*Susan King Taylor was born on this date in 1848. She was a black writer.

Born a slave on the Grest Farm in Liberty County, Georgia, her mother was a domestic servant for the Grest family. At the age of 7, Susan (Susie) King Baker and her brother were sent to live with their grandmother in Savannah. Even with the strict laws against formal education of African Americans, they both attended two secret schools taught by black women. Baker soon became a skilled reader and writer. By 1860, Baker befriended two white individuals, a girl and boy, who also offered to teach her lessons even though they knew it violated Georgia law and custom.

On April 1, 1862, at age 14, Baker was sent back to live with her mother around the time federal forces attacked nearby Fort Pulaski. When the Union Army captured the fort, Baker fled with her uncle’s family and other blacks to Union-occupied St. Simons Island. Since most blacks were not educated, word of Baker’s knowledge and intelligence spread among the Army officers on the island. Five days after her arrival, Commodore Louis M. Goldsborough offered Baker books and school supplies if she agreed to organize a school for the children on St. Simon’s Island. Baker accepted the offer and became the first black teacher to openly instruct African American students in Georgia. By day she taught children and at night she instructed adults.

Baker met and married her first husband, Edward King, a black non-commissioned officer in the Union Army, while teaching at St. Simon Island. For the next three years, Susan Baker King traveled with her husband’s regiment, working as a laundress while teaching black Union soldiers how to read and write during their off-duty hours. She also served as a nurse, helping camp doctors care for injured soldiers. In 1866, the Kings returned to Savannah, where she established a school for freed black children. In that same year, Edward King died in September only a few months after their first son was born.

By the early 1870s, she moved to Boston where she met her second husband, Russell Taylor. With nursing being a passion of hers, Baker soon joined and then became president of the Women’s Relief Corps, which gave assistance to soldiers and hospitals.

In 1890, after a trip to care for her dying son, Baker wrote her memoirs, which she privately published them as a book in 1902 as Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd US Colored Troops. Susie Baker King Taylor died in 1912 at the age of sixty-four in Boston.

Born premature on June 23, 1940, in St. Bethlehem, Tennessee, Wilma Rudolph was a sickly child who had to wear a brace on her left leg. She overcame her disabilities through physical therapy and hard work, and went on to become a gifted runner. She became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field events at the Olympics, and later worked as a teacher and track coach.

Ella Baker

While we’re constantly reminded of the civil rights leaders who worked in front, those who were behind the scenes often go unrecognized. Ella Baker is one of those people. An active civil rights leader in the 1930s, Ms. Baker fought for civil rights for five decades, working alongside W.E.B Dubois, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King, Jr. She even mentored well-known civil rights activist, Rosa Parks.
Ella Baker is quoted as saying, “You didn’t see me on television; you didn’t see news stories about me. The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put together pieces out of which I hoped organization might come. My theory is, strong people don’t need strong leaders.”

Diane Nash

A leader and strategist of the student wing of the Civil Rights Movement, Diane Nash was a member of the infamous Freedom Riders. She also helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Selma Voting Rights Committee campaign, which helped blacks in the South get to vote and have political power.
Raised in Chicago, Nash initially wanted to become a nun as a result of her Catholic upbringing. Also known for her beauty, she would later become runner-up for Miss Illinois. But Nash’s path changed direction when she attended Fisk University after transferring from Howard University. It was there that she would witness segregation first hand, since coming from a desegregated northern city. Her experiences in the South resulted in her ambition to fight against segregation.
Historian David Halberstam considered Nash, “bright, focused, utterly fearless, with an unerring instinct for the correct tactical move at each increment of the crisis; as a leader, her instincts had been flawless, and she was the kind of person who pushed those around her to be at their best—that, or be gone from the movement.”

Mae Jemison
A physician who volunteered with the Peace Corps and the first female African American astronaut, Mae was also the first black woman to go into space. After her 1992 expedition on the Endeavor shuttle, she left NASA and founded the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence (which sponsors science camps for kids), as well as companies involved in scientific and technological research. Currently, she is a professor at Cornell University and strongly involved in the science community.

Shirley Chisholm

In 1968, Shirley became the first black Congresswoman and in 1972, she became the first black woman to contend for the presidential office. She used her time in Congress and on the campaign trail to voice her opinions on women’s and civil rights, giving a public voice to many of the grassroots campaigns she was involved in prior to her election.

Harriet Tubman
Like Sojourner, Harriet was born into slavery and found a means of escape with the help of her abolitionist neighbors. In 1849, she fled her slave life in Maryland and found respite in Philadelphia. There she formulated a plan to liberate the rest of her family by way of the Underground Railroad, a system that involved moving slaves from one safe house to another under rigid secrecy. She was able to free her family and numerous other slaves throughout the years, taking them as far as Canada and helping them find safe jobs. Later, she worked as a nurse during the Civil War and was a proponent of both women’s suffrage and the abolitionist movement.

As this is the last Friday in February. With Black History Month coming to a close, it’s only right that we highlight a woman who is more that just the first African-American First Lady of the United States.

Michelle Obama has dedication to much-needed campaigns (such as her initiative to end childhood obesity), her involvement in raising daughters Sasha and Malia and her down-to-earth fashion choices.

As First Lady, Michelle continues to support military families, helping working women balance career and family, encouraging national service, and promoting healthy eating and lifestyle habits for children and families living across the country.
I salute you Michelle Obama on the last day of Black History Month!

Michelle Obama recording