Women’s History Month 2024: Celebrating Strength And Power
Hurray!!! It is March! It is Women’s History Month 2024! Is it not remarkable the way we took a leap from Black History Month into Women’s History Month this year? A whole month cut out for women to celebrate themselves, to rejoice in being a woman. Personally, I’m out to learn a whole lot of stuff this month. I’m not saying someone has to come teach me how to be a woman, I just know that sometimes we need reminding of who we are: Beautiful, Powerful, Strong, Enough.
It is not possible to be too much of a woman, it is not possible for a woman to be less. Being a woman means you’re more than enough. You carry inside of you surplus supplies just ready to be utilized. You carry inside of you, people and nations just waiting to be born. Most importantly, you carry inside of you, enough love and enough power to change the world. Not in small ways, but in ways large and obvious enough for the world to pause and say yes, that is a woman!.
Feminism and Women’s History Month
Feminism is an ideology and a movement that advocates for the equality of sexes. Women throughout history have fought for rights to be seen as thinking and intelligent beings, equal to their male counterparts. Black women, White women, have fought for the right to vote and be voted for. The right to earn money equivalent to the work done. The rights over their bodies. The right to make life decisions.
Many great Black women who we look up to only got there because they refused to believe the world view that they are less. They got up to the pedestal by believing in themselves and as my mother always says,
It is only what you carry inside of you that will help on life’s journey.
Like I said before, the aim of this month is to remind us of who we are.
6 Inspiring Black Women To Remember In Women’s History Month 2024
We all know that Black women are strong pillars of their families and by extension, the society. Black women are made of strong stuff that prevents them from backing down in times of conflict and harassment. A Black woman does not allow her powerhouses to stop her from achieving her dreams. A black woman works hard. A black woman is a power house.
Below are some women who put in a little extra despite difficulties and made sure they got to the finish line. Their lives should teach us that nothing is impossible when you put your mind to it. Being a woman doesn’t mean you’re weak, and because of that perceived weakness, you believe you have a solid excuse to lie down and wallow in your failures. Being a woman means that when you fall, you rise up again, stronger and more determined to conquer the world.
1. Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has called her “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement”.
On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake’s order to relinquish her seat in the “colored section” to a white passenger, after the whites-only section was filled. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation, but the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) believed that she was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws. Parks’ prominence in the community and her willingness to become a controversial figure inspired the black community to boycott the Montgomery buses for over a year, the first major direct action campaign of the post-war civil rights movement. Her case became bogged down in the state courts, but the federal Montgomery bus lawsuit Browder v. Gayle succeeded in November 1956.
Parks’ act of defiance and the Montgomery bus boycott became important symbols of the movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Edgar Nixon, President of the local chapter of the NAACP; and Martin Luther King Jr., a new minister in Montgomery who gained national prominence in the civil rights movement and went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize.
Source: Wikipedia
2. Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
She became a poet and writer after a series of occupations as a young adult, including fry cook, sex worker, nightclub dancer and performer, cast member of the opera Porgy and Bess, coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. She was an actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Beginning in the 1990s, she made around 80 appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” (1993) at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961.
Source: Wikipedia
3. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, born 15 September 1977 is a Nigerian writer whose works range from novels to short stories to nonfiction. She was described in The Times Literary Supplement as “the most prominent” of a “procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors who is succeeding in attracting a new generation of reader to African literature.
Adichie was born in the city of Enugu in Nigeria, and grew up as the fifth of six children in an Igbo family in the university town of Nsukka in Enugu State. While she was growing up, her father, James Nwoye Adichie, worked as a professor of statistics at the University of Nigeria. Her mother, Grace Ifeoma, was the university’s first female registrar. The family lost almost everything during the Nigerian Civil War, including both maternal and paternal grandfathers. Her family’s ancestral village is in Abba in Anambra State.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about The Thing Around Your Neck on Bookbits radio.
Adichie has written the novels Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), and Americanah (2013), the short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), and the book-length essay We Should All Be Feminists (2014). One of her most recent books, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, was published in March 2017. In 2008, she was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant. Her most recent book, half of a yellow sun, also received a prize.
Source: Wikipedia
4. Wilma Rudolph
Wilma Glodean Rudolph (June 23, 1940 – November 12, 1994) was an African-American sprinter born in Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee, who became a world-record-holding Olympic champion and international sports icon in track and field following her successes in the 1956 and 1960 Olympic Games. Rudolph competed in the 200-meter dash and won a bronze medal in the 4 × 100-meter relays at the 1956 Summer Olympics at Melbourne, Australia. She also won three gold medals, in the 100- and 200-meter individual events and the 4 x 100-meter relay at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy. Rudolph was acclaimed the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s and became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympic Games.
Due to the worldwide television coverage of the 1960 Summer Olympics, Rudolph became an international star along with other Olympic athletes such as Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali), Oscar Robertson, and Rafer Johnson who competed in Italy.
As an Olympic champion in the early 1960s, Rudolph was among the most highly visible black women in America and abroad. She became a role model for black and female athletes and her Olympic successes helped elevate women’s track and field in the United States. Rudolph is also regarded as a civil rights and women’s rights pioneer. In 1962, Rudolph retired from competition at the peak of her athletic career as the world record-holder in the 100- and 200-meter individual events and the 4 × 100-meter relays. After competing in the 1960 Summer Olympics, the 1963 graduate of Tennessee State University became an educator and coach. Rudolph died of brain and throat cancer in 1994.
Source: Wikipedia
5. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Ellen Eugenia Johnson was born in Monrovia to a Gola father and Kru-German mother. She was educated at the College of West Africa. She completed her education in the United States, where she studied at Madison Business College and Harvard University. She returned to Liberia to work in William Tolbert’s government as Deputy Minister of Finance from 1971 to 1974. Later, she worked again in the West for the World Bank in the Caribbean and Latin America. In 1979, she received a cabinet appointment as Minister of Finance, serving to 1980.
After Samuel Doe seized power that year in a coup d’état and executed Tolbert, Sirleaf fled to the United States. She worked for Citibank and then the Equator Bank. She returned to Liberia to contest a senatorial seat for Montserrado County in 1985, an election that was disputed.
Sirleaf continued to be involved in politics. She finished in second place at the 1997 presidential election, which was won by Charles Taylor.
She won the 2005 Presidential election and took office on 16 January 2006. She was re-elected in 2011. She was the first woman in Africa elected as President of her country. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, in recognition of her efforts to bring women into the peacekeeping process. She has received numerous other awards for her leadership.
In June 2016, Sirleaf was elected as the Chair of the Economic Community of West African States, making her the first woman to hold the position since it was created.
Source: Wikipedia
6. Whitney Houston
Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) was an American singer and actress. She was cited as the most awarded female artist of all time by Guinness World Records and remains one of the best-selling music artists of all time with 200 million records sold worldwide. Houston released seven studio albums and two soundtrack albums, all of which have been certified diamond, multi-platinum, platinum, or gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Her crossover appeal on the popular music charts—as well as her prominence on MTV, starting with her video for “How Will I Know”—influenced several female African-American artists.
Houston began singing in church as a child and became a background vocalist while in high school. With the guidance of Arista Records chairman Clive Davis, she signed to the label at the age of 19. Her first two studio albums, Whitney Houston (1985) and Whitney (1987), both reached number one on the Billboard 200 in the United States, and to-date are the biggest-selling first two albums released of any artist in history. To this day, she is the only artist to have seven consecutive number-one singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, from “Saving All My Love for You” in 1985 to “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” in 1988.
Houston made her screen acting debut in the romantic thriller film The Bodyguard (1992). She recorded six songs for the film’s soundtrack, including “I Will Always Love You”, which received the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and became the best-selling single by a woman in music history. The soundtrack album received the Grammy Award for Album of the Year; it remains the best-selling soundtrack album in history. Houston made other high-profile film appearances and contributed/produced their accompanying soundtracks, including Waiting to Exhale (1995) and The Preacher’s Wife (1996). The Preacher’s Wife soundtrack went on to become the best-selling gospel album in history.
Source: Wikipedia
Conclusion
Women’s History Month is an opportunity for every woman to examine her life and think about ways to make it better. It is a time to honor and show love to other women in our lives. Our mothers deserve flowers, our sisters deserve hugs this month. When you consider the great things our predecessors did, you realize we have to buckle up so the generations of women coming behind us will also be inspired by our greatness.
After reading this article, pick up a pen and paper and write about five or ten things you think you can do to make a difference in your immediate community. If you’ve been down in the dirt before now, pick yourself up and take that next step that scares you. This year, we are celebrating strength and power.
We are women, We are strong.
Get up, woman! Go on and make history!
Happy Women’s History Month!!!
What's Your Reaction?
