Queen Amina was a warrior and ruler of Zazzau, a Hausa city-state which dominated the trans-Saharan trade after the collapse of the Songhai empire in what is now Northern Nigeria. She led an army of 20,000 soldiers, conquering towns to the north and south in the Nupe and Jukun kingdoms, and through Kasashen Bauch
Queen Amani remains one of the most famous Meroitic queens because of her role in leading the Kushite army against the Romans in a war that lasted three years. This war is largely responsible for halting Rome’s southward expansion in Africa.
During her lifetime, Zora Neale Hurston published four novels; Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), Seraph on the Suwanee (1948) and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays. Her most popular novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was written in rented a house in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in September 1936 and completed in seven weeks.
Nationally, American contralto Marian Anderson broke barriers. Her first record featured spirituals “DeepRiver” and “My Way’s Cloudy.” She was the first African American to perform with the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, the first African American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera. Despite, she was still subject to racial bias.
Ella Fitzgerald was born just as jazz was beginning to develop into a distinct art form. She mastered scat singing, a vocal improvisation using words, syllables and parts of other songs. She won 13 Grammy Awards, sold over 40 million albums, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1967.
