*Slowly begins to sing the chorus to Raheem Devaughs "Woman" lyrics.

Woman woman woman,

Strong Woman woman woman,

Grown Woman woman woman,

Special Woman woman woman,

Beautiful Woman woman woman,

Strong Woman woman woman,

Grown Woman woman woman,

Special Woman woman woman.

This has been the theme song for me from the beginning of the month until the end. Why did I pick this song in particular you ask? Well because many of you did not know March was Women's History month. how many people know the reason and history behind this special month for women?

The reason behind this month is to celebrate women contributions to history, culture and society. In the United States, Women's History Month started from the first International Women's Day in 1911. In 1978, the school district of Sonoma, California participated in Women's History Week, an event designed around the week of March 8th and after being petitioned by the National Women's History Project, Congress passed Pub. L. 100-9 which designated the month of March 1987 as Women’s History Month.

Women have always been undermined and unappreciated throughout history. And Black women who have endured the raft of not only sexism but racism have come in last when it comes to having our story heard.

However, today I am here to tell their stories.

Fannie Lou Hamer

Widely known for her phrase, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,” she was a voting rights activist and civil rights leader.

She worked with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1964, and helped organize the 1964 Freedom Summer African-American voter registration drive in Mississippi. Hamer was threatened, arrested, beaten, and shot at in her fight for liberation but through it all she never gave up.

Angela Davis

During the 1960 Angela Davis was a radical feminist and a member of the Communist Party USA and was also associated with the Black Panther Party. During the early 1970s, she also became active in the movement to improve prison conditions for inmates. That work led to her campaign to release the “Soledad (Prison) Brothers. Angela Davis appeared on the FBI's Most Wanted List. She was able to evade the police for 2 months before being arrested. She spent 18 months in the Women's Detention Center in New York awaiting the trial. Angela was later was eventually acquitted of all charges. In 1980 and 1984 Davis Vice President in the Communist Party but was unsuccessful.

Angela Davis today has been an activist and writer promoting women's rights and racial justice while pursuing her career as a philosopher and teacher at the University of Santa Cruz and San Francisco University.

Maya Angelou

An Author, Poet and Civil Right Activist.

her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which made literary history as the first nonfiction best-seller by an African-American woman. She is also known her many other excellent awards and achievements but Maya Angelou was also very active in the struggle for Black equality, she knew Nelson Mandela before the South African freedom fighter began his long captivity; in Accra she was part of an expatriate community that included W.E.B. Du Bois; she joined Malcolm X in planning for an Organization of Afro-American Unity.

She was also the leader of SCLC, an organization founded by Martin Luther King which preached nonviolence, was instrumental in arranging protests and voter registration drives.

This is a very short list of Black Women who have changed history. Who have made it possible for women today to tell their own story. But March is a month to celebrate not only women who have had their story published but the ones who have not, the women whom you may see in your house right now, or the ones walking down the street in your neighborhood.

So as the month of March has finally come to a close, I wonder how many people will actually celebrate this special month from here on out, how many people will show the women in their own lives appreciation. We as women have a story also. Her-story.