[Previous] [Next]

Women and African American History: 1870-1899

• 15th Amendment to the US Constitution gave the right to vote without regard to race, color, or previous condition of servitude -- but the Amendment did not apply to African American women (or any other women)

• Susan McKinney Stewart, an early African American woman physician, received an M.D. from the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women

• (October 6) Fisk University Jubilee Singers began their first-ever national tour, singing gospel music to raise money for the University

• (April) Charlotte Ray admitted to the Washington, DC, bar; she graduated that year from Howard University Law School

• Sarah Moore Grimke died (abolitionist, womens rights proponent, sister of Angelina Grimke Weld)

• (July 10) Mary McLeod Bethune born

• Civil Rights Act of 1875 outlaws discrimination in public accomodations (invalidated in Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896)

• Rutherford B. Hayes ended Reconstruction by withdrawing US Army troops from the South

• Mary Eliza Mahoney graduated from the nursing school at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, Boston, becoming the first African American professional nurse

• Angelina Emily Grimke Weld died (abolitionist, womens rights proponent, sister of Sarah Moore Grimke)

• (October 20) Lydia Maria Child died (abolitionist, writer)

• (November 11) Lucretia Mott died (Quaker abolitionist and womens rights advocate)

• Tennessee passed first Jim Crow laws

• Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles founded Spelman College, the first college for African American women

• (September 8) Sarah Mapps Douglass died

• (November 26) Sojourner Truth died (abolitionist, womens rights proponent, minister, lecturer)

• Mary Ann Shadd Cary became the second African American woman in the United States to earn a law degree

• Mary Church Terrell (then Mary Church) graduated from Oberlin College (activist, clubwoman)

• (January 24) Helen Pitts married Frederick Douglass, setting off controversy and opposition to their interracial

BlackFacts Details

Actor and activist, Paul Robeson, portrays Othello for the 296th time at New Yor

Black People Facts

Barack Obama Facts