Intro Panel
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Alt tag: American poet Elizabeth Alexander, smiling for the camera (Courtesy of Elizabeth Alexander)
Credit: Courtesy photo
Caption: While earlier generations of African-American women had few career options, the U.S. civil rights movement and the push for women’s equality have created opportunities for black women in virtually any field. Today, African-American women excel in business, medicine, science, literature, the law, academia and numerous other callings.
Poet Elizabeth Alexander, seen here, graduated from Yale University and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her 2005 poetry collection American Sublime. She became one of only four poets to have participated in a presidential inauguration when she read her poem “Praise Song for the Day” at Barack Obama’s inauguration as U.S. president on January 21, 2009.
See also: Making Their Mark: Profiles of Contemporary African-American Women (PDF, 1.2MB) and On Penning a Verse for the President-elect.
Panel 2
PHOTO: AP #06120608649
Alt tag: Astronaut Joan Higginbotham, posing in her NASA flight suit (AP Images)
Credit: AP Images
Caption: Joan Higginbotham was recruited by NASA when she was completing her studies in electrical engineering at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, which led her to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. She worked on 53 shuttle launches before being selected as an astronaut candidate in 1996. Ten years later, aboard the space shuttle Discovery, Higginbotham became the third African-American woman to go into space.
See also: Remembering “Extra-Special” Space Shuttle Flight.
Panel 3
PHOTO: AP #090402152269
Alt tag: Close-up of playwright Lynn Nottage, wearing a rust-colored shirt (AP Images)
Credit: AP Images
Caption: When playwright Lynn Nottage won a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2007, she was hailed as “an original voice in American theater.” Her play Intimate Apparel, set in 1905, explored race and class in America through the eyes of an African-American seamstress who sews lingerie. In 2009, Nottage won the Pulitzer Prize for Ruined, a drama about women who were brutalized during wartime in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her latest play, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, offers a humorous look at racial stereotypes in 1930s Hollywood.
See also: Making Their Mark: Profiles of Contemporary African-American Women (PDF, 1.2MB).
Panel 4
PHOTO: AP #071211048369
Alt tag: Actress Jurnee Smollett, in evening attire (AP Images)
Credit: AP Images
Caption: Actress Jurnee Smollett is best known for her role in The Great Debaters, a 2007 movie about the debate team at an all-black school in Marshall, Texas, during the 1930s. But she is also an HIV/AIDS activist who traveled to Botswana, South Africa and Swaziland in 2009 on a State Department–sponsored tour to educate and empower young people to protect themselves against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Smollett, who shares her experience of having close friends who are living with HIV, is the youngest board member of Artists for a New South Africa, which promotes AIDS education and civil rights.
See also: Actress Jurnee Smollett: HIV/AIDS Activist.
Panel 5
PHOTO: AP #100609025588
Alt tag: U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Susan Rice, at a desk with briefing papers and microphone (AP Images)
Credit: AP Images
Caption: Since 2009, diplomat Susan Rice has served as U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations and worked to advance U.S. interests, defend universal values, reinforce international security and prosperity, and protect human rights. Educated at Stanford University in California and at Oxford University in England, Rice served on President Clinton’s White House National Security Council staff and later worked at the Brookings Institution. Her career advice? “If you’re excited about something and passionate about it, that’s what you ought to do.”
See also: Making Their Mark: Profiles of Contemporary African-American Women (PDF, 1.2MB).
Panel 6
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Alt tag: Close-up of scientist and entrepreneur Mary Spio, shown in three-quarters view (Courtesy of Mary Spio)
Credit: Courtesy photo
Caption: Born in Syracuse, New York, to Ghanaian parents, Mary Spio was always interested in space science. A graduate degree in engineering led her to a job at Boeing Company, where she became head of satellite communications and created a digital cinema division. Today, she is known as a groundbreaker in transferring movies by satellite and also as the founder of an online dating service and as a marketing and technology executive. “Always look at the opportunities around you,” she tells young people.
See also: Entrepreneur Engineers Her Own Success.