Awesome Black Women

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Across
  1. 2. This Journalist and advocate for women’s rights, including suffrage, also founded the NACW in 1896, and took her anti-lynching campaign to the White House in 1898. She was a founding member of the NAACP.
  2. 7. Singer known as “Lady Day” who revolutionized jazz and swing music. Her song “Strange Fruit,”noted as the first civil rights protest song.
  3. 9. Daughter of Mississippi sharecroppers, this civil and voting rights leader spoke truth to power pronouncing “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” President Johnson feared her speech.
  4. 12. First African American woman in space.
  5. 13. Sold away from her parents and traded many times, this talented speaker heard a calling to become a travelling preacher in 1843 and renamed herself _________.
  6. 14. This entrepreneur became the first self-made female millionaire in America making her fortune in hair care products. Born Sarah Breedlove, she later became known as ________.
  7. 16. This writer who experienced childhood trauma that left her speechless for 5 years, overcame her hardship through writing, and moved on to become an Inaugural poet reading her poem “On the Pulse of Morning.”
  8. 17. First author to win the Hugo (Sci Fi) Award three years in a row!
  9. 18. First woman and first Black American to be the Librarian of Congress.
  10. 19. Tied with Shannon Miller for most Olympic medals for a US Gymnast, this gymnast has a trick named after her.
Down
  1. 1. First Black woman elected to U.S. Congress later became first Black woman to run for Presidential nomination.
  2. 3. First Native American and first Black American female pilot.
  3. 4. First Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
  4. 5. Several months prior to Rosa Parks’ arrest, this 15-year-old high school student refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
  5. 6. In 1866, she became the first Black female to enlist in the US Army as a Buffalo Soldier. As women were not allowed in the Army, she enlisted by switching her first and last name.
  6. 8. First African American in Olympic history to win the individual all-around event in gymnastics. She took the gold in both 2012 and 2016 Olympics.
  7. 10. Richest African American and pre-eminent philanthropist, Queen of the talk show.
  8. 11. First Black woman to become US Attorney General.
  9. 15. Despite contracting polio at the age of four, this runner went on to become the first woman to win triple gold in a single Olympics.