Women and African American History: 1950-1959
1950
• Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize (for Annie Allen)
• Althea Gibson became the first African American to play at Wimbledon
• Juanita Hall became the first African American to win a Tony Award, for playing Bloody Mary in South Pacific
• (January 16) Debbie Allen born (choreographer, actor, director, producer)
• (February 2) Natalie Cole born (singer; daughter of Nat King Cole)
1951
• (July 15) Mary White Ovington died (social worker, reformer, NAACP founder)
1952
1952
1954
• Norma Sklarek became the first African American woman licensed as an architect
• Dorothy Dandridge was the first African Amerian woman nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, for playing the lead role in Carmen Jones
• (January 29) Oprah Winfrey born (first African American woman billionaire, first African American woman to host a nationally syndicated talk show)
• (September 22) Shari Belafonte-Harper born (actress)
• (May 17) in Brown v. Board of Education, Supreme Court orders schools desegregate "with all deliberate speed" -- finds "separate but equal" public facilities to be unconstitutional
• (July 24) Mary Church Terrell died (activist, clubwoman)
1955
• (May 18) Mary McLeod Bethune died
• (December 1) Rosa Parks arrested when she refused to give up a seat and move to the rear of the bus, triggering the Montgomery bus boycott
• Marian Anderson became the first African American member of the Metropolitan Opera company
1956
• Mae Jemison born (astronaut, physician)
• (December 21) US Supreme Court ruled bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, unconstitional
1957
• African American students, advised by NAACP activist Daisy Bates, desegregated a Little Rock, Arkansas, school, under the protection of military troops ordered in by the federal government
• (April 15) Evelyn Ashford born (athlete, track and field; four Olympic gold medals, Track and Field Women's Hall of Fame)
• Althea Gibson became the first African American to win at Wimbledon and the first African American to win the US Open
• Associated Press named Althea Gibson their "Woman Athlete of the Year"
1958
• (August 16) Angela Bassett born (actress)
1959
• (March 11) Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry became the first Broadway play written by an African American woman -- Sidney Poitier and Claudia McNeil starred
• (January 12) Motown Records founded in Detroit after Berry Gordy deferred working for Billy Davis and Gordy's sisters Gwen and Anna at Anna Records; female stars from Motown included Diane Ross and the Supremes, Gladys Knight, Queen Latifah.
• (December 21, 1959) Florence Griffith-Joyner born (athlete, track and field; first African American to win four medals in one Olympics; sister-in-law of Jackie Joyner-Kersee)
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