Although history has tried to erase them, these women are written on the souls of black women and we know how to wear them.

She refused to be what they demanded she be.  She decided to take some friends with her.

After leading many people to freedom through the underground railroad over 8 years, Araminta Ross, joined the women’s suffrage movement. Later in life she cared for the elderly and evenly established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged in 1896 on land near her home.

She would hold a mirror up so they could face their hypocrisy.

Freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, Ida B Wells grew up to become an investigative journalist who brought notice to lynchings, discrimination and sexism in the United States. She also spoke and wrote about them to the point it caused conflict with many of the white suffrage organizers because she called them on their silence to racist behavior. She was associated with the founding of the NAACP and National Association of Colored Women’s Club.

She wanted to capture the history and soul of a people.

The lives of African Americans in the southern part of the United States was documented by Zora Neale Hurston. She lived through the Harlem Renaissance writing novels, short stories, plays and essays.  She interviewed the last known person captured by slavers and brought to the US on a slave ship, Cudjoe Lewis.

They wanted to put their name of her work. She knew better than that.

Fashion houses saw her as a seamstress, but she opened her own shop and created high fashion for the up and coming in Harlem.  Her clients ranged from Nat King Cole’s wife, Eartha Kitt, Mae West, Josephine Baker, and more.  Zelda Wynn Valdes also created one of the first outfits for the Playboy Bunny.

Marcus Garvey taught them to love their hair and features the way God had given them.

Black is Beautiful grew out of a 1950s movement in New York City when men from the AJASS society started holding fashion shows for African American women who wore their hair natural. It promoted beauty to another standard.