Six Notable Women Posthumously Honored

The National Women’s Hall of Fame has included six pioneering Black women in its unique sisterhood, recognizing their contributions in Seneca Falls, NY, the birthplace of the women’s rights movement in the United States. Its new Virtual Induction Series celebrates underrepresented women of note. This is done by posthumously recognizing marginalized women who were overlooked during their lives or who passed away before 1969, when the hall of fame was established, or before they could be inducted. Here are the honorees of 2020:
Henrietta Lacks (1920-1951)
The legacy of Henrietta Lacks endures in the development of the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, research on Parkinson’s disease, and much more, thanks to her immortal HeLa cells. While the use of her cells over the decades has propelled medicine forward, it has also raised questions about medical ethics (and these issues have inspired new safeguards), as it was done without her knowledge or consent. As part of her treatment for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital, her cells were taken to a lab and cultured, according to the hospital.
While most cancer cells die within a few days, scientists found that Lacks’s cells doubled every 24 hours. Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951. To this day, the easily cultured HeLa cells have been used in over 76,000 studies.
Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954)
For much of her life, Mary Church Terrell worked for civil rights, as well as being an advocate for women’s suffrage and Black women. She founded an organization for Black women that addressed lynching, educational reform, and disenfranchisement. She wrote extensively about the empowerment of Black women, including in her autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World. And at 80, she joined picket lines to protest against segregated restaurants and theaters.
Along the way, the educator achieved a series of pioneering milestones. She was the first Black woman to earn a college degree in classics from Oberlin College, the first in the U.S. appointed to the school board of a major city (in Washington), and the first president of the National Association of Colored Women.
Barbara Rose Johns Powell (1935-1991)
As a teenager, Barbara Rose Johns Powell organized a school strike that helped ignite the desegregation movement in the United States. At 16, she led her classmates in a two-week strike in 1951 to protest the conditions of their overcrowded and segregated high school in Farmville, Virginia. The Robert Russa Moton High School had deteriorating facilities, no science labs, no gym, and no plumbing. Her protest led to a lawsuit that integrated the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. This led the court to rule that racial segregation in American public schools was unconstitutional.
Aretha Franklin (1942-2018)
Known as the “Queen of Soul” and especially for the song “Respect,” her powerful anthem for civil and women’s rights, Franklin dedicated much of her life to these causes. The singer, songwriter, pianist, and actress donated money to civil rights groups, sometimes covering payroll, and performed at many of their fundraising events and protests. At 16, Franklin toured with Martin Luther King Jr. and singer-activist Harry Belafonte to promote the civil rights movement through music.
The first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Franklin recorded music and toured for six decades. Among other honors, she received the Grammy Legend Award in 1991 and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994. The legacy of the legendary singer lives on in the legions she influenced, including Jennifer Hudson and Dolly Parton.
Barbara Hillary (1931-2019)
When retired nurse Barbara Hillary learned that no Black woman had ever been to the North Pole, she decided to be the first. She achieved this at the age of 75, also becoming the oldest person to step foot on the North Pole. A few years later, at 79, Hillary became the first Black woman to set foot on the South Pole. She was accustomed to breaking barriers, having founded and edited The Peninsula Magazine, a nonprofit magazine for a multiracial audience. The magazine was the first of its kind in the New York area.
Toni Morrison (1931-2019)
The literary body of work by Toni Morrison amplifies Black voices and experiences. Upon joining Random House in 1967, Morrison became the first Black woman to reach the position of senior fiction editor. At Random House, she helped bring Black literature into the mainstream and began writing fiction that examined life through the experiences of Black women.
Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was inspired by a tale about Black women who wished to have blue eyes. She garnered national attention with her acclaimed Song of Solomon, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other awards followed for the essayist and professor at Princeton University, including the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Beloved, the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the 2000 National Humanities Medal.
Source: Lenore T. Adkins/ https://share.america.gov