It’s Black History Month!
February is a time to celebrate and embrace African-American and all African traditions and cultures, even though for those of us in the African-American community, it is something to celebrate every day of our lives.
The African-American community has evolved so much over the past many years, fighting to gain the respect they deserve in this crazy discriminating world we live in, we should thank heroes like Martin Luther King. Jr, entertainer Oprah Winfrey, and former US president Barack Obama, and so many more who have made such great inspirational impact on this country in so many ways from their activism, music, and more, and they have taken the steps they did to help to be a voice to African-Americans and inspire them to speak for what they believe in and that they can be whomever they want to be.
However, not all African-American heroes get published into the history books and are often overlooked in favor of traditional American history that only tells the stories like that of America’s founding fathers, World War II, and the so-called explorers and “discoverers” of America like Christopher Columbus, when there is so much more that we can learn.
In this article, we will discuss six incredible African-American heroes who don’t get the credit, respect, and acknowledgement they deserve, but maybe after you finish this article, you’ll have a reason to, and you’ll share this story with your friends and family because these people’s stories should be heard and shared by all.
Phillis Wheatley (1753 - 1784)
Before phenomenal poet Maya Angelou came into the world and graced us with her strong poems, there was young Phillis Wheatley.
Born in West Africa in 1753, she was captured and taken to Boston by slave traders in 1761. Upon arrival, she was bought by wealthy tailor John Wheatley, who would come to name her Phillis after the ship she arrived on, as well as giving her his family last name.
Unlike the usual cruel and uneducated upbringing an African-American would sadly have to endure during slavery, when Susanna, John Wheatley’s wife, discovered that young Wheatley had a quite remarkable intelligence, she relieved her of all her domestic duties and educated her with help from their daughter and son, Mary and Nathaniel.
For the next 16 months, Wheatley learned fast, and soon she could read the Bible, Greek and Latin classics, and British literature, while also studying astronomy and geography, as well as writing in Greek and Latin.
Developing a love for literature, Wheatley began writing poetry and at age 13; she would go on to get her first poem “On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin.” published in the Newport Mercury newspaper in 1769. The poem was about two sailors who nearly drowned at sea in a storm.
She began to write more poetry, receiving public acclaim at age 17, when she published her first collection of poems, “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.” With financial support from Selina Hastings, the English Countess of Huntingdon, Wheatley traveled to London with one of her tutors, Nathaniel, to publish her book since publishers in Boston refused to publish the text.
In one of her poems in the book, Wheatley conveyed her feelings on being captured from her home and her feelings on being enslaved: “I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate was snatched from Afric’s fancied happy seat: What pants excruciating must molest, what sorrows labor in my parent’s breast! Steeled was that soul, and by no misery moved, that from a father seized his babe beloved: Such, such my case. And can I then but pray others may never feel tyrannic sway?”
Upon the book’s publication, Wheatley became the first African American and the first enslaved US person to publish a book of poems as well as only the third American woman to do so. Her popularity as a poet both in the United States and England ultimately brought her freedom from slavery October 18, 1773.
Wheatley was also a strong supporter of the fight for independence, and in those efforts she penned several poems in honor of the Continental Army's commander and the future first American president, George Washington, who showed such appreciation for her poetry that he invited her to visit him in his quarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts in March 1776.
Unfortunately for the young poet, life became tragic as most of the Wheatley family died due to contracting illnesses which deeply broke Wheatley’s heart.
In 1778, Wheatley married a free African American from Boston, John Peters, a poor grocer. They fell on hard times as Wheatley tried to publish a second book of poems but failed to do so. With the ongoing revolution and the couple’s financial struggles, her enthusiasm for writing weakened, so instead of writing she had to get a job as a scullery maid at a boarding house to support her family.
She birthed two sons who died at childbirth, and she herself died during childbirth December 5, 1784.
Nonetheless, Wheatley in her time was the most influential African-American poet and is considered fundamental to the genre of African American literature by critics.
Matthew Henson (1866 - 1955)
The adventurous Matthew Alexander Henson was born August 8, 1866 in Charles County, Maryland to two African American sharecroppers who were freed before the Civil War. Unfortunately, they passed away when he was young leaving him and his siblings to the care of an uncle in Washington, DC.
At 12 years old, Henson ran away to Baltimore where he signed up to be a cabin boy aboard the Katie Hines, a merchant ship. The ship’s captain, Captain Childs, a Quaker, took the young Henson under his wing and taught him reading, writing, seamanship, and navigation, including how to hoist sails, tie knots, and read charts, as well as lessons in geography, history, mathematics, and first aid.
For five years Henson sailed on the Katie Hines, and he would see most of the world traveling to Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 1884, Captain Childs died on the voyage and Henson returned to Washington, DC and he took a job as a clerk in a hat shop.
But Henson’s wanderlust had been awakened. Soon, adventure would come back knocking at his door in 1888 in the form of a US Navy civil engineer by the name of Robert Peary who came into the shop one day to sell a collection of seal and walrus pelts that had just arrived from an expedition to Greenland.
Meeting with Henson, Peary was immediately impressed with his sailing experience and his enthusiasm to see more of the world, so Peary hired him to be his personal attendant and invited him to join him on his expedition to Nicaragua.
After two years of the Nicaragua expedition and getting to witness even more of Henson’s navigating skills, Peary recruited him as a colleague and he became "first man" in his expeditions.
In 1887, Henson and Peary joined together for their biggest, life-changing expedition yet, the Arctic, where their final destination was the North Pole—an expedition that ends with one receiving highest recognition while the other sadly gets gets nothing in return.
Their first stop was Greenland. While there, Henson met several local Inuit natives; after getting to know them, he came to embrace their culture and knowledge and even mastered the Inuit language and their survival methods (which came in handy for further explorations in the Arctic). The Inuit community in return welcomed Henson with open arms giving him the nickname “Mahri-Pahluk” meaning “Matthew The Kind One.”
During the Arctic expeditions, Henson became a capable hunter, fisherman, dog handler, and igloo builder, and even the most experienced of Peary’s recruits on each of their seven dangerous attempts (they even got support from former President Theodore Roosevelt) to reach the North Pole.
April 6, 1909, on their eighth attempt, Henson and Peary successfully made it to the North Pole accompanied with four Inuit men and 40 dogs, and when they reached their destination, Henson planted the American flag claiming in a great achievement in American history. This victory made Henson one of the first men and the first African-American to set foot in the North Pole.
Returning home to America, the world gave the most credit and applause to Peary on his success for reaching the North Pole, while ignoring Henson’s contributions. Even Peary distanced himself from Henson, his once close friend and colleague, which broke Henson’s heart as Henson recounted once in an interview.
Nonetheless, Henson kept on living his best life. He even published an Arctic expedition memoir entitled “A Negro Explorer at the North Pole” in 1912, and in 1937 he became a member to the elite Explorer’s Club in New York City. He was honored with a Congressional Medal and the Peary Polar Expedition Medal in 1944 for his role in the expeditions.
Henson breathed his last breath March 9, 1955. In 1988, Henson’s remains were moved for reinterment at Arlington National Cemetery, and September 20, 2021, the International Astronomical Union named a lunar crater after him.
Madame C. J. Walker (1867 – 1919)
To African-Americans, their curls symbolize integrity, beauty, pride, and fighting against the oppression that society tries to inflict on them, defying it all by wearing their afros, dreadlocks, box braids, cornrows, and twist. And it’s always important for them to nurture their hair with love to keep flexing that Black Girl Magic, and thanks to Madame C.J. Walker and her homemade line of hair care products for African-American women, that magic is alive.
Born as Sarah Breedlove December 23, 1867 on a plantation in Delta, Louisiana to two sharecroppers who had been born into slavery, Breedlove was the first in her family to be born free after the Emancipation Proclamation.
Her life, however, encountered hardships as she was orphaned at seven years old. Breedlove was cared for by her older sister, Louvenia, and her cruel brother-in-law, Jesse Powell, surviving together by working in the cotton fields of Delta. At age 14, she married Moses McWilliams to escape Powell’s abuse.
With McWilliams, Breedlove birthed her one and only daughter, Lelia (who was later renamed A'Lelia) June 6, 1885. Sadly, two years later her husband died. To provide a better life for herself and her daughter, they moved to St. Louis, Missouri where three of her brothers had established themselves as barbers. She got a job working as a laundress and cook which paid as little as $1.50 a day, but she managed to save enough money to get her daughter a proper education in the city’s public schools.
Breedlove soon joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church where she met and befriended leading African-American men and women who were members of St. Paul AME Church and the National Association of Colored Women. Hearing about their education and success inspired Breedlove and allowed her to view the world positively.
After an unsuccessful marriage to John Davis from 1894 to 1903, Breedlove suffered from scalp ailments that caused her to lose most of her hair. Consulting her barber brothers, they advised her to start experimenting with homemade remedies and store-bought products including a black hair product called "The Great Wonderful Hair Grower” by Annie Malone, another influential African-American businesswoman and owner of the Poro Company.
She contacted Malone and became a commissioned agent selling products for her, moving to Denver with her daughter in 1905 to sell Malone’s hair products while also concocting her own. The following year, she met and married her third husband, Charles Joseph Walker, a St. Louis newspaperman (whom she eventually divorced in 1910) and Sarah Breedlove was reborn as Madame C.J. Walker.
Born anew, Walker launched her line of hair products and straighteners for African American women which she called the “Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower” which was a scalp conditioning and healing formula.
While other African-American hair products were available, Walker differentiated herself by remaining humble and empathizing that she wanted to use her products to help African American women’s hair health, thus selling her homemade products to only them, even going door to door, teaching each and every one of them how to groom and style their hair.
In 1908, Walker opened her own beauty school, the Lelia College of Beauty Culture (which unfortunately closed in1981) named after her daughter and opened her factory, the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company. In 1910, seeing that there was a more prosperous African-American business community in Indianapolis, she happily relocated her factory.
Walker’s wealth kept increasing and increasing until she became a millionaire, making her the first female self-made millionaire, even rivaling that of her former employer, Malone, who became her biggest business rival.
Walker continued to develop her business by traveling across the United States and providing career opportunities and economic independence for thousands of African American women who like her had been confined to being maids, cooks, laundresses, and farmhands. In 1913, she decided to take her business international by visiting the Caribbean and Central America.
Soon, Walker became a philanthropist contributing to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) donating $5,000 to the NAACP’s efforts for the anti-lynching movement and covered tuition for six African American students at Tuskegee Institute.
By her time of death in May 25, 1919, Walker was the wealthiest African-American woman in America. There is even a Netflix series entitled “Self Made” which stars the talented Octavia Spencer as Walker.
Katherine Johnson (1918–2020)
One of the inspirations for the 2016 biographical drama film with Taraji P. Henson portraying her (with Spencer and Janelle Monáe portraying her fellow mathematicians), Katherine Johnson was known for calculating and analyzing the flight paths of many spacecraft including the historic Apollo 11 mission which landed Neil Armstrong on the moon.
Born and raised as Creola Katherine Coleman in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia August 26, 1918. At age 10, Coleman had mastered geometry and algebra, even starting high school, and then started at West Virginia State College (now West Virginia State University) at 15 and graduated at 18 with bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and French.
In 1939, she enrolled in West Virginia University’s graduate school where she continued to study math; however, plans changed when she left to marry James Goble and start a family with him, having three daughters together. Unfortunately, he died in 1956, and then three years later, she married James Johnson who she would remain happily married to until his death in 2019.
In 1952, Johnson learned that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was hiring African American women with mathematical and computing skills to work as “human computers” (basically people who could help calculate the trajectory of space missions), enthusiastically applying herself for the job.
Although NACA was segregated, it was required by federal law that federal government employers not discriminate on the basis of race. So the NACA had two divisions of human computers, one for the Caucasian women, and another for the African American women.
Dorothy Vaughan, the head of NACA (played by Spencer in “Hidden Figures”) assigned Johnson to a project in the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division, and Johnson’s temporary position soon became permanent.
Despite the segregation policy, Johnson refused to follow the racial and gender barriers. “We needed to be assertive as women in those days—assertive and aggressive—and the degree to which we had to be that way depended on where you were. I had to be,” she said in a 1999 interview. Also unlike most women in the workplace, instead of just doing what she was told without question, Johnson spoke out and asked questions.
Thankfully, NACA became NASA, and Johnson’s working environment would become more positive as racial segregation was lifted.
In 1962, when President John F. Kennedy charged the country to send a man to the Moon, Johnson was part of the team that began calculating the trajectory for America’s first space trip with astronaut Alan Shepherd’s mission, which was an early step toward a Moon landing. Johnson went on to do the calculations for Moon landing in 1969.
In 1986, after 33 years of service, she retired from NASA. For her hard work, Johnson was given many awards such as the NASA Lunar Orbiter Award, three NASA Special Achievement Awards, and she was named Mathematician of the Year in 1997 by the National Technical Association. Additionally, she has been honored with an honorary Doctor of Law degree from the State University of New York and honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Capitol College in Maryland and Old Dominion University in Virginia.
In November of 2015, President Obama presented Johnson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The next year, “Hidden Figures”, a book inspired by Johnson and her female African-American colleagues was published by Margot Lee Shetterly which inspired the movie of the same name that came out the same year.
Johnson passed away February 24, 2020 at age 101, a woman who truly lived a remarkable life.
Her legacy is honored in her hometown of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia and at her alma mater WVU with a scholarship in her name, the Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson Scholarship, which benefits students majoring in the STEM fields with emphasis on assisting talented individuals who are underrepresented in the fields of science and mathematics.
Charity Adams Earley (1918 - 2002)
Thousands of American men and women served in World War II, but one African-American woman, Charity Adams Earley, was the nation’s highest ranking African American woman.
Born Charity Edna Adams December 5, 1918 in Kittrell, North Carolina, the eldest of four children, Earley grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. Earley’s father, Reverend Eugene Adams, was an African Methodist Episcopalian Minister who was fluent in Hebrew and Greek, and her mother, Charity Adams, was a schoolteacher who valued good education and worked to instill a love of learning into each of their children. Earley would follow in those footsteps as she was intellectually gifted and began elementary school as a second grader.
Despite Jim Crow segregation and Ku Klux Klan intimidation, Reverend Adams was the president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). With her strong parents’ guidance, Earley was molded with strength and courage in the face of the Ku Klux Klan’s deadly threats which would help Earley survive the segregation and discrimination inherent in the American military at that time.
Earley graduated as valedictorian of Booker T. Washington High School in 1934, and was accepted into Wilberforce University in Ohio where she majored in Mathematics, Physics, and Latin, and minored in History. She also followed in her father’s footsteps and became a member of the NAACP, the Women’s self-government association, and the Greek sorority, Delta Sigma Theta.
In 1938, she graduated with her bachelor’s degree, returned to South Carolina, and from then on, she taught math and science at the local junior high school. In the summer she worked to earn a Master of Arts degree in vocational psychology at the Ohio State University.
After infamous attack on the Pearl Harbor, the US began to expand their military forces, including forming a new military force, the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC), which would later be known as the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), a force that recruited talented women into non-combat roles necessary to win the war.
Hearing about the WAAC and hoping for better opportunities as a southern African American woman, Earley applied herself in the WAAC with encouragement from the dean of Wilberforce University who recommended her for the first class rank. In July, she was accepted into the WAAC, one of 39 candidates accepted into the first officer training class for African-Americans. She travelled to Fort Des Moines, Iowa and began her training at the African American Officer Candidate School
She graduated in August 1942 as the first African American officer of the WAC, and by September 1943 Earley was promoted to the rank of Major, making her the highest-ranking African-American female officer and one of the nation’s highest-ranking WAC officers.
By the end of 1944, Earley was selected to serve as commanding officer to the first and only battalion of African American Women’s Army Corps to serve overseas, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. She was stationed in Birmingham, England and there organized and sorted mail for delivery to US soldiers serving in Europe. Earley’s unit was given six months to complete the task, but with a strict shift schedule, hard work, and perseverance, Earley and her fellow African American women officers completed the assignment in just three months.
During her service, her parents’ racial endurance lessons came to work as Earley challenged the military’s racial segregation and sexism, and rejected any racist abuse given to her and her unit, such as when a male Caucasian general threatened “to send a white first lieutenant down here to show you how to run this unit,” to which she defiantly replied, “Over my dead body, sir.”
December 26, 1945, for her work in the WAC, Earley was promoted to lieutenant colonel, the highest possible promotion for any women in the WAC, which placed her directly under the colonel and director of the organization, Oveta Culp Hobby.
Earley was ordered to work at the WAC headquarters at the Pentagon; however, at this point she decided it was time to leave the service as she was not interested in an assignment at the Pentagon, plus she could no longer stand for the racist discrimination that was still a contaminant in US military culture, so she left the WAC in March 1946.
After finishing her Master of Arts degree in vocational psychology, she moved to Cleveland, Ohio to work at the Veterans Administration as a registration officer, where she reviewed World War II veterans’ requests for educational funding and other benefits offered under the GI Bill, determined to give and each and every veteran the rewards they deserved, but soon she left to pursue teaching.
In 1949, she met and married her Wilberforce University classmate, Stanley Earley, and together they moved to Zurich, Switzerland while he completed medical school.
In 1952, they returned to the US and remained in Dayton, Ohio where they happily started a family having two kids named Stanley III and Judith.
In 1989, Earley published her autobiography entitled “One Woman's Army: a Black Officer Remembers the WAC,” which recounted her experiences in the WAC, and in 1991, she received numerous accolades and honorary degrees from her alma mater, Wilberforce University and the University of Dayton. In 1996, the Smithsonian National Postal Museum honored Earley for her work with the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion.
She died January 13, 2002 at age 83 in Dayton, Ohio.
Honoring her legacy, African American filmmaker and director Tyler Perry is producing a Netflix film called “Six Triple Eight” about Earley and the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion starring Kerry Washington as Earley to be released this year.
Shirley Chisholm (1924 - 2005)
Last, but not least, before America’s first African-American President Obama, and first female as well as the first African-American and first Asian-American Vice President Kamala Harris who made historical impacts in US politics, there was Shirley Chisholm.
Born November 30, 1924 in New York City to Barbadian and Guyanese immigrants, Chisholm split her childhood between Barbados and Brooklyn, New York. She got into Brooklyn College where she earned awards for her debate skills, joined the Delta Sigma Theta sorority and the Harriet Tubman Society, using her debating skills to speak for the inclusion of African American soldiers in the military during World War II, for adding courses on African American history, and for including women in student government.
She graduated from Brooklyn College in 1946 before becoming a nursery school teacher and daycare center director, and then she earned her Master’s Degree in elementary education from Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1952.
Her studies and her work experiences in preschools later helped her advocate for early childhood education and working mothers in her Congressional debates.
Kicking off her political career in 1953, Chisholm campaigned for Lewis Flagg Jr. to become Brooklyn’s first Black judge, which led to her involvement in the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League, a group that fought for economic empowerment and civil rights. She would go on to take part in other political groups, including the League of Women Voters, the Brooklyn Democratic Clubs, and the Unity Democratic Club.
Drawing upon her experience in Brooklyn politics, she ran for the New York State Assembly in 1964, which she successfully won and served her role from 1965 to 1968, and her achievements included granting domestic workers unemployment benefits and a program that gave underprivileged students the opportunity to attend college while taking remedial education classes. Chisholm’s role in the New York State Assembly also promoted African-American women’s political representation
In 1968, Chisholm won a seat in New York’s 12th congressional district becoming the first African American woman elected in the US House of Representatives.
As an active House member, she quickly became known as a strong liberal, proudly and mercifully opposing weapons development and the war in Vietnam.
Chisholm founded the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC) in 1971 which identified, recruited, trained, endorsed, and supported women seeking public office.
In 1972, Chisholm ran for president, making history as the first African American candidate from a major party to make a bid for the US presidency by seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination.
“I am not the candidate of Black America, although I am Black and proud. I am not the candidate of the woman’s movement of this country, although I am a woman and equally proud of that. I am the candidate of the people and my presence before you symbolizes a new era in American political history,” Chisholm announced during her campaign. She also used her candidacy to push focus on racial and gender equity issues.
Although Republican Richard Nixon won the election, Chisholm became a symbolic figure to the African-American community and perhaps the inspiration for our current Vice President, Kamala Harris.
Chisholm retired from Congress in 1983 to teach at Mount Holyoke College and co-found National Political Congress of Black Women.
In 1991, President Bill Clinton offered Chisholm the position of US Ambassador to Jamaica, but she declined due to poor health, defending her choice by adding proudly, “I want to be remembered as a woman who dared to be a catalyst of change.”
Chisholm died January 1, 2005, but thanks to her, four years and 19 days later, her dreams of change come to the US government when Obama was inaugurated as the first African American President, and then 12 years later, when Harris became the first woman to serve as vice president.
Despite not getting the attention they deserve, the African American community and other ethnic communities keep these stories alive by sharing them and working to achieve greatness themselves, and honestly, we should learn from these strong individuals to keep up the hard work and persevere, to be the voice of this generation, and to keep these stories alive for the next generation to hear. Just as the dazzling singer Whitney Houston sings: “I believe the children are the future, teach them well and let them lead the way, show them all the beauty, they possess inside.”
Let this article be a lesson that there is more history that deserves to seen and heard than what we commonly hear, and remember to embrace the beauty of diversity and culture around you—don’t judge a book by its cover. Ensure these African American stories and more ethnic stories are told, and open your eyes to the world around you.
That’s all folks, and have yourself a Happy Black History Month!