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.
Helen Keller lost her vision and became mute February 1882. She worked on behalf of the blind, campaigning that the major cause of blindness in infants was a condition called ophthalma neonatarum.
