Quick — name five Black women from history.

If you said Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, and then started stalling… you’re not alone.

And that’s exactly the problem.

The contributions of Black women have been systematically erased, minimized, or attributed to someone else for centuries. Women’s History Month is winding down, but the urgency of teaching our children these stories doesn’t end in March.

Here are 10 Black women every child — and every adult — should know by name.

1. Mary McLeod Bethune — The Woman Who Built a University From Nothing

In 1904, Mary McLeod Bethune opened a school for Black girls in Daytona Beach, Florida with $1.50, five students, and crates for desks.

That school became Bethune-Cookman University.

She went on to advise President Franklin D. Roosevelt and became the highest-ranking Black woman in government at the time. She didn’t wait for permission. She didn’t wait for funding. She started with what she had and built an empire of education.

2. Madam C.J. Walker — America’s First Self-Made Female Millionaire

Before Oprah. Before Rihanna. There was Sarah Breedlove — better known as Madam C.J. Walker.

Born to formerly enslaved parents in 1867, she built a hair care empire that made her the first self-made female millionaire in American history. She employed thousands of Black women and used her wealth to fund anti-lynching campaigns and civil rights organizations.

She didn’t just break the glass ceiling. She built her own building.

3. Fannie Lou Hamer — “I’m Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired”

Fannie Lou Hamer was a sharecropper in Mississippi who was beaten nearly to death for trying to register to vote. She didn’t stop. She co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and challenged the all-white delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.

Her testimony was so powerful that President Lyndon Johnson called an emergency press conference to pull TV coverage away from her. He was scared of a sharecropper with the truth. That tells you everything.

4. Ida B. Wells — The Journalist Who Fought Lynching With Data

Ida B. Wells didn’t just write about the horrors of lynching — she investigated them. She traveled across the South, documented cases, published the data, and forced the world to confront what America wanted to hide.

She was exiled from Memphis after her newspaper office was destroyed by a white mob. She kept writing. She kept fighting. She co-founded the NAACP and never stopped holding this country accountable.

5. Katherine Johnson — The Mathematician Who Sent America to Space

You might know her from the movie Hidden Figures. But the real story is even more remarkable.

Katherine Johnson calculated the trajectory for America’s first human spaceflight. When NASA started using computers, astronaut John Glenn refused to fly until Katherine personally verified the numbers. She was that good.

She worked at NASA for 33 years and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.

6. Shirley Chisholm — “Unbought and Unbossed”

In 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to Congress. In 1972, she became the first Black candidate for a major party’s presidential nomination.

She was told to wait her turn. She ran anyway. She was told she couldn’t win. She ran anyway. She opened doors that every Black woman in politics has walked through since.

7. Mary Bowser — The Spy in the Confederate White House

Mary Bowser was an enslaved woman who was freed and then voluntarily went back into the Confederate White House as a spy for the Union.

She had a photographic memory. She read documents off Jefferson Davis’s desk and passed intelligence to the Union Army. She was one of the most valuable spies in the Civil War — and most people have never heard her name.

8. Bessie Coleman — The First Black Woman to Earn a Pilot’s License

No American flight school would accept a Black woman in 1920. So Bessie Coleman learned French and moved to France to get her license.

She became the first Black woman — and the first Native American woman — to hold a pilot’s license. She performed in air shows across America, refusing to perform at venues that segregated their entrances. She used her platform to fight, even while flying.

9. Dorothy Height — The Godmother of the Civil Rights Movement

Dorothy Height stood on the stage at the March on Washington in 1963. She was the only woman on the platform — and she wasn’t allowed to speak.

She spent 40 years leading the National Council of Negro Women and worked alongside every major civil rights leader of the 20th century. She fought for racial justice and women’s rights simultaneously, refusing to choose between her identities.

10. Claudette Colvin — The Teenager Who Refused to Move Before Rosa Parks

Nine months before Rosa Parks, a 15-year-old girl named Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. She was arrested, handcuffed, and dragged off the bus.

Civil rights leaders chose Rosa Parks as the face of the boycott because they thought a teenager wouldn’t hold up to public scrutiny. Claudette’s courage started the fire. She deserves to be remembered.

Why These Stories Matter Right Now

With DEI rollbacks gutting school curricula and book bans accelerating across the country, our daughters need these stories more than ever.

Not as footnotes. Not as “fun facts” during Women’s History Month. As the foundation of how they see themselves.

Our Women’s Edition Black History Flashcards feature dozens of women like these — the ones the textbooks forgot. Every card is a conversation starter. Every conversation builds identity.

Because a Black girl who knows that Bessie Coleman moved to France to chase her dream, that Mary Bowser outsmarted the Confederacy from the inside, that Fannie Lou Hamer stared down the President of the United States — that girl walks differently through the world.

Which Black woman from history inspires you the most? Tell us in the comments — and share this with a young girl who needs to see it.

Love, peace, and power to the people. ✊🏾