The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, a popular, long-lived, all-female jazz band of the 1940s, were the first racially integrated women's band in America. Their achievement has been largely neglected by music historians. A brief history of the band is presented, and their significance is discussed. (BJV)

Discusses the following aspects of the life and art of Harriet Powers (born 1837), a Black quilter from Georgia: (1) subject matter of quilts; (2) African continuity; (3) provenance of quilts; (4) Powers' personal history; and (5) historical context of quilts. (BJV)

Describes a Black woman's personal experience of having her grandfather pass on to her his secret method of weaving cane chair seats. (BJV)

Chronicles the professional and personal life of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, a sculptor of Afro-American and Narragansett Indian descent, who achieved prominence as an artist and a socialite in both France and the United States beginning in the 1920s. (BJV)

Chronicles the life of the author, a Black woman artist, from 1974 to 1979. The essay covers her years in Tampa from 1974-77, her Artist in Residency at Howard University from 1977-78, and her preparations in 1978-79 to leave for Paris, where she would live and work until 1985. (BJV)

Afrofemcentrism--Afro-female-centered consciousness in the visual arts--has found its ideological and aesthetic fruition in the sculpture of Elizabeth Catlett and Faith Ringgold. They depict Black women's realities and portray Black women as primary, active, and real-typed. (BJV)

Chronicles the personal and professional life of Lois Mailou Jones, a Black woman painter who blends Western and non-Western aesthetic traditions in her art. The influences of Haitian and African native traditions on her work are discussed. (BJV)

Black women artists--from the sculptor Edmonia Lewis (born 1843/5) through the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, to the Harlem Renaissance--have played a vital role in developing those forms of self-expression by which Black people in America have managed to survive centuries of racial oppression. (BJV)

Presents photographs and short biographical sketches of notable Black women artists past and present, including the following: Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, Leontyne Price, Florence Price, Ann Lundy, Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, Michelle Paterson, Augusta Savage, Glenda Y. Hooker, Marie L. Moore, Varnette Honeywood, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller,…