AJ’s Reviews > I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America > Status Update

Johnnetta Cole is the first black woman president of Spelman Collage, the Atlanta institution whose proud tradition of educating women leaders dates from 1881. She holds advanced degrees in anthropology from Northwestern University and was director of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Hunter College New York City. She has published books in the fields of anthropology and women's studies.

Since her election to the California State Assemble in 1976, Maxine Waters of Los Angeles has worked on a wide range of legislation, from sex abuse prevention to corporate divestment from South Africa. Named majority whip by State Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, Waters is considered the most powerful woman in California's political circles and the most influential black woman in the Democratic Party.

Althea Simmons is the chief congressional lobbyist of the NAACP and the director of its Washington Bureau...Considered one of the most effective lobbyists on Capitol Hill, she played a key role in such legislative victories as the 1982 extension of the Voting Rights Act, sanctions against South Africa, and a national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Toni Morrison is one of America's celebrated...novelists. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 for her 5th novel, Beloved, and received the National Book Critics Award for Song of Solomon (1978) She has been editor at Random House...was the Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at the State University of New York and assumed Robert Goheen Professorship in Humanities at Princeton 1989

When Barbara Jordan was elected to the Texas Senate in 1966 she became the first black senator to sit in that body since 1883. She was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1972 and served for three highly visible terms. Since 1979 she has been a professor at the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin.

Katherine Dunham redesigned the art of modern dance...introducing elements of African and Caribbean folk cultures. Dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, teacher, writer...initiate of Haitian vodun...She performed in the 1940 Broadway musical Cabin in the Sky, seven films, Stormy Weather (1943)...founded the Katherine Dunham Center for the Performing Arts...received the Kennedy Center Honors (1983)

Cicely Tyson has portrayed many heroic women on stage, screen, and television, and her courageous choice of roles has had an impact far beyond her individual career. She won two Emmy awards in 1974 for her portrayal of Jane in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman...she was nominated for an Academy Award (1973) for her role as Rebecca in the film Sounder...holds...seven Image Awards from the NAACP...

I feel it's important to point out this book is so much more than what I've shared. There's real women here, real history here. The snippets I've given in my updates are brief introductions, but I've withheld the words of these women which would otherwise spoil the book as a page is devoted to each. Additionally these are not presented as interviews these are mini biographies, memoirs. Their stories, their words.

"Alice Walker won the Pulitzer prize for Fiction and the American Book Award for her third novel, The Color Purple, published in 1983. Subsequently made into an Oscar nominated movie, The Color Purple intensified discussion among black men and women about image, role, and reality. Also a prolific poet, essayist, and short-story writer...publisher of Wild Trees Press."

"Bertha Gilkey is president of the Cochran Tenant Management Corporation in St Louis, Missouri. An activist for welfare and tenant rights since the age of fourteen, in the mid-seventies she organized the tenants of a deteriorated public housing complex to regain control of their destiny. She was instrumental in obtaining over $30 million in federal funds for renovation...Founder/president of Urban Women Inc.."