Famous and Notable Black Women Posters, “Ha...-Hi...-”
for the social studies classroom, home schoolers and theme decor.

Adelaide Hall
Fannie Lou Hamer

Lorraine Hansberry
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Adelaide Hall, Giclee Print

Adelaide Hall
b. 10-20-1901; Brooklyn
d. 11-7-1993; London

Adelaide Hall, who was taught to sing by her father, worked in black revues from the chorus of the Broadway musical Shuffle Along (1921) to Blackbirds of 1928, with the song “I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby”.

Hall lived in Europe where opportunities for black performers were more available, after the Blackbirds tour of Europe, settling in England. She had a radio show and appeared on stage and in films and nightclubs. She made her last recording at age 90 in 1991.

• Underneath a Harlem Moon: The Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall

Fannie Lou Hamer,
née Townsend
b. 10-6-1917; Sunflower Co., MS
d. 3-14-1977; Mound Bayou, MS

Fannie Lou Hamer was a plain-spoken activist remembered and loved for her use of Bible verses and hymns to demand civil rights.

Fannie Lou Hamer quotes ~
• “Nobody's free until everybody's free.”
• “I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
• “One night I went to the church. They had a mass meeting. And I went to the church, and they talked about how it was our right, that we could register and vote. They were talking about we could vote out people that we didn't want in office, we thought that wasn't right, that we could vote them out. That sounded interesting enough to me that I wanted to try it. I had never heard, until 1962, that black people could register and vote.”
• “When they asked for those to raise their hands who'd go down to the courthouse the next day, I raised mine. Had it high up as I could get it. I guess if I'd had any sense I'd've been a little scared, but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do to me was kill me and it seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember.”

Lorraine Hansberry
b. 5-19-1930; Chicago, IL
d. 1-12-1965; New York City

Playwright Lorraine Hansberry's best known work, A Raisin in the Sun, was inspired by her family's fight against racially segregated housing laws. She was the youngest person, and only the 5th woman, to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best play of the year; she died at age 35 from cancer.

Lorraine Hansberry quotes ~
• “A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men — and people in general.”
• “I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and — I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations.”
• “Eventually it comes to you: the thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.”
• “Never be afraid to sit a while and think.”

FYI - the title A Raisin in the Sun is from the poem “A Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
b. 9-24-1825; Baltimore, MD
d. 2-22-1911

Frances Harper, an African American abolitionist, poet and teacher, was born to free parents and orphaned at an early age. She published her first book of poetry at age twenty and her first novel, Iola Leroy: Shadows Uplifted (1892), at age 67. She lived with the William Still family for a time.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper quote ~
• “Every mother should endeavor to be a true artist, who knows how to weave into her child's life images of grace and beauty, the true poet capable of writing on the soul of childhood the harmony of love and truth, and teaching it how to produce the grandest of all poems - the poetry of a true and noble life.”

Dorothy Irene Height
b. 3-24-1912; Richmond, VA
d. 4-20-2010; Washington, DC

Social activist Dorothy Height, a 2004 recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal, initiated food, child care, housing, and career educational programs. In 1986 she began the Black Family Reunion Celebration to emphasize the positive aspects of the African-American family.

Dorothy Height quotes ~
• “We've got to work to save our children and do it with full respect for the fact that if we do not, no one else is going to do it.”
• “No one will do for you what you need to do for yourself. We cannot afford to be separate. . . . We have to see that all of us are in the same boat.”
• “Without community service, we would not have a strong quality of life. It's important to the person who serves as well as the recipient. It's the way in which we ourselves grow and develop.”

Sarah “Sally” Hemings
b. c. 1773; Albemarle Co., VA
d. 1835; Charlottesville, VA

Sarah “Sally” Hemings a slave owned by Thomas Jefferson, was the mother of several of his children.

Sally Hemings was the granddaughter of an African slave and an English sea captain, and the daughter of Jefferson's father-in-law, or in effect, the half sister of Jefferson's wife.