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.
Untutored in classical music but influenced by jazz and blues, Mahalia Jackson would create her own style and establish herself as a gospel singer. During her lifetime, she performed for kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers and kept going back to sing in churches for the people who loved her voice first.
Carter G. Woodson, one of the first African-Americans to graduate from Harvard University with a doctorate degree, is credited with establishing Black History Week (then called “Negro History Week”) in 1926, designed to highlight and celebrate the Black experience. Since then, U.S. presidents have proclaimed February as National Black History Month.
Madam C.J. Walker, was born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867 in a one-room cabin with a fireplace, a few windows, and a porch located on a cotton plantation on Delta, Louisiana. She would build a beauty empire employing 40,000 African American women and men in the US, Central America, and the Caribbean and found the National Negro Cosmetics Manufacturers Association in 1917.
