Category: Paintings

Fannie Franklin Wall 1860-1944 Fannie Wall was a clubwoman, civic leader, community activist, and children’s home founder. A prominent community activist, she took part in several organizations promoting African American economic empowerment and antiracism. Wall was active in the National Association of Colored Women whose motto was ‘Lifting As We Climb’ Wall was ‘the motivating spirit’ behind… Continue reading Fannie Wall

Lydia Flood Jackson 1862 –1963 Lydia Flood Jackson fought for African American civil rights and was a champion of women’s rights. She was an active clubwoman and first legislative chair of the California State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs.   As a political activist, she traveled to Mexico, South America and the West Indies for lectures. Jackson… Continue reading Lydia Flood Jackson

Eunice Kathleen Waymon better known as Nina Simone. Singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger and civil rights activist. Nina Simone 1933-2003 Trained as a classical pianist, Simone’s musical style fused gospel and pop with classical music, in particular Johann Sebastian Bach. In one of her first jobs, playing at a jazz club, she was told she had… Continue reading Nina Simone

Maria P. Williams 1866-1932 Maria Priscilla Thurston Williams is credited as the first Black woman film producer for the silent crime drama The Flames of Wrath in 1923.

Ruby Bridges 1954 – At age six, Ruby Bridges advanced the cause of civil rights in November 1960 when she became the first African American student to integrate an elementary school in the South (New Orleans). A lifelong activist for racial equality, in 1999, Ruby established The Ruby Bridges Foundation to promote tolerance and create change through… Continue reading Ruby Bridges

Coretta Scott King 1927 – 2006 Coretta Scott King was an American author, activist, civil rights leader, and the wife of Martin Luther King Jr. She met her husband while attending graduate school in Boston. They were both active in the American civil rights movement and Coretta King was active in the Women’s Movement. Two months after her husband’s assassination in 1968 she founded… Continue reading Coretta King

Anna Murray Douglass (1813 – 1882) Anna Murray Douglass was an American abolitionist, member of the Underground Railroad, and the first wife of American social reformer and statesman Frederick Douglass, from 1838 to her death. Anna Murray was a laundress and housekeeper. She met Frederick Douglass when he was working as a caulker at the docks of and… Continue reading Anna Douglass

Elizabeth Ann Eckford   1941– Elizabeth Ann Eckford is one the first black students to attend classes at formerly all-white Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Will Counts of the Arkansas Democrat took the photo of her that inspired this painting. Eckford only spent one year at Little Rock Central High where she and the other black students were tormented… Continue reading Elizabeth Eckford

Anna Mangin (1844 – 1931) Anna Mangin was awarded a patent in 1892 for the Pastry Fork. The designed allowed the user to beat eggs, mash potatoes, prepare salad dressing, and work together butter and flour without having to touch the food with his or her hands.   In 1893, Mangin’s Pastry Fork was displayed… Continue reading Anna Mangin

𝗘𝗟𝗟𝗔 𝗦𝗛𝗘𝗣𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗗 (1851-1915) Ella Shepard, soprano, pianist and reformer, was the matriarch of the Fisk Jubilee Singers and also a confidante of Frederick Douglass. She was born a slave in 1851 on Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage plantation and was a biracial relation of Jackson’s family. When her father moved to Ohio, a German woman taught her… Continue reading Ella Sheppard