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.
Black Poetry Day was enacted to celebrate Jupiter Hammon who is considered the first published black poet in the United states. "Now We Are Green, Our Touch is Green" is a poem written by Litha Sovell of the Green Belt Movement in Tanzania.
