Thelma Porter, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1928. She graduated high school in New York and started attending Brooklyn College to study psychology. While she was in high school, she was voted Miss Personality Plus, Miss Cover Girl and Miss Victory.
When Thelma was 19 entered into the pageant world, becoming the first black woman in America to win a beauty pageant, being named the Miss Subway in New York City. In 1948, at the age of 20, she was the President of the NAACP Youth Council in New York City.
She paved the way for contestant winners such as Vanessa Williams and Kenya Moore to compete in pageants. Thelma was the feature cover girl for Ebony magazine in 1949 and JET magazine in 1952.
Mary McLeod Bethune was born in Maysville, South Carolina, she was the second to youngest child out of 16 other siblings. One day, a black woman who was starting a missionary school, offered the McLeod children to attend her school but Mary’s family could only afford to send one child and Mary was the child they chose. While at the school, she took as many classes as she could. Randomly, a woman in Denver, Colorado offered the school Mary attended, scholarship money for one student to continue to going to school. Mary was chosen and she went to the Scotia Seminary School for Girls from 1888-1893 in Concord, North Carolina.
After graduating from Scotia, she attended the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois. She then moved to Daytona, Florida where she started The Daytona Normal and Industrial School for Negro Girls, in 1904.It was a private school.
When she first started it, only five students attended. In just two years, the school expanded to 250 students. The school was so successful that it merged with the Cook Institute for Men in 1923 or 1929. There are several sources that say both of the two (wide range, I know, but I’m just reporting the facts lol.) Anyhow, the school became known as the Bethune-Cook College.
She has other accomplishments such becoming the President chapter president of the National Association of Colored Women. Later on, she became the National Leader of the Organization. She was involved in government services with past Presidents such Calvin Coolridge, Herbert Hoover, Theodore Roosevelt and even gained a close relationship with his wife Eleanor; she also worked with Harry Truman.
Before her death in 1955, she had a spiritual bequest stating ” I leave you a thirst for education. Knowledge is the prime need for the hour–of I have a legacy to leave my people, it is my philosophy of living and serving.”
Ruby Bridges was the first black child to go to an all-white elementary school in the south. She went to school in New Orleans, Louisiana and was chosen to take a test in order to attend the white school. The test was created to be hard for test takers, so blacks wouldn’t get into the school. WELP, that didn’t work because Ruby passed the test and was able to go to the all white elementary school.
In September of 1960 Ruby was still at her old school the state of Louisiana tried to slow down the integration process. On November 14, 1960; Ruby attended her first day at William Frantz Elementary school. She was escorted by the four U.S Marshals and had to go directly to the principal’s office and she sat there all day. The net day was the same, until a teacher by the name Mrs.Henry agreed to teach her. Ruby was the only one in her class because parents pulled their children out of the class. She stayed in the classroom all day, everyday, not even able to go to recess or the cafeteria because someone threatened to poison her. When she had to go to the restroom, she had to be escorted by the Marshals.
photo credit: nola.com
As time went on, her teacher had left, so she had to be in a classroom with the other students. Eventually everything had worked out. She went on to high school and graduated. She went to college in Kansas and went on to become a travel agent.
Without her mother encouraging her to take the test to get placement into the school, it would’ve been later on in the decades that someone would be brave enough to brake those barriers.
Dorothea Towles Church was the first black female to werrkk the runways in the early 1950s, no specific year found.
After she completed he Bachelor’s degree from Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, she moved to Los Angeles with her uncle. She liked the glamour life, so she enrolled in Dorothy Farrier Charm and Modeling School, as their first black student. Dorothea found modeling gigs while in California and during a two month vacation that she took in Pairs, she decided to try modeling there. While being there, she was hired on by Christian Dior. At that time, she first the black model in Paris, as well as the United States as well. She began buying collections of clothing from fashion designers in Paris. In 1954, she made her way back to the states and showed off her collection of clothing at Black Colleges.
photo credit: splendidhabitat.com
Now, her story may sound like it was a breeze for her but early on she did face racial barriers while in California and that is what prevented her from getting a job when she first arrived there, that is what led her to go to Charm School.
photo credit: splendidhabitat.com
In 2006, she passed away from heart complications. She paved a way for Black Women during that and the fact that a high profile fashion designer hired her, he could vouch for her. Shortly after her come out, other fashion models of color did the same.
Andd the award for the first black woman to go into space goes to………Dr. Mae C Jemison. Jemison obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Standford University in 1977. She then attended Cornell University and received her Master’s Degree in 1981. She traveled to West Africa to teach and do medical research with the Peace Corps.
photo credit: compassmetrics.com
Once she made it back to the United States, she decided to switch careers, to an astronaut. In October of 1985, she applied to the NASA Astronaut Training Program. She reapplied in 1987 because of The Challenger Explosion put a delay on admissions. She was chosen June 4, 1987 and became the First Black Woman to be admitted in the program. She actually went to space, with 6 others, on September 12, 1992 and returned eight days later.
photo credit: blackenterprise.com
Jemison left the space program in 1993, and since then, it was been reported that she’s traveling and currently lives in Houston, Texas. Becoming an Astronaunt is like a childhood dream/fantasy, like becoming a cowboy or a basketball player. Well Jemison made her career a reality and proved that black people, especially women, can do ANYTHING.
George Washington Carver, born in Diamond, Missouri, was born into a family that was owned by white people; his parents and siblings. As a baby, only a week old, him, his sister and mother were kidnapped by raiders from Arkansas. He was the only one of his family to be found by his owners. His owners taught him and his brother to read and write. He graduated high school in Minneapolis, Kansas and went to study music and art at Simpson College in Iowa. A teacher suggested that he should enroll in a botany program at Iowa State Agricultural College, when finding out he was good at drawing botanical samples and the natural world process.
Carver was the first black student at Iowa State College and earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree. He went on to earn in Master’s Degree, studying plant pathology. The well-known educator Booker T Washington, hired Carver at The Tuskegee Institute to run the agricultural department. While at the Institute, he researched Biology plants and did some experimenting, creating peanuts, pecans,sweet potatoes, and soy beans. He EVEN invented a special kind of gasoline, plastic, paints, dyes and many more.
Carver was recognized by the president of the U.S at the time, which was Theodore Roosevelt and recognized internationally. He was even made a member of the British Royal Society of Arts.
For a black man to create all those inventions during the period of a time is an achievement he got every recognition that he deserved.
Fact 5 goes to Macon Bolling Allen, who was the first black lawyer in the United States in July 3, 1844. He earned his license to practice law in Portland, Maine.
Macon was born in Indiana and learned to read and write as a kid, growing up a free man. His first job was a school teacher then he eventually went on to study law and earned his license. He had a hard time getting a job in Maine because white people weren’t willing to hire a black man to represent them in court and very few blacks lived in the state.
By 1845, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts where he took the bar examine again and passed! He teamed up with another black lawyer by the name of Robert Morris and they both opened up the first Black law office in the U.S.
Macon, still challenging himself, went on to take another exam for the Justice of Peace in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. He passed and was known to be the First Black man to have a Judiciary position in the U.S.
After the Civil War, Macon moved to Charleston, South Carolina to open his own practice. Later on he moved to Washington, D.C to work as an attorney for the Land and Improvement Association.
Macon set the bar for blacks to become lawyers. To this day, some blacks WANT representation from someone of their own skin. For example: Johnnie Cochran, well-known celebrity attorney, has represented O.J Simpson, Todd Bridges, Tupac Shakur and even Michael Jackson. AND he won all their cases. It almost seems as if when you have Black representation, they try harder to fight your case for you.
Danii Gold 