the religious community as well as a teacher and educator. In going after the free black population the mob reflected the deepest fears of a white community anxious uncertain and fearful of those promoting black literacy. The mob especially seemed to want to shut down black schools and was relentless in its pursuit of John F. Cook, "The mob wanted Cook, a solemn free black man who was well-versed in Presbyterian theology and sought to educate every Negro child he could find. Cook was a firm opponent of drink and slaver," and he had to flee for his life to Philadelphia where he remained for a year until it was safe to return. Tanner's own safety may well have been in danger too although there is no record of her ever leaving the District of Columbia. The rioting went on for three days before the militia was called in and the mob dispersed. In her old age Alethia Tanner was able to see the District of Columbia Emancipation Act signed into law on April 16, 1862, by Abraham Lincoln. On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was also signed by President Lincoln. These two acts signaled that there was no going back and that ending slavery was now a national priority. Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately free a single slave, it fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and for freedom. Among these men were some of Alethia Tanner's nephews. As reflected in her will, Alethia Browning Tanner was able to accumulate property and had some saving to pass on to her nephews and grandnephews. By the time of her death in 1864 she could look back on a long life filled with achievements and hard work. She had managed to obtain by her long labors, perseverance, and in spite of all odds, not only her own freedom, but she had also purchased the manumission of her sister, her nephews and grandnephews. Alethia during her long and productive life helped the larger community by sponsoring some of the first schools for black children in the District of Columbia and by her financial support had made it possible for many hundreds of young people to gain access to education. Finally, Alethia Browning Bell contributed to and promoted the newly formed African American Methodist Episcopal Church as a place of refuge and dignity for her community. Her impressive legacy was truly "a goodly heritage." Sources: Washington DC Genealogy Trails; John G. Sharp; Histories of the National Mall; Moorland-Spingarn Research Center

On Easter weekend in 1928 five black women took off on an ambitious bike ride from New York City to Washington, D.C. They were Marylou Jackson, Velma Jackson, Ethyl Miller, Leolya Nelson and Constance White. They weren’t out to make a political point. They were motivated simply by their “love for the great outdoors,” according to an account decades later by the League of American Bicyclists. Five native New Yorkers embarked on a group ride from New York City to Washington, D.C. during Easter weekend in 1928. These five women were Marylou Jackson, Velma Jackson, Ethyl Miller, Leolya Nelson and Constance White. They rode 250 miles in three days. On the first day of their ride, they biked 110 miles to Philadelphia. The second day, they biked 40 miles to Wilmington, Delaware. The third and final day, they biked more than 100 miles, arriving in Washington, D.C. Once there they did some sightseeing around the National Mall and Howard University. And then a few blocks west to the Phillis Wheatley YWCA where they spent the night. They also took time to have the above photograph taken. The next day they hopped a train, with their bikes in tow, for New York. Nine years after women were granted the right to vote in the United States, these five cyclists took to the bike to dispel the dehumanizing notion that women were incapable of great feats of athleticism. Cycling in general was an activity seen as something done by young white males. While these five women were not the first to embark on such a journey, they put to the forefront that neither race nor gender would be an inhibitor to their drive and capacity to be full in their bodies. These five cyclists after completing their journey laid out a challenge to others, especially women, to not only make the journey but to beat their time. Sources: Cycling for Change by Jamilah King, colorlines.com; Scurlock/Smithsonian Institute; DC to NYC Bike Tour Honors 1928 Ride by Liz (bikeleague.org)

A California based newspaper called The Monongahela published an editorial in 1881 in which it doubted black children could be educated, following a state ruling requiring communities to desegregate their schools. The Daily Republican would reverse its opinion a decade later in an obituary, published high and center on its front page, following the untimely death of a local young black woman of great educational accomplishment for her time. “She was a mild and gentle lady, and had many friends wherever she went,” the publisher, Chill Hazzard, stated in the story about the death of Elizabeth Jennie Adams Carter, printed just below the newspaper’s flag. The obituary also recognized her as having been the first “colored graduate” of South-Western State Normal College, an earlier name of California University of Pennsylvania. Carter was born a free person in Monongahela Oct. 9, 1852, to the Rev. Beverly and Eliza Jane Peters Adams Carter. Her grandparents were slaves, and her father was a barber, which was a respected profession, said Monongahela historian Terry Necciai. She was granted a diploma July 8, 1881, and awarded a teaching certificate a week later from the California Borough college, at a time when there were few white females on campuses, according to the 2014 book, “African American Women Educators: A Critical Examination of their Pedagogies, Educational Ideas, and Activism from the 19th to mid-20th Centuries.” But before Carter earned her degree, Hazzard had published an editorial stating there was “still a great deal of doubt about the educability of blacks,” according to the book written by a number of authors, including Karen A. Johnson. The book theorized the editorial resulted from a July 4, 1881, ruling by the state Legislature that abolished colored schools. Hazzard went as far as to state that black children didn’t want to go to school. “There were theories about race, and ideas were pervasive in that time about inferiority,” said Johnson, an associate professor of education and ethnic studies at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. “Her life experience was not the case,” Johnson said of Carter. “She was a fascinating character.” She said Carter’s achievements, which included published acclaim for her public speaking skills, might have changed Hazzard’s mind regarding the way he had criticized black people. Johnson said “he might have had a change of heart.” Carter was a teacher in a school for black children in the basement of an African Methodist Episcopal church in Monongahela from 1876 to 1879 before she went to college at age 27. She rose to the position of vice principal at a school near Brownsville before joining the faculty at Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas, about six years after earning her degree. Paul Quinn was founded as a private, faith-based liberal arts college in April 1872 with the purpose of educating freed slaves and their offspring, its website states. Carter was married to John Nelson Carter, an AME minister who also attended the Normal School, and they had two children, William Beverly Burgin, and Lida Jane Carter, who died as a child, according to an article in the California Journal, a Cal U. publication. Her failing health in 1889 brought Carter back to Pennsylvania, where she died about two years later in Beaver at age 38. The cause of her death remains unknown. The Monongahela Valley Republican, which Hazzard also operated, dispatched a reporter to cover Carter’s funeral. “She was a pattern that all should follow,” the reporter wrote in the story, quoting the ministers who eulogized her before she was buried in Monongahela Cemetery. The story also mentioned that one of her pallbearers was Capt. William Catlin, a Civil War veteran from Monongahela who was known for having been among the first black members of the Pennsylvania National Guard. Cal U. continues to memorialize Carter to this day, and it even has a dormitory named after her. Her framed diploma hangs in the multicultural center in Carter Hall. The university also issues scholarships and awards in Carter’s name, honoring those who exemplify “her spirit, resilience and leadership.” Observer-Reporte, "Jennie Carter Left A Legacy of Admiration, Hope at Cal U," Staff Writer, Scott Beveridge (Feb. 2019)

The Life and Times of Caroline Still Anderson November 1, 1847, Caroline Virginia Still, daughter of Letitia and William Still, is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1864, Caroline Still entered Oberlin College at the age of fifteen. In 1868, Caroline Still is the youngest member of the graduating class at Oberlin College. December 28, 1869, Caroline Still married Edward A. Wiley, formerly enslaved and also a fellow classmate at Oberlin, at her parents residence. The famous Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield performed at Caroline’s wedding reception that was attended by prominent African Americans like Robert Purvis, Sarah Mapps Douglass and William Whipper as well as white abolitionist Lucretia Mott. In 1872, Caroline Still Wiley attended lectures in physiology at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. In 1874, Caroline’s husband, Edward Wiley, died, leaving her with two children, William and Letitia, named after her parents. That same year she moved to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University College of Medicine. She taught drawing and elocution to support her family. In 1875, Caroline moved back to Philadelphia and matriculated at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. In 1878, Caroline Still Wiley graduated from Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania with a degree of Doctor of Medicine. She and Georgianna E. Young were the only African Americans to graduate in the 1878 class. Since 1867 when Rebecca Cole graduated, they were the first Blacks to graduate the school. In 1879, Caroline Still Wiley interned at New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston, Massachusetts for one year. That same year she returned to Philadelphia and established her practice. In 1880, Caroline Still Wiley married Reverend Matthew Anderson. In 1888, Caroline served as treasurer for the alumni association of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. In 1899, Caroline Still Anderson assisted her husband Rev. Matthew Anderson in the establishment of the Berean Institute. She served as assistant principal, instructor of elocution, physiology, and hygiene and supervisor of the dispensary. In 1919, Caroline Still Anderson died at her home on June 2nd after a series of strokes. J.A. Hurst, Photographer (Philly); Temple University Libraries, Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection/William Still Collection

Catharine D. Lealtad was the only black student in her senior class at St. Paul’s Mechanic Arts High School. Her “splendid record” prompted Principal George Weitbrecht to select her as valedictorian. He told the Appeal, an “Afro-American” newspaper in St. Paul: “It was simply a question of brains, not color.” From the Minneapolis Tribune: "Negro Girl Valedictorian, Daughter of Colored Minister to Lead in St. Paul School Exercises; A negro girl, daughter of Rev. Alfred H. Lealtad, rector of St. Phillip’s Episcopal church, will be the valedictorian at the graduating exercises of the Mechanics’ Art senior class of St. Paul, which takes place next June. Her name is Catherine Deaver Lealtad. She is 17 years old. The only negro in her class Miss Lealtad, according to the principal of the Mechanics Art, has made a splendid record as a student and has stood at the head of her class since she entered." Dr. Catharine Deaver Lealtad, Macalester College’s first African American graduate, earned a double major degree in chemistry and history in 1915 with highest honors. After graduation, Dr. Lealtad taught for a year in Columbus, Ohio, and then moved to New York City to work for the YWCA and the Urban League. She was accepted into Cornell University’s medical school, but left shortly after her arrival due to the racial prejudice at Cornell. She went on to study medicine in Lyon, France, where she received her medical degree from the University of Paris in 1933 specializing in pediatrics. When World War II began, Dr. Lealtad was commissioned as a major in the U.S. Army and went to Germany in 1945 to supervise medical services for children that had been displaced due to the war. One year later, she went to China with the U.S. Public Health Service to assist the Chinese doctors in fighting the cholera epidemic that was sweeping through China at that time. Upon returning to the U.S. at the close of WWII, Dr. Lealtad worked at Sydenham Hospital, the first voluntarily interracial hospital in New York. Although Dr. Lealtad retired in 1979, she continued in her efforts to serve those who had limited access to medical care. She worked for two years at a mission hospital in Puerto Rico and for seven years at a free clinic for the underprivileged in Mexico City. In 1983, Dr. Lealtad created an endowed scholarship at Macalester College. The only person to receive two honorary degrees from Macalester, Dr. Lealtad passed away in 1989. Source: MacalesterCollege, Multicultural Life, Lealtad-Suzuki Center