Women and African American History: 1980-1989
1980
• Angela Davis ran for Vice President on the Communist Party ticket
1981
1982
1983
• The Color Purple, a novel by Alice Walker published in 1982, won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, making Alice Walker the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction
• Toni Morrison became the first African American winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
1984
• Leontine T. C. Kelly became the first woman bishop of any major American religious denomination, the United Methodist Church
• Vanessa Williams became first African American selected as Miss America; when she resigned after a scandal involving nude photographs, Suzette Charles, Miss New Jersey, became the second African American Miss America
1985
• Patricia Roberts Harris died (lawyer, politician, diplomat)
1986
• Willie B. Barrow became President of Operation PUSH
• Ella Baker died (civil rights activist)
1987
• Carrie Saxon Perry, elected mayor of Hartford, Connecticut, becoming the first African American woman mayor of a large American city
1988
• Florence Griffith-Joyner becomes the first American woman to win four medals in one Olympics
1989
• Oprah Winfrey, first African American woman to host a nationally-syndicated talk show, founded Harpo Productions to produce television shows and movies
• (January 29) Barbara Harris elected first woman bishop of the Episcopal Church
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