Madam C.J. Walker, was born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867 in a one-room cabin with a fireplace, a few windows, and a porch located on a cotton plantation on Delta, Louisiana. She would build a beauty empire employing 40,000 African American women and men in the US, Central America, and the Caribbean and found the National Negro Cosmetics Manufacturers Association in 1917.
Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross around 1820 in Bucktown, Maryland. She would escape to Pennsylvania in 1849. She worked for the union army as a spy, scout, nurse and cook from 1862 to 1865 during the American Civil War and would become a supporter of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, joining their cause in campaigning for women's suffrage.
Sojourner Truth was born Isabella Baumfree around 1797 in New York to Mum Bett and Brom, the first enslaved African Americans freed under the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. During her lifetime, she supported the cause of the Underground Railroad, she provided needed clothing, blankets, food, and recruited African American soldiers for the Union’s only Black regiment during the Civil War.
Lise Meitner (n. Elise Meitner) achieved two major results in nuclear physics, the discovery of the element protactinium and nuclear fission. In 1966, she, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman were awarded the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s Enrico Fermi Prize for their contribution to the discovery of nuclear fission.
In 1922, Amelia Earhart received her pilot’s license making her one of about a dozen licensed women fliers in the world. She became the first woman, and the second person after Charles Lindbergh to complete a solo nonstop transatlantic flight. On July 24, 1936 Earhart would take possession of the airplane she’d use to make her round-the-world flight which would turn out to be her last.
