"A Moment In Afro Her-story: Mariane Pearl"

Jornalist Mariane Pearl

Mariane van Neyenhoff Pearl  is a French freelance journalist, activist, a reporter and columnist for Glamour magazine. She is the widow of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in early 2002. Mariane Pearl is best known for her memoir, A Mighty Heart, which deals with the events surrounding her husband's kidnapping and assassination, which was latter adapted into the film A Mighty Heart.

"A Moment In Afro Herstory: Nikki Giovanni"

"Activist, educator and poet Nikki Giovanni"

Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni  is a Grammy-nominated American poet, activist and author, intellectual and shero. Nikki Giovanni is currently a Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech. The civil rights and black power movements inspired her early poetry that was collected in Black Feeling, Black Talk (1967), Black Judgment (1968), and Re: Creation (1970).

She has since written more than two dozen books including volumes of poetry, illustrated children's books, and three collections of essays. What great books of poems to read to your young children and grandchildren. I admire Nikki because she speaks her mind. Shouldn't we all have the courage to do that?

"A Moment In Afro Herstory: Angela Davis and Toni Morrison"

Angela Davis and Toni Morrison

Most of us know Angela Y. Davis as the most iconic Afro wearing women in "American His-story," but others know her as an activist, educator, intellectual, socialist and was a vocal activist during the Civil Rights Movement and a former Black Panther. Her research interests were in feminism, African American studies, critical theory, popular music culture and social consciousness, and philosophy of punishment and prisons. Since moving in the early 1990s from communism to reformist she has identified herself as a democratic socialist. Davis is the founder of Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish what it calls the prison-industrial complex.

If you are an avid reader like I am, I'm sure you've read one of many Toni Morrison's excellent works of Literature. Toni Morrison  is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed black characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. As an editor at Random House, Morrison played an important role in bringing black literature into the mainstream. No one can tell our Her-story like we can and these women had the courage to tell the truth even when it made others uncomfortable.

(Photo:Jill Krementz)