Women and African American History: 1970-1979
1970
• Cheryl Adrienne Brown, Miss New York, became the first African American contestant in the Miss America pageant
• (August 7) Angela Davis, radical black activist and philosopher, was arrested as a suspected conspirator in the abortive attempt to free George Jackson from a courtroom in Marin County, California
1971
• (January 11) Mary J. Blige born (singer)
1972
• Mahalia Jackson died (gospel singer)
• Shirley Chisholm became the first African American woman candidate for President, with more than 150 delegate votes at the 1972 Democratic convention
• Barbara Jordan elected to Congress, the first African American woman from a southern state to be elected to the House
1973
1974
1975
• Mary Bush Wilson becomes first African American woman board chair of the NAACP (the first chair, Mary White Ovington, was a white woman)
1976
• Barbara Jordan was the first woman and the first African American to give the keynote addres at a national convention of the Democratic Party
1977
• first African American woman ordained as an Episcopal priest: Pauli Murray
1978
• Faye Wattleton became president of the Planned Parenthood Federation -- the first woman and the first African American to hold that position
• (June 28) in University of California v. Backke, Supreme Court limits federal affirmative action
1979
• Hazel Winifred Johnson became the first African American woman appointed as a general
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