I’ve been thinking a lot about a line from poet June Jordan, who once wrote, “Like a lot of Black women, I have always had to invent the power my freedom requires.”
Invent the power.
What strikes me is the truth that echoes inside that phrase – the reality that so many Black women were never handed protection, opportunity, or permission. Instead, they created strength where none existed. They forged courage in spaces designed to silence them. They imagined freedom long before the world was ready to offer it, and then they marched toward it, carrying all of us along with them.
Throughout history, Black women have changed our world not always with microphones or movements, but with persistence. And resolve. With everyday acts of bravery that became the backbone of progress.
Claudette Colvin was just fifteen when she refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery in 1955, months before Rosa Parks performed similar heroics, and later became a key plaintiff in the case that ended bus segregation.
Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first Black woman physician in the United States in 1864, caring for formerly enslaved people despite relentless racism and resistance.
Daisy Bates stood at the center of the Little Rock school desegregation crisis, guiding and protecting the Little Rock Nine as they faced mobs, threats, and national scrutiny to integrate Central High School.
Harriet Tubman showed us that fear does not get the final word as she led hundreds to freedom. Fannie Lou Hamer spoke plainly about injustice when silence was safer. Audre Lorde urged women to use their strength in service of their vision. And Jane Bolin quietly shattered barriers as the first Black woman judge in the United States, bringing fairness into courtrooms that had long excluded women like her.
Madam C.J. Walker invented opportunity where none existed, building a thriving business empire that empowered thousands of Black women with financial independence and pride.
These women didn’t wait for empowerment. They invented it. They pioneered it.
If Black people have been underappreciated in this country, Black women have carried that weight most heavily. For centuries, they’ve been exploited, dismissed, underpaid, and overlooked. Yet they kept building a more just society anyway. They kept teaching children, organizing communities, healing families, leading movements, creating culture, waving placards, and advancing the line when progress felt impossible. There is something profoundly powerful about that kind of persistence.
During Black History Month, and every month, we should pause not only to honor the famous and familiar names, but also to recognize the countless Black women whose quiet courage shaped the world we live in today. The ones whose stories weren’t always told. The ones who did the work even when no one was watching.
Let’s read their words. Tell their stories. Learn from their courage.
And salute the women who invented the power their freedom required. Because history did not move forward without them, and it never will.
