"Patricia E. Bath, an ophthalmologist and laser scientist, was an innovative research scientist and advocate for blindness prevention, treatment, and cure. Her accomplishments include the invention of a new device and technique for cataract surgery known as laserphaco, the creation of a new discipline known as "community ophthalmology," and appointment as the first woman chair of ophthalmology in the United States, at Drew-UCLA in 1983."
Retrieved from https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_26.html
"Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a prominent journalist, activist, and researcher, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In her lifetime, she battled sexism, racism, and violence. As a skilled writer, Wells-Barnett also used her skills as a journalist to shed light on the conditions of African Americans throughout the South."
Retrieved from https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ida-b-wells-barnett
"Mary Ellen Britton was an African-American physician, educator, suffragist, journalist and civil rights activist from Lexington, Kentucky. She attended Berea College, the first institution of higher learning in Kentucky to admit blacks. The only profession open to educated women of any race at that time was teaching, and Britton taught in segregated public schools."
Retrieved from https://kcaah.org/women-in-history/mary-ellen-britton/
Coretta Scott King is “…the founder of the king center, architect of dr. King’s legacy, and lifelong human rights activist for social change and peace, Coretta Scott King was among the most prominent women leaders of our time. Prepared by her family, education, and personality for a life committed to social justice and peace, she entered the world stage in 1955 as wife of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and as a leading participant in the American Civil Rights Movement.”
Retrieved from https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/about-mrs-king/
"Crystal Wilkinson, a recent fellowship recipient of the Academy of American Poets, is the award-winning author of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, a culinary memoir, Perfect Black, a collection of poems, and three works of fiction—The Birds of Opulence , Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries. She is the recipient of an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, an O. Henry Prize, a USA Artists Fellowship, and an Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. She has received recognition from the Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, The Vermont Studio Center for the Arts, The Hermitage Foundation and others. Her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including most recently in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, STORY, Agni Literary Journal, Emergence, Oxford American and Southern Cultures. She was Poet Laureate of Kentucky from 2021 to 2023. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Kentucky where she is a Bush-Holbrook Endowed Professor."
Retrieved from https://www.crystalewilkinson.net/bio
Louise Virginia Lomax Winters "...attended St. Philip School of Nursing in Richmond, Virginia where she graduated in 1942. Later, she also took courses at DePaul University in Chicago, Western Michigan College, Lake Forest College, Catholic University and the University of Maryland. Initially, this registered nurse, had difficulty enlisting into the Army Nurse Corps. However, with the help of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, she went into active duty as a second lieutenant on March 30, 1943. She was a medical nurse at TAAF. By 1946, she had been promoted to first lieutenant. She was one of the last five nurses remaining on the Tuskegee Army Air base after it was designated for closing as reported in the roster for July 15, 1946."
Retrieved from https://cafriseabove.org/louise-virginia-lomax/
"Toyin Ojih Odutola is a Nigerian-American contemporary visual artist known for her vivid multimedia drawings and works on paper. Her unique style of complex mark-making and lavish compositions rethink the category and traditions of portraiture and storytelling."
Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyin_Ojih_Odutola
"Ruth Smith Lloyd was a 20th-century scientist whose research focused on fertility, the relationship of sex hormones to growth, and the female sex cycle. She earned a PhD in the field of anatomy from Western Reserve University in 1941, making her the first African-American woman to have reached this achievement."
Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Smith_Lloyd
"Phillis Wheatley Peters was born in West Africa in 1753. At the age of eight, she was kidnapped, enslaved in New England, and sold to John Wheatley of Boston. The first African-American and one of the first women to publish a book of poetry in the colonies, Wheatley learned to read and write English by the age of nine, familiarizing herself with Latin, Greek, the Bible, and selected classics at an early age. She began writing poetry at thirteen, modeling her work on the English poets of the time, particularly John Milton, Thomas Gray, and Alexander Pope. Her poem “On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield” was published as a broadside in cities such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia and garnered Wheatley national acclaim."
Retrieved from https://poets.org/poet/phillis-wheatley
"Alexa Canady earned a B.S. degree in zoology from the University of Michigan in 1971, and graduated from the medical school there in 1975. "The summer after my junior year," she explains, "I worked in Dr. Bloom's lab in genetics and attended a genetic counseling clinic. I fell in love with medicine." In her work as a neurosurgeon, she saw young patients facing life-threatening illnesses, gunshot wounds, head trauma, hydrocephaly, and other brain injuries or diseases. Throughout her twenty-year career in pediatric neurosurgery, Dr. Canady has helped thousands of patients, most of them age ten or younger."
Retrieved from https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_53.html
"Octavia E. Butler was a renowned African American author who received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work."
Retrieved from https://www.octaviabutler.com/theauthor
"In 1926 May Edward Chinn became the first African American woman to graduate from the University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College. She practiced medicine in Harlem for fifty years. A tireless advocate for poor patients with advanced, often previously untreated diseases, she became a staunch supporter of new methods to detect cancer in its earliest stages."
Retrieved from https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_61.html
"Dr. Mae Jemison is a physician and scientist who, in 1992, became the first Black woman astronaut in space. After attending Stanford and Cornell Universities, she served as a medical officer in the Peace Corps. In June 1987, she achieved a lifelong dream when she became the first Black woman to be admitted into NASA’s astronaut training program. Jemison made history again on September 12, 1992, when she flew into space aboard the Endeavour on mission STS47 and became the first Black woman in space. In recognition of her accomplishments, Jemison has received several awards and honorary doctorates. Today, she works as a scientist and public speaker."
Retrieved from https://www.biography.com/scientists/mae-c-jemison
"Judith Jamison joined Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1965 and quickly became an international star. Over the next 15 years, Mr. Ailey created some of his most enduring roles for her, most notably the tour-de-force solo Cry. During the 1970s and 80s, she appeared as a guest artist with ballet companies all over the world, starred in the hit Broadway musical Sophisticated Ladies, and formed her own company, The Jamison Project."
Retrieved from https://pressroom.alvinailey.org/alvin-ailey-american-dance-theater/directors/judith-jamison
"Josephine Baker was an American-born French dancer and singer who symbolized the beauty and vitality of Black American culture, which took Paris by storm in the 1920s. She went on to become one of the most popular music hall entertainers in France."
Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Josephine-Baker
Janelle Monáe Robinson is an American singer, songwriter, rapper and actress. She has received ten Grammy Award nominations, and won a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Children's and Family Emmy Award.
Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janelle_Mon%C3%A1e
"Betye Irene Saar is an African American artist known for her work in the medium of assemblage. Saar is a visual storyteller and an accomplished printmaker. Saar was a part of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s, which engaged myths and stereotypes about race and femininity."
Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betye_Saar
"Angie Lena Turner King was one of the first African-American women to gain degrees in chemistry and mathematics, gaining bachelor’s degree in in 1927, and a master’s degree in 1931. She went on to a PhD in mathematics education (University of Pittsburgh, 1955), the first African-American woman to do so. She taught mathematics and chemistry, in high schools and colleges. King was a powerful influence on many of her students, including Katherine Johnson (the central mathematician in Hidden Figures)."
Retrieved from https://www.acs.org/education/whatischemistry/african-americans-in-sciences/angie-turner-king.html
Many Strides to Freedom: African American Women's Unsung Contributions and Legacies by 
African American Women of the Old West by 
Women's Work by 
Memories of a Tuskegee Airmen Nurse and Her Military Sisters by 
Hidden Figures by 
