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.
Black Poetry Day was enacted to celebrate Jupiter Hammon who is considered the first published black poet in the United states. "Now We Are Green, Our Touch is Green" is a poem written by Litha Sovell of the Green Belt Movement in Tanzania.
Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977 and mobilized poor women to plant nearly 30 million trees. She was the first woman from Africa honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 and the first woman in East and Central African to earn a doctorate degree.
