TRAILBLAZERS, Black Women Who Helped Make America Great
American Firsts/American Icons
by Gabrielle David
Edited by Carolina Fung Feng
Introduction by Chandra D. L. Waring
Foreword by Lyah Beth LeFlore
Since slavery, Black women have struggled to liberate themselves from racism and sexism. Yet despite these hurdles and under the most duress circumstances, they managed to achieve greatness. TRAILBLAZERS, Black Women Who Helped Make America Great, American Firsts/American Icons by Gabrielle David shines a light on these historically marked footholds, which often led to widespread cultural change. TRAILBLAZERS is a six-volume series that examines the lives and careers of over 400 brilliant women from the eighteenth century to the present who blazed uncharted paths in every conceivable way.
Each TRAILBLAZERS volume is organized into three to four sections. Besides providing biographical information written in a warm and welcoming tone, replete with powerful photographs, David provides a historical timeline for each section written from the viewpoint of Black women that maps out the significance of the featured women that follow.
Volume 1 features an assortment of sixty-five activists, dancers, and athletes. We learn about the significance of activists like Ella Baker, Pauli Murray, Rosina Tucker, and Clara Day, who represent the hundreds of unnamed women who participated in the civil rights and labor movements. We re-discover dancers Jeni Legon and Margot Webb, who are honored alongside dance legends Josephine Baker, Katherine Dunham, Janet Collins, and a new generation of dancers including Misty Copeland, Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, and choreographers like Camille A. Brown, and Cynthia Oliver. And then there are the Black women athletes who disrupted the world of sports, including the nearly forgotten tennis champion Ora Washington, and Alice Coachman, the first to compete and win in the Olympics, to Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast in Olympic history. Throughout the series, as David re-introduces many of these women into the public sphere, they are not always in predictable ways. For example, Debbie Allen makes a brief appearance in this volume, not for her acting or as a director, but rather as the dancer she initially trained to be, reminding us that Black women are multifaceted, multitalented, and complex. What binds these women together is that as they struggled on the front lines, they shook-up the status quo of Black people in America. Throughout the volume, David also challenges the socially conditioned assumptions, stereotypes, and false binaries that denigrate Black women’s bodies particularly in dance and sports, including the barriers they face in how they wear their hair. In this regard, David addresses the totality of Black womanhood: physically, culturally and politically.
Volume 2 features women who are visual artists, women who served their country as elected officials or working in government, and composers, songwriters and conductors. We learn about the first nationally-known Black woman artist, sculptor Edmonia Lewis, the first Black woman cartoonist Jackie Ormes, photographer Carrie Weems, and a new generation of artists such as Kara Elizabeth Walker and Tschabalala Self. We realize that before notable politicians like Lori Lightfoot and Stacey Abrams, women like Crystal Bird Fauset, Velvalea “Vel” Phillips and Shirley Chisholm paved the way, and shine a light on the handful of Black women who served on presidential cabinets like Patricia Robert Harris, Condeleeza Rice, and Loretta Lynch. And as we venture into the world of music, we celebrate classical composers like Nora Holt and Florence Beatrice Price, choral conductor Eva Jessye, highly acclaimed singer-songwriters like Valerie Simpson and Missy Elliot, conductor Jeri Lynne Johnson, award-winning film and TV composer Kathryn Bostic, and breakout songwriter rapper Brittany “Starrah” Hazzard. Their personal achievements reveal the best qualities of Black women in America.
Volume 3 features literature, business, the military, and film, music and television production. We are reminded that literary greats like Gwendolyn Brooks and Toni Morrison rest on the iconic firsts of Lucy Terry, Phillis Wheatley and Harriet E. Wilson, with a new generation who continue to blaze the trail in Natasha Trethewey and Jesmyn Ward. Black ingenuity and entrepreneurship began during slavery with the likes of Mary Ellen Pleasant who emerged as a millionaire, with Maggie Lena Walker, Annie Minerva Turnbo Malone, and Ernesta G. Procope paving the way for the likes of Oprah Winfrey. Beyoncé Knowles-Carter makes an appearance here as a businesswoman, reminding us of her multifaceted talent. David explores the Black women who dared to persistently pursue their right to serve in the United States Armed Forces, even when they were not considered American citizens, and barred from official military status. They served as early as the Civil War, beginning with nurse, cook, and laundress, Susie King Taylor, and Cathay Williams, who enlisted in the United States Regular Army as a man. Because of their tenacity, over 100 years later we are able to celebrate the ascension of United States Navy Admiral Michelle Janine Howard, and United States Marine Corp. Brigadier General Lorna Mahlock. Although Black women filmmakers have been productive as early as the early 1900s, few have been able to break through the celluloid ceiling. Despite these challenges, notable contributions have been made by Black women in film, music and television production, like pioneering filmmakers Jessie Maple and Kathleen Collins, film directors like Gina Prince-Bythewood, television producer Shonda Rhimes, and music producers like Sylvia Robinson and Suzanne de Passe. What binds these women together is that as they struggled on the front lines, they shook-up the status quo of Black people in America.
With painstaking research, David has created an affordable and visually appealing accessible reference book. From the foremothers who blazed trails and broke barriers, to today’s women warriors, TRAILBLAZERS features powerful and inspiring role models for women and girls from all cultural backgrounds who are poised to become super women of the future, as well as those people who are intellectually curious and want to learn more. TRAILBLAZERS is a clarion call for recognition of the transformative work black women have done and continue to do. For this reason, TRAILBLAZERS belongs on the bookshelf of every home, school, and library in America.
List price: $34.99; approximately 530 pp. each. Available for pre-order from our distributor, University of Chicago Press, and other major online outlets. To order review or exam copies call (773) 702-7109 or email orders@press.uchicago.edu. For interviews or speaking engagements: gdavid@2leafpress.org. Check out TRAILBLAZERS’ website at https://trailblazersblackwomen.org and sign-up for updates.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GABRIELLE DAVID is a multidisciplinary artist who attended LaGuardia Community College (CUNY) and New School University. She is the publisher of 2Leaf Press and serves as Executive Director of 2Leaf Press Inc. Over the years, she has participated in and organized poetry reading panel discussions, festivals and workshops, and has published articles and essays in numerous publications. David is the editor of Branches of the Tree of Life (2014), and co-editor of Hey Yo! Yo Soy! 40 Years of Nuyorican Street Poetry (2012). She is the author of the poetry chapbooks, Spring Has Returned and I Am Renewed (1996), and This is Me: A Collection of Poems and Things (1994).
ABOUT THE EDITOR
CAROLINA FUNG FENG, a translator and copy editor specializing in Spanish translations, has worked on a number of 2Leaf Press’ titles, and is the co-translator of Hey Yo! Yo Soy! 40 Years of Nuyorican Street Poetry (2012). She has worked in adult education programs as an ESOL teacher, coordinator and administrator, and currently works as a census communications and digital campaigner for a nonprofit organization in New York. Fung Feng holds a BA in Spanish-English translation and interpretation, and English Language Arts from Hunter College (CUNY).
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
LYAH BETH LEFLORE is a television and film executive, producer, music supervisor, and the author of eight critically-acclaimed books, two of which are National Bestsellers. She is the author of the novels Wildflowers (2009), and Last Night A DJ Saved My Life (2006); and recently the co-author of Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil: The Life, Legacy, and Love of My Son Michael Brown (2020) by Lezley McSpadden. LeFlore recently established the Shirley Bradley LeFlore Foundation, a literary arts based organization with a specific outreach to women and artists of color, named in honor of her mother, who was St. Louis Poet Laureate and a top influencer in poetry and performance.
CHANDRA D. L. WARING is an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. Her research focuses on the growing bi/multiracial population. Her interest in race stems from being raised in a multiracial family in a three very different contexts: Germany, Georgia and Connecticut. Her work has been published in numerous publications and she earned her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Connecticut in 2013, where she was a Multicultural Fellow.
