Black History Month 2014
Mary T. Washington
Sigma Gamma Rho
Sigma Gamma Rho Soror Mary T. Washington was a bookkeeper who in the 1920's began methodically breaking down racial barriers in business.
Soror Washington Wiley earned her bachelor's degree in business from Northwestern University in 1941. While a student, she opened her own accounting firm in her basement, recruiting black businesses as clients. Soror Washington Wiley went on to become the first African-American woman to be a certified public accountant in the United States and the head of one of the largest black-owned accounting firms in the nation.
A study by the National Association of Black Accountants confirmed that in 1943, Soror Washington Wiley became the first black woman to become a C.P.A. and the 13th black C.P.A. in the nation.
With business partners Hiram Pittman and Lester McKeever, she founded Washington, Pittman & McKeever in 1968, one of the largest black C.P.A. firms. She retired from the firm in 1985 at age 79.
In 2002, Dr. Theresa Hammond (chairman of the accounting department at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College) published a book on the history of black C.P.A.'s, "A White-Collar Profession: African-American Certified Public Accountants Since 1921," which included Soror Washington Wiley's stellar career and significant influence.
Soror Washington Wiley died on July 2, 2005 at a nursing home in Chicago. She was 99 years old.
Soror Mary T. Washington Wiley, a phenomenal trailblazer breaking down barriers in the business arena!
Azie Taylor Morton
Alpha Kappa Alpha
Azie Taylor Morton (February 1, 1936 – December 7, 2003) served as Treasurer of the United States during the Carter administration (September 12, 1977 to January 20, 1981). She remains the only African American to hold that office. Her signature was printed on U.S. currency during her tenure; this is an honor she shared with four African-American men.
Morton was born in Dale, Texas and graduated from Hutson-Tillotson College in Austin. Her first job was teaching at a school for delinquent girls. Before becoming Treasurer, she served on President John F. Kennedy's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. From 1972 to 1976, she was a special assistant to Robert Schwarz Strauss, then chair of the Democratic National Committee. She was also an election observer for the presidential elections in Haiti, Senegal, and the Dominican Republic; a member of the American Delegation to Rome, Italy for the Enthronement of Pope John Paul II; chair of a People to People Mission to the Soviet Union and China; and a representative to the first African/African American Conference held in Africa. She was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
Azie Taylor married James Homer Morton on May 29, 1965. They had two daughters. On December 6, 2003, Morton suffered a stroke at her home in Bastrop County, Texas.
Shirley Chisholm
Delta Sigma Theta
Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1924, Shirley Chisholm is best known for becoming the first black congresswoman (1968), representing New York State in the U.S. House of Representatives for seven terms. She went on to run for the 1972 Democratic nomination for the presidency—becoming the first major-party African-American candidate to do so. Throughout her political career, Chisholm fought for education opportunities and social justice. Chisholm left Congress in 1983 to teach. She died in Florida in 2005.
Famed U.S. congresswoman and lifelong social activist Shirley Chisholm was born Shirley St. Hill on November 30, 1924, in a predominantly black neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Chisholm spent part of her childhood in Barbados with her grandmother. After graduating from Brooklyn College in 1946, she began her career as a teacher and went on to earn a master's degree in elementary education from Columbia University.
Chisholm served as director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center from 1953 to 1959, and as an educational consultant for New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare from 1959 to 1964.
In 1968, Shirley Chisholm made history by becoming the United States' first African-American congresswoman, beginning the first of seven terms in the House of Representatives. After initially being assigned to the House Forestry Committee, she shocked many by demanding reassignment. She was placed on the Veterans' Affairs Committee, eventually graduating to the Education and Labor Committee. In 1969, Chisholm became one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Chisholm went on to make history yet again, becoming the first major-party African-American candidate to make a bid for the U.S. presidency when she ran for the Democratic nomination in 1972. A champion of minority education and employment opportunities throughout her tenure in Congress, Chisholm was also a vocal opponent of the U.S. military draft. After leaving Congress in 1983, she taught at Mount Holyoke College and was popular on the lecture circuit.
Chisholm was married to Conrad Chisholm from 1949 to 1977. She wed Arthur Hardwick Jr. in 1986. She authored two books during her lifetime, Unbought and Unbossed (1970) and The Good Fight (1973).
Chisholm died on January 1, 2005, at the age of 80, in Ormond Beach (near Daytona Beach), Florida.
"She was our Moses that opened the Red Sea for us," Robert E. Williams, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Flagler County, said of Chisholm in an interview with The Associated Press (January 2, 2005). William Howard, Chisholm's longtime campaign treasurer, expressed similar sentiments. "Anyone that came in contact with her, they had a feeling of a careness," Howard said, "and they felt that she was very much a part of each individual as she represented her district."
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