A few notable biographies of African-American female icons.

Sojourner Truth (c.1797–1883)

Abolitionist and women's rights activist. Born Isabella Van Wagener c. 1797 in Ulster County, New York. Born to slaves of a wealthy Dutch-American estate owner (she grew up speaking Dutch), she herself served as a slave in the Dumont family (1810–27) and had at least five children (two daughters were sold away from her). She fled her owners' household in 1827, found refuge in the home of the Van Wageners, and took their name.

Van Wagener successfully sued to get her son back from slavery in Alabama, and c.1829 she settled in New York City with him and a daughter. A religious mystic by this time, for the next few years she was heavily involved with some questionable religious evangelicals, and, after a scandal in which she was an innocent bystander, she withdrew to raise her children and to work as a domestic.

In 1843, she announced that ‘voices’ had commanded her to assume the name ‘Sojourner Truth’ and to set out as a preacher. She ended up in Northampton, Massachusetts, with a utopian community and stayed there until c.1850, when she settled in Battle Creek, MI. By that time she had also added lectures on abolition and women's rights to her public appearances. (Extremely tall, she was accused of being a man, and is said to have bared her breast at a women's rights convention to prove she was a woman.)

Truth was received by President Lincoln at the White House in 1864. After the war she advocated a ‘Negro State’ and promoted the emigration of African-Americans to the West. She continued to travel throughout much of the Northeast, lecturing on a variety of inspirational and social reform topics, retiring to Battle Creek, Michigan, in her later years.

Mary McLeod Bethune(1875–1955)

Educator and civil and women's rights activist. Born July 10, 1875 in Mayesville, South Carolina. A child of former slaves, she began her life picking cotton, but a scholarship to Scotia Seminary in North Carolina in 1888 launched her long and distinguished career as educator and activist.

Believing that education provided the key to racial advancement, she founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute, Florida (1904), which through her persistent direction as president (1904–42) became Bethune-Cookman College (1929). An activist, she mobilized thousands of black women as leader and founder of the National Association of Colored Women and the National Council of Negro Women.

A national figure, she served in the Roosevelt administration as adviser to the president on minority affairs and director of the Division of Negro Affairs within the National Youth Administration (1936–44). Through her efforts to promote full citizenship rights for all African-Americans and her feminist perspective, she came to symbolize the dual role black women played as activists for the rights of blacks and women.

Rosa (Lee McCauley) Parks (1913-2005)

Civil-rights activist. Born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. After briefly attending Alabama State University, she married and settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where by 1955 she was working as a tailor's assistant in a department store. Contrary to most early portrayals of her as merely a poor, tired seamstress, who on the spur of the moment refused to surrender her seat in a bus to a white passenger, she had long been a community activist.

Parks served as secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and had worked for the Union of Sleeping Car Porters. She had also been involved in previous incidents when refusing to leave a bus seat. By forcing the police to remove, arrest, and imprison her on this occasion, and then agreeing to become a test case of segregation ordinances, she played a deliberate role in instigating the Montgomery bus boycott (1955–6).

Dismissed from her job at the department store, in 1957 she became a youth worker in Detroit, Michigan. As she eventually earned recognition as the ‘midwife’ or ‘mother’ of the civil rights revolution, she became a sought-after speaker nationally. Parks died at her home in Detroit on October 24, 2005, at age 92.

Harriet Tubman (c.1820–1913)

Abolitionist. Born Araminta Ross c. 1820 in Bucktown, Maryland. Reared in slavery, she married a free black, John Tubman, in 1844. He opposed her plans to flee north, so she escaped alone via the Underground Railroad (1849), and over the next decade she led nearly 300 Maryland slaves to safety, including several siblings and her elderly parents.

Known as ‘the Moses of her people,’ Tubman was devoutly religious and a believer in decisive action. She helped John Brown organize his 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia, but was prevented by illness from accompanying him. During the Civil War she repeatedly went behind enemy lines to spy for the Union, and recruit slaves to fight in the army.

In her later years, living in Auburn, New York, she helped support relatives and other former slaves, and raised money for freedmen's schools and a home for elderly blacks.

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (1862–1931)

Ella Josephine Baker (1903–86)

Maya Angelou (1928– )

Writer, dancer, African-American activist. Born Marguerite Johnson on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. Angelou spent her difficult formative years moving back and forth between her motherÕs and grandmotherÕs. At age eight, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend, who was subsequently killed by her uncles. The event caused the young girl to go mute for nearly six years, and her teens and early twenties were spent as a dancer, filled with isolation and experimentation.

At 16 she gave birth to a son, Guy, after which she toured Europe and Africa in the musical Porgy and Bess. On returning to New York City in the 1960s, she joined the Harlem Writers Guild and became involved in black activism. She then spent several years in Ghana as editor of African Review, where she began to take her life, her activism and her writing more seriously.

AngelouÕs five-volume autobiography commenced with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1970. The memoirs chronicle different eras of her life and were met with critical and popular success. Later books include All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986) and My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken and Me (1994). She has published several volumes of verse, including And Still I Rise (1987) and Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1995). Her volume of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Die (1971), was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

In 1993, Angelou read On the Pulse of Morning at Bill Clinton's Presidential inauguration, a poem written at his request. It was only the second time a poet had been asked to read at an inauguration, the first being Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. In 2006, Angelou agreed to host a weekly radio show on XM Satellite RadioÕs Oprah & Friends channel. She also teaches at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, where she has a lifetime position as the Reynolds professor of American studies.

Lena Horne (1917– )

Singer and actress. Born Lena Mary Calhoun Horne on June 30, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. Raised by her actress mother, by the age of 16 she was dancing at Harlem's Cotton Club, becoming a popular singer with bands such as those of Noble Sissle and Teddy Wilson. She performed in the musical Blackbirds of 1939, and went into film, becoming the first African-American to be signed to a long-term contract (although her scenes were sometimes excised for distribution in the South). The title song of Stormy Weather (1943) became her signature.

Horne was blacklisted in the early 1950s for little more than her friendship with Paul Robeson and her outspokenness about discrimination, but she performed in the musical Jamaica (1957) and later made several other films. She toured Europe and the USA as a nightclub singer, spoke out increasingly against racism, and published her autobiography, Lena (1965).

Horne was married to musical conductor Lennie Hayton from 1947 until his death in 1971. MGM studio executives disapproved of the interracial marriage and eventually let both of them go. In 2006, ABC announced that Whitney Houston will portray Horne in a television biopic.

Wilma (Glodean) Rudolph (1940–94)

Athlete, Olympic track and field champion. Born on June 23, 1940, in St. Bethlehem, Tennessee. Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field events at the Olympics. But the road to victory was not an easy one for her. Born premature and sickly as a child, Rudolph had problems with her left leg and had to wear a brace. It was with great determination and with the help of physical therapy that she was able to overcome her physical disabilities. Growing up in the South during days of segregation, Rudolph attended an African-American high school where she played on the basketball team. A naturally gifted runner, she later recruited for the track team. 

While still in high school, Rudolph qualified for the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia. At the age of 16, she was the youngest member of the U.S. team and won a bronze medal in the sprint relay event. After finishing high school, Rudolph enrolled at Tennessee State University where she studied education.  She also trained hard for the next Olympics.

Held in Rome, Italy, the 1960 Olympics were a golden time for Rudolph. She won the 100 meter, 200 meter, and sprint relay events, making her one of the popular athletes from the games. This first-class sprinter became a sports superstar, celebrated around the world for her achievements. She made numerous appearances on television and received several honors, including being named the Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year twice.

After retiring from competition in the early 1960s, Rudolph worked as a teacher and a track coach. She shared her remarkable story with the world in 1977 with her autobiography, Wilma. Her book was later turned into a television film. In the 1980s, she was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame and established the Wilma Rudolph Foundation to promote amateur athletics.

Rudolph died on November 12, 1994, near Nashville, Tennessee, from brain cancer. In 2004, the United States Postal Service honored this Olympic champion by featuring her likeness on a 23-cent stamp. She is remembered as one of the fastest women in track and as a source of great inspiration for generations of African-American athletes.

Oprah Winfrey (1954-)

Television talk-show host, actress, producer. Born January 29, 1954, in Kosciusko, Mississippi. Winfrey launched the Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986 as a nationally syndicated program. With its placement on 120 channels and an audience of 10 million people, the show grossed $125 million by the end of its first year, of which Winfrey received $30 million. She soon gained ownership of the program from ABC, drawing it under the control of her new production company, Harpo Productions ('Oprah' spelled backwards) and making more and more money from syndication.

According to Forbes magazine, Oprah was the richest African American of the 20th century and the world's only Black billionaire for three years running. Life magazine hailed her as the most influential woman of her generation. In 2005, Business Week named her the greatest Black philanthropist in American history. Oprah's Angel Network has raised more than $51,000,000 for charitable programs, including girls' education in South Africa and relief to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Winfrey is a dedicated activist for children's rights; in 1994, President Clinton signed a bill into law that Winfrey had proposed to Congress, creating a nationwide database of convicted child abusers. She founded the Family for Better Lives foundation and also contributes to her alma mater, Tennessee State University. In September, 2002, Oprah was named the first recipient of The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences' Bob Hope Humanitarian Award.

Mae C. Jemison (1956-)

Astronaut, physician. Born October 17, 1956, in Decatur, Alabama, the youngest child of Charlie Jemison, a roofer and carpenter, and Dorothy (Green) Jemison, an elementary school teacher.

At Stanford, Jemison pursued a dual major and in 1977 received a B.S. in chemical engineering and a B.A. in African and African-American Studies. As she had been in high school, Jemison was very involved in extracurricular activities including dance and theater productions, and served as head of the Black Student Union. Upon graduation, she entered Cornell University Medical College to work toward a medical degree. During her years there, she found time to xpand her horizons by visiting and studying in Cuba and Kenya and working at a Cambodian rfugee camp in Thailand. When she obtained her M.D. in 1981, she interned at Los Angeles County/University of Southern California Medical Center and later worked as a general pactitioner. For the next two and a half years, she was the area Peace Corps medical officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia where she also taught and did medical research. Following her return to the United States in 1985, she made a career change and decided to follow a dream she had nurtured for a long time. In October of that year she applied for admission to NASA's astronaut training program. The Challenger disaster of January 1986 delayed the selection process, but when she reapplied a year later, Jemison was one of the 15 candidates chosen from a field of about 2,000.

Joins Eight-Day Endeavor Mission

When Jemison was chosen on June 4, 1987, she became the first African American woman ever admitted into the astronaut training program. After more than a year of training, she became an astronaut with the title of sciencemission specialist, a job which would make her responsible for conducting crewrelated scientific experiments on the space shuttle. On September 12, 1992, Jemison finally flew into space with six other astronauts aboard the Endeavour on mission STS47. During her eight days in space, she conducted experiments on weightlessness and motion sickness on the crew and herself. Altogether, she spent slightly over 190 hours in space before returning to Earth on September 20. Following her historic flight, Jemison noted that society should recognize how much both women and members of other minority groups can contribute if given the opportunity. In recognition of her accomplishments, Jemison received several honorary doctorates, the 1988 Essence Science and Technology Award, the Ebony Black Achievement Award in 1992, and a Montgomery Fellowship from Dartmouth College in 1993, and was named Gamma Sigma Gamma Woman of the Year in 1990. Also in 1992, an alternative public school in Detroit, Michigan—the Mae C. Jemison Academy—was named after her. Jemison is a member of the American Medical Association, the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and served on the Board of Directors of the World Sickle Cell Foundation from 1990 to 1992. She is also an advisory committee member of the American Express Geography Competition and an honorary board member of the Center for the Prevention of Childhood Malnutrition. After leaving the astronaut corps in March 1993, she accepted a teaching fellowship at Dartmouth and also established the Jemison Group, a company that seeks to research, develop, and market advanced technologies.