February and March

February was Black History Month and March is Women’s History Month. I thought I might recognize both.

We’re all happy to see Kamala Harris poke a hole in the glass ceiling by being the first woman of color to be elected Vice-President of the United States. But there are many others who came before her.

Bethune was born in 1875 to parents who had been slaves. With the help of benefactors, she attended college hoping to become a missionary. Instead she began teaching school and founded a school for girls in Daytona Beach, Florida.

In 1931, the school merged with the Cookman Institute for Boys eventually becoming Bethune-Cookman University.

She was active politically, working to register black voters. In 1924, she was elected president of the National Association of Colored Women and went to work straightening out their finances and establishing a national headquarters in Washington, DC – the first black-controlled organization to be headquartered in Washington. In 1935, she founded the National Council of Negro Women in New York.

She worked to elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The National Youth Administration was a creation of the Roosevelt Administration. She lobbied the organization for minority involvement so aggressively that she was offered an appointment as administrative assistant. Within two years she was promoted to Director of the Division of Negro Affairs, becoming the first African-American female division head in the US Government. More than 300,000 black young men and women were given employment and work training on NYA projects.

She became friends with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt – especially Eleanor. She had unprecedented access to the White House through her friendship with the First Lady and used her access to Create a coalition of black leaders called the Federal Council of Negro Affairs, but more popularly ‘The Black Cabinet’.

Patricia Roberts Harris, a native of Mattoon, Illinois was a gifted scholar who graduated from Howard University with honors in 1945. After earning her law degree from George Washington University Law School, Harris became an attorney in the criminal division of the Department of Justice in 1960. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy appointed Harris co-chairman of the National Women’s Committee of Civil Rights.  

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Harris as Ambassador to Luxembourg. By accepting this appointment, Harris was the first African American woman to serve the United States as an ambassador. Harris would continue to be a force in the Democratic Party serving as chairman of the credentials committee in 1972 and a member-at-large of the Democratic National Committee in 1973. Her due diligence and commitment to social justice and civil rights would catch the attention of presidential candidate Jimmy Carter in 1976.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Harris as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, which made her the first African American to serve in the United States Cabinet, and the first African American woman to enter the line of succession to the presidency. At Harris’ confirmation hearing, she was asked would her background prevent her from effectively serving as Secretary of Housing and Urban and Development. Harris responded: 

“I am one of them.  You do not seem to understand who I am.  I am a Black woman, the daughter of a Pullman car waiter. I am a Black woman who even eight years ago could not buy a house in parts of the District of Columbia. I didn’t start out as a member of a prestigious law firm, but as a woman who needed a scholarship to go to school. If you think I have forgotten that, you are wrong.”

After serving as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, in 1979 Harris became Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, the largest cabinet agency in President Carter’s administration.

In 1969, Shirley Chisholm became the first African American woman to serve in Congress, or, as she preferred, the “first black woman congressman.” She was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971 and the Congressional Women’s Caucus in 1977. Chisholm was also the first woman and the first African American to seek the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1972.

On November 3, 1992, Carol Moseley Braun became the first African-American woman elected to the US Senate. She was quite liberal on social issues and was strongly pro-choice. When she was elected, women were not allowed to wear pants on the floor of the Senate. She and Barbara Mikulski challenged the rule and both wore pants onto the floor. Female support staff soon followed their lead and the rule was changed in 1993.

She made headlines when she convinced the Judiciary Committee not to renew a design patent for the United Daughters of the Confederacy because it contained the Confederate Flag. She also made a plea to her colleagues about the symbolism of the Confederate flag, declaring, “It has no place in our modern times, place in this body, place in our society”.

I’ve left out lots and lots of courageous and trailblazing women. I’ll try to post about some of them in the coming months.