In 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first African American woman to serve in Congress.

Although raised on a slave-owning plantation, Angelina Grimké Weld became an ardent abolitionist.

Prudence Crandall bravely defied prevailing patterns of racial discrimination when she opened one of the first schools for African American girls in Connecticut in 1833.

Ruby Bridges was only six years old when she became the first African American to attend her elementary school.

Mary McLeod Bethune was one of the most important Black educators, civil and women’s rights leaders and government officials of the twentieth century.