The Melanin Pearls Podcast

Black HERstory Month: Women Who Planted the Seed

Episode Summary

It's Black HERstory Month and we celebrate the unsung black women heroines who sacrificed emotional and physical comforts to make it better and pave the way for women they will never meet. Yet these women, the contributions they made and the ambitions, goals and challenges they wrestled with—remain, by and large, absent from media coverage. Join Yvette and Ericka as they raise a glass and shine a light on women who changed the world and we should thank every day. Women’s History Month is a time to honor the women who paved the way and inspire the HERstory-maker in all of us. “Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possible, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.” – Maya Angelou

Episode Notes

When you think of strong Black female role models, women who raise the bar, are Black Girl Magic every single day, women to look up to, your mind might automatically wander to Michelle Obama, Serena Williams, or Beyoncé. But these contemporary icons are far from the first influential Black women in history who made lasting change in the US. Yvette and Ericka cover 11 unsung black women heroines who change HERstory to make it better for women they would never meet. During this episode, Yvette and Ericka covered:

  1. Katherine Johnson: One of NASA’s brightest “computers”
  2. Bessie Coleman: First black woman to earn a pilot’s license
  3. Audre Lorde: Lesbian, Black, female poet
  4. Alice Dunnigan: First black woman white house correspondent
  5. Claudette Colvin: Teenage Civil Rights
  6. Althea Gibson: First African American to win a Grand Slam title (the French Championships)
  7. Patricia Roberts Harris: First African American woman to serve in the United States Cabinet, and the first to enter the line of succession to the Presidency
  8. Gail Pankey-Albert: First African-American female New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) seat holder in 1981

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