African-American History and Women Timeline (1930-1939)

1930

• Black women called for white Southern women to oppose lynching; in response, Jessie Daniel Ames and others founded the Association for the Prevention of Lynching (1930-1942), with Ames as director.

• Annie Turnbo Melone (business executive and philanthropist) moved her business operations to Chicago.

• Lorraine Hansberry was born (playwright, wrote Raisin in the Sun).

1931

• Nine African-American "Scottsboro Boys" (Alabama) were accused of raping two white women and convicted quickly. The trial focused national attention on the legal plight of African-Americans in the South.

• (February 18) Toni Morrison was born (writer; first African-American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature).

• (March 25) Ida B. Wells (Wells-Barnett) died (muckraking journalist, lecturer, activist, anti-lynching writer and activist).

• (August 16) A'Lelia Walker died (executive, arts patron, Harlem Renaissance figure).

1932

• Augusta Savage began the largest art center in the US at the time, the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts in New York.

1933

• Caterina Jarboro performed the title role in Verdi's "Aida" at the Chicago Civic Opera.

• (February 21) Nina Simone born (pianist, singer; "Priestess of Soul").

• (-1942) Civilian Conservation Corp employed more than 250,000 African-American women and men.

1934

• (February 18) Audre Lorde was born (poet, essayist, educator).

• (December 15) Maggie Lena Walker died (banker, executive).

1935

• The National Council of Negro Women was founded.

• (July 17) Diahann Carroll was born (actress, first African-American woman to star in a television series).

1936

• Mary McLeod Bethune was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the National Youth Administration as Director of Negro Affairs, the first major appointment of an African-American woman to a federal position.

• Barbara Jordan was born (politician, first African-American woman from the South elected to Congress).

1937

• Zora Neale Hurston published Their Eyes Were Watching God.

• (June 13) Eleanor Holmes Norton was born (though some sources give her date of birth as April 8, 1938).

1938

• (November 8) Crystal Bird Fauset was elected to the Pennsylvania House, becoming the first African-American woman state legislator.

1939

• (July 22) Jane Matilda Bolin was appointed justice of the Domestic Relations Court of New York, becoming the first African-American woman judge.

• Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American to win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar—about playing the role of a servant, she said, "It's better to get $7,000 a week for playing a servant than $7 a week for being one."

• Marian Anderson, denied permission to sing at a Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) hall, performed outdoors for 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial. Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR in protest of their refusal.

• Marian Wright Edelman was born (lawyer, educator, reformer).