Shirley Chisholm did not enter American politics to fit in. She entered to force change. When she arrived on the national stage in the late 1960s, Washington was dominated by white men and governed by assumptions about who could lead, who could speak, and whose communities mattered. Chisholm challenged all of it, directly, publicly, and […]

Bessie Coleman did not ask for permission to fly. When the United States refused to train her, she crossed an ocean, learned another language, and returned with a pilot’s license, and a mission. In doing so, she became the first Black woman and the first Native American woman to earn an international pilot’s license, reshaping […]

In the canon of American civil rights history, Claudette Colvin’s name is often a footnote, if it appears at all. Yet on March 2, 1955, Colvin, then just 15 years old, did something that would alter the legal foundation of segregation in the United States. She refused to give up her seat on a segregated […]

Long before “creator economy” became a buzzword and long before venture capital learned how to talk about inclusion, Madam C. J. Walker built a scalable business in an America that offered Black women little room to imagine themselves as owners, let alone industry leaders. She did it by identifying a real consumer need, developing a […]