Their names are usually unheard of, but for international women’s month, I wanted to bring light to a few yet significant Black women philosophers and intellectuals who contributed to Black empowerment and movements.
- Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964)
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Cooper received her doctorate from the University of Paris in 1925, making her the 4th African American woman to achieve that level of academic distinction. She concentrated her educational philosophy on preparing African American students for college who then attended prestigious colleges. However, elites from Washington, DC, were not fond of this and removed her from her teaching and administrative positions. She wrote a single book named A Voice from the South by a Black Woman from the South. Cooper also helped found the Colored Women’s YWCA (a part of the Young Women’s Chrisitian Association) in 1905. She continued her philosophical explorations throughout her life and wrote about the 1940s, even as she approached the age of ninety.
- Ida B. Wells (1862-1931)
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Prior to Rosa Parks, Wells was forcefully removed from a train after a conductor for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company asked her to give up her seat for a White man. She sued the railroad and won in the local courts, but the Supreme Court of Tennessee, unfortunately, reversed the lower court’s ruling. In 1892, she became a partner at the Free Speech and Headlight newspaper. Concurrently, 3 of her friends were lynched, motivating her to begin an anti-lynching crusade. Eventually, she was forced to flee Memphis because White reactionaries burned the newspaper’s offices and threatened to lynch her. In Chicago, Illinois, she successfully blocked segregation in schools. Additionally, she became one of the founding members of NAACP. In 1930, she became the first Black woman to run for public office in the US. Ida B. Wells continued her activism until the end of her life.
- Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954)
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Terrell was born in Memphis, Tennessee. She worked with Frederick Douglass on several civil rights campaigns, was an active member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and a founding member of the NAACP. Moreover, she formed the Federation of Afro-American Women. In 1896, she was selected as the 1st president of the National Association of Colored Women. In 1940, she published an autobiography named A Colored Woman in a White World. In the early 1950s, despite her age, she continued to be involved in the struggle against segregation in public eating places in Washington.
Reference (APA Style)
Stewart, J. B., & Anderson, T. (2015). Introduction to African American Studies: Transdisciplinary Approaches and Implications (pp. 15–16). Inprint Editions.