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Exhibit title card featuring a mural of Elizabeth Cotten.

Lady Plays the Blues Project

A digital annotated bibliography and multimedia archive about Black women country blues guitarists.
by Yoli M. Bergstrom-Lynch via Lady Plays the Blues Project on December 31, 2024
Sakinah Ahad Shannon.

The Story of Sakinah Ahad Shannon, an Early Hero of Abortion Liberation

Sakinah discovered Chicago’s Abortion Counseling Service, better known as Jane, because she wanted to help a friend. Then she became an essential part of it.
by Renee Bracey Sherman, Regina Mahone via The Nation on October 1, 2024
A group of Black women in swimsuits and caps gather in a group in a pool.

The Intimacy of Exercise: Sensuality and Sexuality in Black Women’s Fitness History

How did the sensuality, sexuality, and homosociality of exercise create intimate possibilities for Black women in postwar America?
by Ava Purkiss via Nursing Clio on July 3, 2024
Portrait of Harriet Tubman, in a field.

There Is Room for Our Black Heroes To Be Human

“Night Flyer” expands Harriet Tubman’s legacy to include her family, community and “eco-spiritual worldview.”
by Tiya Miles, Keishel A. Williams via The Emancipator on June 27, 2024
Painting of Mary Ann Tritt Cassell, a woman with pale skin and curled hair wearing a blue shirt with pink bow collar.

An Art Mystery is Solved, and a Historic Portrait Goes on Display

The painting of Mary Ann Tritt Cassell is likely the first known portrait commissioned by an American born into slavery.
by James Johnston via Retropolis on June 24, 2024
Illustration of Frances Thompson, bordered by smoke from green candles, and a purple flower.

How a Disabled Black Trans Woman Left Her Mark on 19th-Century Memphis

For a brief moment in history, Frances Thompson was Memphis’ biggest scandal. Her life paints a different picture of our civil rights legacy.
by Justin A. Davis via The Emancipator on June 13, 2024
Black women gathered in discussion for an episode of "Black Journal."

“The Black Woman”

Black women activism within documentary films in the 1960s United States.
by Manar Ellethy via Journal of the History of Ideas Blog on April 10, 2024
Regina King as Shirley Chisholm in "Shirley," a new film.

The True History Behind Netflix's 'Shirley' Movie

A new film dramatizes Shirley Chisholm's history-making bid to become the first Black woman president in 1972.
by Ellen Wexler via Smithsonian on March 22, 2024
Maria P. Williams, 1916.

The First Black Woman to Write, Produce, and Act in Her Own Film

Maria P. Williams pioneered filmmaking for African American women, but her life is even more thrilling than her sole film.
by Jennie Knuppel via The Saturday Evening Post on February 29, 2024
Irma Sherman, Chair of McMaid Workers Organizing Committee.

How Four Black Women Changed Labor Organizing Forever

40 years ago in Chicago, McMaid workers sparked a movement.
by Keith Kelleher via The Forge on February 13, 2024
Ambrotype of African American Woman with Flag—believed to be a washerwoman for Union troops quartered outside Richmond, Virginia

Home Front: Black Women Unionists in the Confederacy

The resistance and unionism of enslaved and freed Black women in the midst of the Confederacy is an epic story of sacrifice for nation and citizenship.
by Thavolia Glymph, Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on February 4, 2024
Display selling nuts

“Girls, We Can’t Lose!”: In 1930s St Louis, Black Women Workers Went on Strike and Won

During the Great Depression, St. Louis's Funsten Nut Factory was racially divided. But Black workers went on strike — and got their white coworkers to join them.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Jacobin on November 8, 2023
Willie Mae Thornton

'Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters' Explores the Legacy of the Black Musician Who Made 'Hound Dog' a Hit

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton lived an unapologetic life that transcended genres and gender norms beyond her bluesy hit song and the “Elvis moment.”
by Daja E. Henry, Lynnée Denise via The 19th on June 27, 2023
Tina Turner singing on stage

America Loved Tina Turner. But It Wasn’t Good To Her.

Over the course of her 83 years, the megawatt star that was Tina Turner kept telling us who she was in the hopes that we would see her — all of her.
by Soraya Nadia McDonald via Andscape on June 6, 2023
Native American and Black girls tossing around a medicine ball in a circle.

Right Living, Right Acting, and Right Thinking

How Black women used exercise to achieve civic goals in the late nineteenth century.
by Ava Purkiss via Lapham’s Quarterly on April 17, 2023
Sha-Rock tells her story to a crowd at the Bronx Music Heritage Center, 2023.

"You Gotta Fight and Fight and Fight for Your Legacy"

Sha-Rock claims her place as the first female MC in hip-hop history.
by Sidney Madden, Rodney Carmichael, Mano Sundaresan via NPR on March 23, 2023
15 women involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott; Rosa Parks's mugshot is the center.

The Women Behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott

We've heard about Rosa Parks and her crucial role, but Parks was just one of many women involved.
by Karen Grigsby Bates via NPR on March 22, 2023
Anna Julia Cooper, portrait sitting in a chair, and Mary Church Terrell, side portrait.

‘Moving Unapologetically to the Forefront’: How an Archive Is Preserving the Black Feminist Movement

The Black Woman’s Organizing Archive highlights work in the 19th and 20th centuries that benefitted Black women and American society as a whole.
by Daja E. Henry, Sabrina Evans, Shirley Moody-Turner via The 19th on March 8, 2023
Hands holding pregnant woman's stomach.

Black Women and the Racialization of Infanticide

Loss of control over knowledge of the female body cemented women’s status as second-class citizens.
by Rebekka Michaelsen via Black Perspectives on March 2, 2023
A photograph of Marvel Cooke overlayed over The Crisis' newspaper office.

This Radical Reporter Dedicated Her Life to Fighting the System

"I idolized women like Marvel Cooke," Angela Davis tells Teen Vogue.
by Olivia Lapeyrolerie via Teen Vogue on February 8, 2023
Female costars in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" next to a picture of Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins.

The Pioneering Black Sci-Fi Writer Behind the Original Wakanda

Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins invented the setting that eventually became Wakanda in her science fiction, but her name isn't widely known.
by Alison Lanier via Ms. Magazine on November 23, 2022
Octavia E. Butler.

The Spectacular Life of Octavia E. Butler

The story of the girl who grew up in Pasadena, took the bus, loved her mom and grandmother, and wrote herself into the world.
by E. Alex Jung via Vulture on November 21, 2022
"Home of Fannie Lou Hamer" sign

The Local Politics of Fannie Lou Hamer

By age 44, most people are figuring out how to live and die peacefully. That was certainly not the case with sharecropper and hero Fannie Lou Hamer.
by Stefan M. Bradley via Black Perspectives on October 6, 2022
Alberta Hunter Performing at U.S.O show

Tricksters, Biographies, and Two-Faced Archives

In 2015, precisely 31 years to the day of her death, blues and cabaret singer Alberta Hunter was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.
by K. T. Ewing via Black Perspectives on June 2, 2022
Ada “Bricktop” Smith (far left) seated at table with other women, the New York Public Library Digital Collections, 1920 – 1929 (Courtesy of the Schomburg Center).

Behind and Beyond Biography: Writing Black Women’s Lives and Thoughts

Ashley D. Farmer and Tanisha C. Ford explain the importance of biographical writing of African American women and the personal connection involved.
by Ashley D. Farmer, Tanisha C. Ford via Black Perspectives on May 31, 2022
Photo of Danyel Smith.

Danyel Smith Tells the History of Black Women in Pop Music

The author discusses Whitney Houston, Gladys Knight, racism in magazines, and why she’s so hopeful for the future of music and writing.
by Emily J. Lordi, Danyel Smith via The New Yorker on April 17, 2022
Combahee River Collective. Second, from the left, is Barbara Smith.

Eleven Black Women: Why Did They Die?

Barbara Smith, a key contributor to contemporary Black feminist thought, formed the Combahee River Collective to address Black women's interlocking oppressions.
by Huda Hassan, Barbara Smith via Mother, Loosen My Tongue on March 8, 2022
Drawing of the hanging of a woman accused of witchcraft.

The Historical Truth About Women Burned at the Stake in America? Most Were Black.

Most Americans probably don’t know this piece of Black history. But they should.
by Kali Nicole Gross via Washington Post on February 25, 2022
Third World Women's Alliance member demonstrating in crowd

How Black Feminists Defined Abortion Rights

As liberation movements bloomed, they offered a vision of reproductive justice that was about equality, not just “choice.”
by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor via The New Yorker on February 22, 2022
From center: Saundra Williams, the first crowned Miss Black America (1969). At left, 2nd runner-up Linda Johnson; on the right is Theresa Claytor, who was the first runner-up.
partner

The History of Beauty Pageants Reveals the Limits of Black Representation

Black contestants — and winners — have not translated into changed beauty standards or structural transformation.
by Mickell Carter via Made By History on February 16, 2022
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