The Women & Their Stories - Hidden Women

The Women & Their Stories

Click on their photos to be transported into their lives from eras gone by.

Sara Margu - First African to Graduate College

Sarah Margu, one of four children brought to the United States on the schooner Amistad. Originally from Sierra Leone, Mrgu eventually won her freedom and became the first African to graduate from College.

Elizabeth Keckly - Successful Author and Seamstress

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly was a former slave who became a successful seamstress, civil activist and author in Washington, DC. She was best known as the personal modiste and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, the First Lady

Bessie Coleman - American Aviator

Bessie Coleman was an early American civil aviator. She was the first African-American woman and first Native-American to hold a pilot license. She earned her pilot license from the Federation Aeronautique Internationale on June 15, 1921, and was the first black person to earn an international pilots license.

Elizabeth "Mumbet" Freeman

The first enslaved African American to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling, in Freeman's favor, found slavery to be inconsistent with the 1780 Massachusetts State Constitution. Her suit, Brom and Bett v. Ashley (1781), was cited in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court appellate review of Quock Walker's freedom suit. When the court upheld Walker's freedom under the state's constitution, the ruling was considered to have implicitly ended slavery in Massachusetts.