Countee Cullen, the Great Black Poet, Wrote, “Yet Do I Marvel at This Curious Thing: To Make a Poet Black, and Bid Him Sing!” These Days Black Women Are Singing Strong

“Black Women Sing Strong These Days” by Irving Penn originally appeared in the May 1969 issue of Fashion.

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Their minds strong, their strategies refined and feminine, five of them shown here and on the next four pages are special women – five out of hundreds who in one way or another hold the ropes of power. All of them have been on the road for many years, dedicated to serving all their fellow citizens. Like Mrs. Elizabeth Duncan Koontz, the first black woman to serve as president of the National Education Association and later appointed by President Nixon to head the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor. Just like the thousands of black women who are teachers and principals. Like hundreds of black women who serve as doctors, judges, psychologists, medical researchers. Like thousands of people with bold ideas, they work in almost every field. They are one of the great resources of this country and will not be exhausted.

Mrs. Martin Luther King Jr., “Classical Nobility”

Filled with faith, warm humor, beauty, discipline, and extroversion, Coretta Scott King was a nonviolent activist who nearly disappeared into the arms of Mrs. Martin Luther King Jr. within a year of her husband’s murder. King has worked together, but not always on the same assignments, since they first met, when she was studying singing at the New England Conservatory and he was working on his doctorate at Boston University. Now, at home in Atlanta, Georgia, where she still lives with her four children, she spends evenings with them, perhaps singing Louisiana Creole folk songs, especially “Mr. Banjo.” She still spends much of her time at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was largely devoted to the writing of her book, My life with Martin Luther Kingwill be published this September. Most recently she preached a Sunday sermon at St Paul’s Cathedral in London with passion and excitement, becoming the first woman to do so. She called her speech “the dawn of a new day,” speaking in a low but powerful voice from the same podium where Dr. King traveled to Sweden in 1964 to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

PhD. Mildred Mitchell Bateman, “I will do whatever I want”