Zeta Youth Conference 2015
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), African American poet, winner of a Pulitzer
Prize in 1950, poet laureate of Illinois: inspired by Harlem Renaissance poet
Paul Dunbar, her poems expressed everyday life in the inner city.
Lizzie Polly Robinson Jenkins; author of the Real Rosewood is a retired educator
and descendant of Rosewood survivors. Her family experienced the horrific 1923
destruction of Rosewood, FL, a small African American town in Levy County. Mrs.
Jenkins is the founder/President and CEO of the Rosewood Foundation. .
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born free in Maryland and later became
an anti-slavery lecturer and poet. She worked for civil rights after the Civil
War, and also for women's rights. She was a founder of the National
Association of Colored Women (NACW). (An African American poet and
abolitionist)
African American journalist with CNN, NPR and PBS, Charlayne Hunter-Gault
was the first African American woman admitted to or graduated from the
University of Georgia. She's also the author of autobiography, In My Place,
reflecting on African American life in the 1940s and 1950s and the civil rights
movement of the fifties and sixties.
Zora Neale Hurston, an African American novelist, folklorist and
anthropologist; author of such books as Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Ms. Hurston was a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.
Toni Morrison, who won the Nobel Prize & Pulitzer Prize for Literature in
1993, published her first novel in 1970. Her novels focus on the experience of
black Americans -- especially women -- searching for identity in an unjust
society.
Sojourner Truth, former slave, abolitionist, preacher and advocate of
women's rights; known for her "Ain't I a Woman" speech.
Alice Walker, known for her books depicting the lives of African American
women, including The Color Purple.
Journalist, civil rights activist, anti-lynching crusader, Ida Bell Wells-Barnett
(1862-1931) was a cofounder of the NAACP and active in women's issues.
Marian Wright Edleman - lawyer, educator, activist, reformer, children's
advocate, administrator; founder of the Children’s Defense Fund; first African
American woman admitted to the Mississippi state
bar.
Zeta Youth Conference 2015
Harriet Tubman, a slave who escaped to freedom and then helped more than
300 other slaves escape. She was an abolitionist and proponent of Civil Rights.
When the American Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a
cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. After the war she settled in
Auburn, New York, where she would spend the rest of her long life. She died in
1913.
In 1981, Alexa Canady became the first female African American
neurosurgeon in the United Sates. Born November 7, 1950 in Lansing,
Michigan she was inspired to pursue a medical career while attending the
University of Michigan health careers summer program. Although she was
discouraged by some advisers, she refused to give up. After graduating cum
laude from medical school in 1975 she became a resident of the University of
Minnesota’s department of neurosurgery, the first African American
neurosurgery resident in the United States. She specialized as a pediatric
neurosurgeon and served as chief of neurosurgery at the Children’s Hospital in
Michigan from 1987 to 2001.
Ruby Nell Bridges was the first African-American child to attend an all-white
public elementary school in the American South. Born September 8,194 in
Tylertown, Mississippi, she was 6 years old when she had to be escorted to
class by her mother and U.S. marshals due to violent mobs opposing
integration. Bridges bravery paved the way for continued Civil Rights action
and she’s shared her story with future generation in educational forums. The
fact that Ruby was born the same year that the Supreme Court’s Brown vs
Board of Education is a notable coincident in her early journey into civil rights
activism. Ruby lived a only five blocks from an all white school but attended
kindergarten several miles away at an all-black segregated school.
.
Founder of Bethune-Cookman College in Florida, advisor to President
Roosevelt, and founder of the National Council of Negro Women, Mary
McLeod Bethune is known as a social reformer and educator.
Physician Regina Benjamin worked as the 18th U.S. surgeon general,
appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009.Born in 1956 in Mobile,
Alabama, she has been recognized widely for her humanitarian spirit.
Her appointment as Surgeon General allowed her to push forth
wellness and prevention initiatives. As a community clinician,
Benjamin allowed patients to pay whatever they could, in whatever
form and took on a variety of expenses form her own pocket. She
became loved by her patients and recognized the media for her
outstanding contributions. A leader in her field she was the first
African American woman and first physician under 40 to be elected to
the American Medical Association’s board of trustees in 1995 and in
2002 became the first black woman to lead a state-based medical
society in her position as president of the Medical Association of the
State of Alabama.
Zeta Youth Conference 2015
Activist on behalf of African Americans and women, Mary Church Terrell was
a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) and helped integrate the American Association of University
Women (AAUW). Her life spanned from just after the Emancipation
Proclamation to just after Brown v. Board of Education
Madam C. J. Walker, African American inventor and business executive. She
was the first African American woman millionaire in America, known not only
for her hair straightening treatment and her salon system, which helped other
African Americans to succeed, but also her work to end lynching and gain
women's rights.
Mary Elizabeth Carnegie exhibited courage, integrity and commitment to the
advancement of the nursing profession, as well as to the advancement of black
and other minority nurses. She wrote, edited and contributed chapters to
nearly 20 books and is author of all three editions of the award-winning The
Path We Tread: Blacks in Nursing Worldwide, 1854-1994. She initiated the
baccalaureate-nursing program at the historically black Hampton University in
Virginia, where the archives are named in her honor.
Josephine Baker: African American exotic dancer, international star, jazz
singer.
One of the 20th century's best-known notable African American women, opera
singer (contralto) Marian Anderson's career was shadowed by racial
prejudice, including the infamous incident in 1937 when the Daughters of the
American Revolution refused to let her sing at Constitution Hall in Washington,
DC -- and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt arranged for her to sing on the
Washington Mall, instead.
“Fannie Jackson Coppin was born a slave in Washington D.C. on October
15, 1837. She gained her freedom when her aunt was able to purchase her at
the age of twelve. In 1860 she enrolled at Oberlin College in Ohio. Oberlin
College was the first college in the United States to accept both black and
female students. In 1869 Jackson became principal of the Institute for Colored
Youth in Philadelphia, making her the first African American woman to receive
the title of school principal, a position she would hold until 1906….”
Mary Jane Patterson is recognized as the first black woman to graduate from an
establish four year college. The daughter of fugitive slaves she was born in Raleigh,
North Carolina in 1840. In 1856 her family moved to Oberlin, Ohio in hopes that the
children would be able to get a college education. She received a B.A. degree from
Oberlin College in 1862. She had an illustrious career as an educator and was known to
mentor many African Americans. After graduating she taught at the Institute for Colored
Youth in Pennsylvania before accepting a teaching position at the Preparatory High
School in Washington, D.C. In 1871, she became the first black principal of the newly
found Preparatory High School for Negroes. She continued to work at the school until
her death on September 24, 1894.
Zeta Youth Conference 2015
Carrie Meek was the first African-American woman to be elected to the
Florida senate. She was a 1992 Florida Women's Hall of Fame inductee.
The first black female U.S. Representative was Shirley Chisholm,
Congresswoman from New York, 1969–1983. She ran for President in 1972.
The first black female Secretary of State was Condoleezza Rice, 2005–2009.
Mae Jemison is an American physician and NASA astronaut. She became the
first black woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space
Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992. She resigned from NASA in 1993 to
form a company researching the application of technology to daily life.
Oprah Winfrey became the first black woman television host in 1986, "The
Oprah Winfrey Show." She retired after 25 seasons and now has her own
television network.
After college at Tennessee State University Oprah moved to Baltimore,
Maryland in 1976 where she hosted a TV chat show, People Are Talking. It was
so popular that in 1984 she was recruited to Chicago to host her own morning
show, A.M. Chicago.
Tennis champion: Althea Gibson became the first black person to play in and
win Wimbledon and the United States national tennis championship. She won
both tournaments twice, in 1957 and 1958. In all, Gibson won 56 tournaments,
including five Grand Slam singles events. She was a World No. 1 and is
sometimes referred to as "the Jackie Robinson of tennis" for breaking the color
barrier.
Charlotte Ray - first African American woman lawyer in the United States
and first woman admitted to the bar in the District of Columbia
Wilma Rudolph overcame childhood polio to become “fastest woman in the
world” (1960). Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold
medals in track and field during a single Olympic games. A track and field
champion, she elevated women's track to a major presence in the United
States
Rosa Parks: African American Civil Rights Activist, who Congress called “ the
first lady of civil rights” and “mother of the freedom movement”. Parks' act of
defiance and the Montgomery Bus Boycott became important symbols of the
modern Civil Rights Movement. She became an international icon of resistance
to racial segregation.
Maya Angelou is one of the most renowned and influential voices of our time.
Hailed as a global renaissance woman, Dr. Angelou is a celebrated poet,
memoirist, novelist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian,
filmmaker, and civil rights activist.
Zeta Youth Conference 2015
Coretta Scott King – author, activist and civil rights leader, wife of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr.; founder of the King Center for Non-violent Social Change. Mrs.
King's most prominent role may have been in the years after her husband's 1968
assassination when she took on the leadership of the struggle for racial equality
herself and became active in the Women's Movement.
Johnnetta B. Cole was born in Jacksonville, Florida, where her family had
long been established as leaders of the black community. In 1987 she made
history by becoming the first African-American woman to serve as President of
Spelman College. At her inauguration as seventh President of Spelman College,
Bill Cosby and his wife Camille made a gift of $20 million to the College, the
largest single gift from individuals to any historically black college or
university. In 2002, Dr. Cole accepted an appointment as President of Bennett
College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina. Like Spelman, Bennett
College is a historically black college; they are the only two institutions in the
United States founded specifically for the higher education of African American
women.
Founding Members of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. – Arizona Clever Stemons,
Fannie Pettie Watts, Pearl Neal, Myrtle Tyler Faithful and Viola Tyler
Goings
Karen Blount - Florida State Director of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Inc. –
Karen Britt - Florida Youth Director of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.
Former National Presidents of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority living in the Southeastern
Region (Florida, Georgia and South Carolina) –
,
Barbara Moore, Jylla Foster & Dr. Edith Francis