Our Inspiration

Portrait of Mary McLeod Bethune, Scurlock Studio Records Archives Center
NMAH, Smithsonian Institution

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955)

Bethune was a famous educator, political activist, and advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt. She was the first African American, male or female, to run a federal agency. Bethune worked for: the National Child Welfare Commission, Commission on Home Building and Home Ownership, Special Advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Minority Affairs, Director of the Division of Negro Affairs National Youth Administration, etc. Writing in 1940, Bethune argued that political participation and democratic reform was essential to future progress for African Americans.

Photo by Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images

Ella Josephine Baker (1903-1986)

Baker was a civil and human rights activist. She is best known for her critiques of both racism in American culture and sexism in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Baker founded the Student nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), believing that youth were underutilized in the Civil Rights Movement.  She mentored future leaders such as John Lewis, Julian Bond, Diane Nash, and Stokley Carmichael.

Courtesy of Oberlin College Archives

Anna Julia Cooper, Ph.D. (1858-1964)
Cooper worked throughout her life as an educator devoted to improving education for Black people. She was only the fourth Black woman in U.S. history to receive a Ph.D. Cooper believed that social progress required uplifting both women and African Americans. Cooper posited that women were oppressed all over the world. Cooper was an early Black feminist, focused on how education and uplift of Black women would be propitious for all of African Americans and society.