In the area of politics, and Religion, many black women made their voices heard. When Patricia Roberts Harris was appointed ambassador to Luxembourg by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, she became the first Black to head a U.S. embassy. In 1965, she headed the School of Law at Howard University, another first among Black women. And after President Jimmy Carter appointed her U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in 1977, Harris became the first Black woman to be named to a presidential cabinet position. In 1979, President Carter appointed her U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, a post she held until 1982.
Marry McLeod Bethune was the first Black woman to receive a major Federal appointment when, on June 24, 1936, she was named director of the Negro division of the National Youth Administration by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1984, Leontine T.C. Kelly (1920-) became the first Black female bishop of a major U.S. religious denomination when she was elected by the United Methodist Church to serve a San Francisco-area diocese of nearly 400 churches and 100,000 members. She retired in 1988.
In Athletics and many other professions, black Women dazzled many people with determination, desire, and dedication. During the 1948 Summer Olympic Games in London, England, Alice Coachman became the first Black woman to win a gold medal, setting a record in the high jump competition at 5 feet, 6 & a half inches. On March 1, 1864, Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first Black woman to receive a medical degree, the "Doctress of Medicine", from the New England Female Medical College in Boston. Jackie Joyner-Kersee was the first woman to win back-to-back gold medals in the intensely fierce heptathlon competition. She won her first medal in 1988 during the Summer Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea, and repeated the feat in 1992 in Barcelona, Spain. Maggie Lena Walker became the first woman bank president in 1903 with the opening of the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond, Va. In 1906. Madame C.J. Walker began a black hair-care products company and used its profits to solidify her place in history as America's first self-made Black woman millionaire.
Black women have overcome obstacles in the past and will continue to do so in the future which will lead to everlasting opportunities of peace and happiness for all.