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As we wrap up Black History Month and get ready for Women’s history month, let’s have a post on Black women’s lives and accomplishments. You can read about the Old Kingdom Egyptian rulers Merneith and Ankhesenpepi II, and Ankhesenpepi II’s mother, Nebet, who had been the vizier for Pepy I, to start out with:

A thousand years later, there’s the pharaoh Hatshupset. Further south, in Sudan, many Black women also ruled. They succeeded in fighting off Roman efforts to conquer and colonize their country.

And in the 1700s, a Black woman was ruling Angola, in Southwest Africa:

You’ll find more about African women here.

By that time, Black women were also making themselves known in the Americas, like the African-American poet Phillis Wheatley. In the 1800s, Ida B. Wells and Sojourner Truth fought for Black women’s rights.

There’s more about Black women’s lives after slavery here.

in the 1900s Rosa Parks and Jo Ann Robinson started the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a big part of the American civil rights movement.

We’ll be having more posts about Black women during Women’s History Month in March.