I want to say Thank You for supporting the Queens project to Crystal Browning. You will help me tell stories of women like Dolores Huerta who was a labor leader and civil rights activist. A former girl scout and teacher, Huerta co founded the Agricultural Workers Association which set up voter registration drives. She directed the United Farm Workers national boycott of grapes taking the worker’s plight to the public.
The Queens of Freedom project will focus on 17 women who have changed the way we live today. These women were queens in their own right, championing freedom and human rights. I will recast women like Sojourner Truth, Madame CJ Walker, Barbara Jordan and 14 more women to be modern day royalty.
This project will use models, costumes and props to remake pictures and tell the stories of their lives.
I want to say Thank You for supporting the Queens project to Annette Coolidge Udvardi help me tell stories of women like Dorothea Lange, a documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration..
I want to say Thank You for supporting the Queens project to Diane Jefferis. She will help me tell stories of women like Barbara Jordan who a member of the House of Representatives and a leader in the civil rights movement. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and was the first African American woman to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.
I want to say Thank You for supporting the Queens project to Kelly Hensy Cobb. You will help me tell stories of women like Harriet Tubman, who was born a slave named Araminta Ross. She was an abolitionist, humanitarian and during the Civil War, a Union spy. She used the Underground Railroad to rescue about 70 enslaved families.
I want to say Thank you for supporting the Queens project to Crystal Singleton Patton. You will help me tell the stories of women like Mary Jane McLeod Bethune who was an educator and civil rights leader. She was one of seventeen children and the only one in her family to attend school, so each day, she taught the others what she had learned. Bethune wrote later, “I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a loving God, faith in myself, and a desire to serve.”
I want to say Thank you for supporting the Queens project to Marsha Bolden. You will help me tell the stories of women like Shirley Chisholm who was the first African American woman to be elected to Congress. Even though she was born in the U.S. her mother sent her to Barbados for her early education. She said “Years later I would know what an important gift my parents had given me by seeing to it that I had my early education in the strict, traditional, British-style schools of Barbados. If I speak and write easily now, that early education is the main reason.”
I want to say Thank you for supporting the Queens project to Jana Reed. You will help me tell the stories of women like Elizabeth Phoebe Griscom Ross better known as Betsy Ross who was born the eighth of seventeen children. During the Revolutionary War, she worked in the upholstery business repairing uniforms, making tents and blankets and prepackaged ammunition.
I want to say Thank you for supporting the Queens project to Aldo Billingslea. You will help me tell the stories of women like Bessie Smith who was nicknamed The Empress of the Blues. As a child, her brother and she used to dance and sing on the street to earn money. She later became one of the highest paid entertainers of her day.
I want to say Thank you for supporting the Queens project to Kerry McCormick. You will help me tell the stories of women like Sacagawea who was an interpreter and guide during the exploration of Lewis and Clark. She was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who the NAWSA used as a symbol of women’s worth and independence. She was pregnant with her first child when she began to work with Lewis and Clark.
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