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A photograph of Wangari Maathai by Nobel Committee –

50 Most Famous Black Women in History

Dolly Parton once said that 鈥淚f your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.鈥� This is but a justification that has long been seen through the entire centuries and women have been excellent leaders, especially, black women.

The legacy of women through empowering them is yet to continue and there is a bright light at the end of the tunnel. In the article are the fifty most famous black women in history. Be keen!

1. Wangari Maathai

A photograph of Wangari Maathai by Nobel Committee –

Wangar末 Muta Maathai was a Kenyan social, environmental and political activist and the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. As a beneficiary of the Kennedy Airlift, she studied in the United States, earning a bachelor’s degree from Mount St. Scholastica and a master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh.

She went on to become the first woman in East and Central Africa to become a Doctor of Philosophy, receiving her PhD from the University of Nairobi in Kenya.

2. Margaret Kenyatta

Margaret Wambui Kenyatta was a Kenyan politician. She was the daughter of the first President of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, and his wife Grace Wahu. She served as the Mayor of Nairobi from 1970 to 1976 and as Kenya’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1976 to 1986. She was thereafter appointed as a Commissioner with the Electoral Commission of Kenya from 1992 to 2002.

3. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

Winnie Mandela photo by Superikonosop –

Winnie Madikizela also known as Winnie Mandela, was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician, and the second wife of Nelson Mandela. She served as a Member of Parliament from 1994 to 2003. From 2009 until her death, and was a deputy minister of arts and culture from 1994 to 1996.

A member of the African National Congress (ANC) political party, she served on the ANC’s National Executive Committee and headed its Women’s League. Madikizela-Mandela was known to her supporters as the “Mother of the Nation”.

4. Miriam Makeba

Miriam Makeba photo by Tom Beetz –

Zenzile Miriam Makeba, nicknamed Mama Africa, was a South African singer, songwriter, actress, and civil rights, activist. Associated with musical genres including Afropop, jazz, and world music, she was an advocate against apartheid and white-minority government in South Africa.

5. Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama photo by Joyce N. Boghosian –

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is an American attorney and author who served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She was the first African-American woman to serve in this position. She is married to former President Barack Obama.

In her early legal career, she worked at the law firm Sidley Austin where she met Barack Obama. She subsequently worked in nonprofits and as the associate dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago as well as the vice president for Community and External Affairs of the University of Chicago Medical Center.

6. Amanda Smith

Amanda Smith photo by Adam Cuerden –

Amanda Berry Smith was a Methodist preacher and former slave who funded The Amanda Smith Orphanage and Industrial Home for Abandoned and Destitute Colored Children outside Chicago.

She was a leader in the Wesleyan Holiness movement, preaching the doctrine of entire sanctification throughout Methodist camp meetings across the world. She was referred to as “God’s image carved in ebony”. International preacher The Reverend Dr A. Louise Bonaparte is her great-great-granddaughter.

7. Alberta Williams King

Alberta Williams photo by an Unknown author –

Alberta Christine Williams King was Martin Luther King Jr.’s mother, married to Martin Luther King Sr. She played a significant role in the affairs of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. She was shot and killed in the church by Marcus Wayne Chenault, a 23-year-old Black Hebrew Israelite six years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

8. Sonia Sanchez

Sonia Sanchez photo by Slowking –

Sonia Sanchez is an American poet, writer, and professor. She was a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement and has written over a dozen books of poetry, as well as short stories, critical essays, plays, and children’s books.

In the 1960s, Sanchez released poems in periodicals targeted towards African-American audiences and published her debut collection, Homecoming, in 1969.

In 1993, she received Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and in 2001 was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for her contributions to the canon of American poetry. She has been influential to other African-American poets, including Krista Franklin.

9. Augusta Savage

Augusta Savage photo by US Gov. –

Augusta Savage was an American sculptor associated with the Harlem Renaissance. She was also a teacher whose studio was essential to the careers of a generation of artists who would become nationally known. She worked for equal rights for African Americans in the arts.

10. Mickalene Thomas

Mickalene Thomas photo by Bangabandhu –

Mickalene Thomas is a contemporary African-American visual artist best known as a painter of complex works using rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. Thomas’s collage work is inspired by popular art histories and movements, including Impressionism, Cubism, Dada and the Harlem Renaissance.

11. Nina Chanel Abney

Nina Chanel Abney is an American artist, based in New York. She was born in Harvey, Illinois. She is an African American contemporary artist and painter who explores race, gender, pop culture, homophobia, and politics in her work.

Her work uses symbols and bright colours to present new ways of approaching loaded topics as she invites viewers to draw their conclusions. Blending the playful and the serious, Abney has said that her work is “easy to swallow, hard to digest.”

12. Elizabeth Freeman

A painted photo of Elizabeth Freeman by Susan Anne Ridley Sedgwick –

Elizabeth Freeman, also known as Bet, Mum Bett, or MumBet, was the first enslaved African American to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling, in Freeman’s favour, found slavery to be inconsistent with the 1780 Massachusetts State Constitution.

13. Ruth Janetta Temple

Ruth Temple photo by an Unknown author –

Ruth Janetta Temple was an American physician who was a leader in providing free and affordable healthcare and education to underserved communities in Los Angeles, California. She and her husband, Otis Banks, established the Temple Health Institute in East Los Angeles, which became a model for community-based health clinics across the country.

Temple was a member of the American Medical Association, the Women’s University Club, the California Medical Association, the California Congress of Parents and Teachers, and Alpha Kappa Alpha. A year before her death, the East Los Angeles Health Center has renamed the Dr Ruth Temple Center in her honour.

14. Mary Lee Mills

Mary Lee Mills was an American nurse. Born into a family of eleven children, she attended the Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing and graduated with a nursing degree and became a registered nurse.

After working as a midwife, she joined the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) in 1946 and served as their chief nursing officer of Liberia, working to hold some of their first campaigns in public health education.

Mills later worked in Lebanon and established the country’s first nursing school, and helped to combat treatable diseases. She was later assigned to South Vietnam, Cambodia and Chad to provide medical education.

15. Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman photo by Horatio Seymour Squyer –

Harriet Tubman was an American abolitionist and social activist. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 slaves, including family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.

When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 slaves.

16. Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks photo by an Unknown author –

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honoured her as “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement”.

She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation, and organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Edgar Nixon and Martin Luther King Jr. From 1965 to 1988, she served as secretary and receptionist to John Conyers, an African-American US Representative. She was also active in the Black Power movement and supported political prisoners in the US.

17. Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Gail Winfrey is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011.

Dubbed the “Queen of All Media”, Oprah was the richest African-American of the 20th century and was once the world’s only black billionaire. By 2007, she was sometimes ranked as the most influential woman in the world.

18. Gayle King

Gayle King photo by David Shankbone –

Gayle King is an American television personality, author and broadcast journalist for CBS News, co-hosting its flagship morning program, CBS Mornings, and before that its predecessor CBS This Morning. She is also an editor-at-large for O, The Oprah Magazine. King was named one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People of 2019”.

19. Whoopi Goldberg

Whoopi Goldberg photo by David Shankbone –

Caryn Elaine Johnson, known professionally as Whoopi Goldberg, is an American actor, comedian, author, and television personality. A recipient of numerous accolades, she is one of 17 entertainers to win the EGOT, which includes an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Academy Award, and a Tony Award.

20. Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou photo by Clinton Library –

Maya Angelou born Marguerite Annie Johnson was an American memoirist, popular poet, and civil rights, activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years.

Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.

21. Wendy Williams

Wendy Williams photo by WBLS –

Wendy Williams Hunter is an American broadcaster and writer. From 2008 to 2021, she hosted the nationally syndicated television talk show The Wendy Williams Show.

Williams was also a radio DJ and host before she started her television career. As a DJ, she became known in New York as a shock jockette. She gained notoriety for her on-air spats with celebrities and was the subject of the 2006 VH1 reality television series The Wendy Williams Experience, which broadcast events surrounding her radio show.

22. Sandra Lindsay

A photo of Sandra Lindsay with President Joe Biden –

After the COVID-19 scandal brought by the virus Corona Virus befell human beings in the world, the tension of the downfall of man was all over the world. Experts in drug/antidote/ vaccine production became busy trying to find a solution to the pandemic.

United States of America were among the first nations to find a possible solution in forming a vaccine against the pandemic. However, no one was willing to try the vaccine to see if it was compatible with human tissues and organs i.e. if it was harmful or safe for human use, since it was new in the entire world.

Fortunately, Sandra Lindsay, a medical worker or simply a nurse, offered to get the first immunisation for the COVID-19 disease! Wasn’t this patriotic? The Jamaican-born woman flickered emotions of pride and scepticism against the backdrop of the federal government鈥檚 vaccines against a virus that鈥檚 killed approximately 300,000 Americans.

23. Diane Abbott

Diane Abbott photo by Chris McAndrew –

Diane Julie Abbott is a British politician who has been a Member of Parliament (MP) for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987. A socialist member of the Labour Party, she served in Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Home Secretary from 2016 to 2020. Abbott is the first black woman elected to Parliament and the longest-serving black MP in the House of Commons.

24. Ellen Johnson

Ellen Johnson photo by Sean Hurt –

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is a Liberian politician who served as the 24th president of Liberia from 2006 to 2018. She won the 2005 presidential election and took office on 16 January 2006. She was re-elected in 2011. She was the first woman in Africa elected as president of her country.

In Liberia, she worked in William Tolbert’s government as Deputy Minister of Finance from 1971 to 1974. Later, she worked again in the West, for the World Bank in the Caribbean and Latin America. In 1979, she received a cabinet appointment as Minister of Finance, serving until 1980.

25. Althea Gibson

Althea Gibson photo by Carl Van Vechten –

Althea Neale Gibson was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and one of the first Black athletes to cross the colour line of international tennis. In 1956, she became the first African American to win a Grand Slam title “the French Championships”. In all, she won 11 Grand Slam tournaments: five singles titles, five doubles titles, and one mixed doubles title.

Gibson was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame. According to Bob Ryland “, She is one of the greatest players who ever lived”. In the early 1960s, she also became the first Black player to compete on the Women’s Professional Golf Tour.

26. Maria Louise Baldwin

Maria Louise Baldwin was an American educator and civic leader born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She lived all her life in Cambridge and Boston. W. E. B. Du Bois claimed she had achieved the most significant distinction in education to that time of any African-American not working in segregated schools.

27. Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Anita Chisholm was an American politician who in 1968 became the first black woman elected to the United States Congress. Chisholm represented New York’s 12th congressional district, a district centred on Bedford鈥揝tuyvesant, for seven terms from 1969 to 1983.

In 1972, she became the first black candidate for a major-party nomination for President of the United States, and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s nomination.

28. Elizabeth Carter Brooks

Elizabeth Carter Brooks was an American educator, social activist and architect. She was passionate about helping other African Americans achieve personal success and was one of the first to recognize the importance of preserving historical buildings in the United States.

29. Fannie Lou Hamer

Fannie Lou Hamer was an American voting and women’s rights activist, community organizer, and leader in the civil rights movement. She was the co-founder and vice-chair of the Freedom Democratic Party, which she represented at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.

Hamer also organized Mississippi’s Freedom Summer along with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She was also a co-founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus, an organization created to recruit, train, and support women of all races who wish to seek election to the government office.

30. Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Wells dedicated her life to combating prejudice and violence, the fight for African-American equality, especially that of women, and became arguably the most famous Black woman in the United States of her time.

31. Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights.

During her 33-year career at NASA and its predecessor, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform tasks. The space agency noted her “historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist”.

32. Mary McLeod Bethune

Mary Jane McLeod Bethune was an American educator, philanthropist, humanitarian, womanist, and civil rights, activist. Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935, established the organization’s flagship journal Aframerican Women’s Journal, and presided as president or leader for a myriad of African American women’s organizations including the National Association for Colored Women and the National Youth Administration’s Negro Division.

33. Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley Peters was an American author who is considered the first African-American author of a published book of poetry. Born in West Africa, she was kidnapped and subsequently sold into enslavement at the age of seven or eight and transported to North America, where she was bought by the Wheatley family of Boston. After she learned to read and write, they encouraged her poetry when they saw her talent.

34. Wilma Rudolph

Wilma Rudolph by Jan Arkesteijn –

Wilma Glodean Rudolph was an American sprinter, who became a world-record-holding Olympic champion and international sports icon in track and field following her successes in the 1956 and 1960 Olympic Games. Rudolph competed in the 200-meter dash and won a bronze medal in the 4 脳 100-meter relays at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.

She also won three gold medals, in the 100- and 200-meter individual events and the 4 x 100-meter relay at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy. Rudolph was acclaimed as the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s and became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympic Games.

35. Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-1900s American South and published research on hoodoo. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937.

36. Angela Yvonne Davis

Angela Yvonne Davis is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, scholar, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A feminist and a Marxist, Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and are a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). She is the author of more than ten books on class, gender, race, and the U.S. prison system.

37. Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday by William P. Gottlieb –

Billie Holiday was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed “Lady Day” by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo.

38. Charlayne Hunter-Gault

Charlayne Hunter-Gault is an American civil rights activist, journalist and former foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, CNN, and the Public Broadcasting Service. Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes were the first African-American students to attend the University of Georgia.

39. Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Jane Fitzgerald was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the “First Lady of Song”, “Queen of Jazz”, and “Lady Ella”. She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a “horn-like” improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.

40. Ren茅e Stout

Renee Stout is an American sculptor and contemporary artist known for assemblage artworks dealing with her personal history and African-American heritage. Her art reflects this interest in African diasporic culture throughout the United States. Stout was the first American artist to exhibit in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art.

41. Barbara Jordan

Barbara Jordan photo by University of Houston –

Barbara Charline Jordan was an American lawyer, educator, and politician. A Democrat, she was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction and the first Southern African-American woman elected to the United States House of Representatives.

Jordan was known for her eloquent opening statement at the House Judiciary Committee hearings during the impeachment process against Richard Nixon.

In 1976, she became the first African-American, and the first woman, to ever deliver a keynote address at a Democratic National Convention. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous other honours. She was the first African-American woman to be buried in the Texas State Cemetery.

42. Leyla McCalla

Leyla McCalla photo by WOMEX –

Leyla Sarah McCalla is an American classical and folk musician. She was a cellist with the Grammy-winning string band Carolina Chocolate Drops but left to focus on her solo career. McCalla’s critically acclaimed album Vari-Colored Songs is a tribute to Langston Hughes which includes adaptations of his poems, Haitian folk songs sung in Haitian Creole, and original compositions.

43. Whitney Houston

Whitney Houston photo by asterix611 –

Whitney Elizabeth Houston was an American singer and actress. Nicknamed “The Voice”, she is one of the bestselling music artists of all time, with sales of over 200 million records worldwide. Houston has influenced many singers in popular music and is known for her powerful, soulful vocals and vocal improvisation skills.

She is the only artist to have had seven consecutive number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100, from “Saving All My Love for You” in 1985 to “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” in 1988. Houston enhanced her popularity upon entering the movie industry.

She has received numerous accolades throughout her career and posthumously, including two Emmy Awards, six Grammy Awards, 16 Billboard Music Awards, and 28 Guinness World Records, as well as induction into the Grammy, Rhythm and Blues Music, and Rock and Roll halls of fame.

44. Bobbi Kristina Brown

Bobbi Kristina Houston Brown was an American reality television personality. She was the daughter and only child of singers Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown. Her parents’ fame kept Brown in the public eye, as did her appearances on the reality show Being Bobby Brown. After her death, her life was the subject of a television movie in 2017 and a documentary in 2021.

45. Cissy Houston

Sisy Houston photo by Tom Marcello Webster –

Emily “Cissy” Houston is an American soul and gospel singer. After a successful career singing backup for such artists as Roy Hamilton, Dionne Warwick, Elvis Presley, and Aretha Franklin, Houston embarked on a solo career, winning two Grammy Awards for her work. Houston is the mother of Whitney Houston, the aunt of singers Dionne Warwick and Dee Dee Warwick, and a cousin of opera singer Leontyne Price.

46. Brandy Norwood

Brandy Norwood photo by Timothy M. Moore –

Brandy Rayana Norwood better known by her mononym Brandy, is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, actress and model. She is known for her distinctive sound, characterized by her peculiar timbre, voice-layering, and intricate riffs, which has earned her the title of “the Vocal Bible”.

As of August 2020, she has sold over 40 million records worldwide, with approximately 8.62 million albums sold in the United States alone. Her work has earned her numerous awards and accolades, including a Grammy Award and an American Music Award.

47. Naomi Ackie

Naomi Ackie is an English actress. She made her television debut as Jen in the Doctor Who episode “Face the Raven” (2015). For her role as Bonnie on the television dark comedy-drama series The End of the F***ing World, she received the British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2020. Ackie is well known for her role as Jannah in the film Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

48. Cardi B

Cardi B photo by VOGUE Taiwan –

Belcalis Marlenis Alm谩nzar Cephus, known professionally as Cardi B, is an American rapper and songwriter. She is known for her aggressive flow, clever punchlines and outspoken lyrics, which have received widespread media coverage and been vastly quoted online. She first gained popularity through Vine and Instagram.

From 2015 to early 2017, she appeared as a regular cast member on the VH1 reality television series Love & Hip Hop: New York, which depicted the pursuit of her music aspirations, and earned further recognition with the release of her two mixtapes: Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 1 (2016) and Vol. 2.

49. Nicki Minaj

Nicki Minaj photo by Lightspac Studios –

Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty known professionally as Nicki Minaj is a Trinidadian-born rapper, singer, and songwriter based in the United States. She is widely regarded as the greatest female rapper of her generation and is credited for bringing female rap back to the mainstream. 

Her musical versatility, animated flow in her rapping, alter egos and accents have achieved widespread media attention. Minaj first gained public recognition with the release of three mixtapes Playtime Is Over (2007), Sucka Free (2008) and Beam Me Up Scotty (2009) before signing with Young Money Entertainment in 2009.

50. Rihanna

Rihanna photo by SIGMA –

Robyn Rihanna Fenty is a Barbadian singer, actress, and businesswoman. Born in Saint Michael and raised in Bridgetown, Barbados, Rihanna auditioned for American record producer Evan Rogers who invited her to the United States to record demo tapes.

After signing with Def Jam in 2005, she soon gained recognition with the release of her first two studio albums, Music of the Sun (2005) and A Girl Like Me (2006), both of which were influenced by Caribbean music and peaked within the top ten of the US Billboard 200 chart.