African American

Author & Activist

b. July 19, 1875
d. September 18, 1935

“Unwittingly, you’ve made me dream
Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam”

Alice Dunbar-Nelson was a racially-mixed bisexual poet and author whose career spanned multiple literary genres and culminated during the Harlem Renaissance. She was also a lifelong educator and activist who fought for women’s suffrage and equality for Black Americans.

Dunbar-Nelson (née Alice Ruth Moore) was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, 10 years after her enslaved mother gained freedom. Her father, who was rumored to have been a white merchant, left when she was young.

An exceptional student, Dunbar-Nelson graduated from high school at age 14. She attended Straight College (now Dillard University) and received her teaching certificate in 1892. She later attended Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Initially, Dunbar-Nelson taught in the Louisiana public school system and worked on her writing. In 1895 she published her first book, a collection of stories and poems titled “Violets and Other Tales.” Soon after, she moved to Boston to pursue a literary career. Her work for the Boston Monthly Review captured the heart of a fellow writer, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and they began a two-year correspondence.

During this period, Dunbar-Nelson relocated to Harlem where she cofounded and taught at the White Rose Mission, a “home for Black girls and women.” In 1898 she married Paul Dunbar in New York, and they settled in Washington, D.C.

In 1899 her second book, “The Goodness of St. Rocque and Others,” about Creole life, launched Dunbar-Nelson’s career-long exploration and critique of American culture and racial oppression. She wrote novels, stories, essays, poems, and reviews and kept a diary.

Dunbar-Nelson’s husband physically and emotional abused her. She divorced him in 1902 and moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where she taught at various high schools and colleges. She created the Wilmington Advocate, a newspaper promoting racial uplift. She quietly married and divorced a second time and explored relationships with women, including Edwina Kruse, a high school principal, and Fay Jackson Robinson, a journalist and activist.

In 1916 Dunbar-Nelson married the journalist Robert J. Nelson. His activism further ignited her own. Among other pursuits, she served on the Delaware Republican Committee and championed civil rights and women’s suffrage.

During the Harlem Renaissance — the golden age of African-American art and expression in 1920s and ’30s — Dunbar-Nelson lectured and wrote prolifically. Her work inspired influential writers of the era.

Dunbar-Nelson died from a heart condition. Fifty years later, W.W. Norton & Co. published her journal, “Give Us Each Day.” It is one of only two African-American women’s journals published in the 20th century.

Transgender Prison Activist

b. 1978

“While it seems like the world is so obsessed with ‘Orange Is the New Black,’ I’m living it.”

Ashley Diamond is a transgender prisoners’ rights activist. In 2016 she won a landmark case against the Georgia Department of Corrections that forced the state to reclassify hormone therapy as a medical necessity for transgender inmates.

Diamond was born and raised in Rome, Georgia. As a youngster, she told her parents she identified with a TV cartoon, “Jem and the Holograms,” about a girl rock star with alter egos. After she attempted suicide at age 15, Diamond was diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The recognition gave her hope for the first time in her life.

Diamond’s Southern Baptist family rejected her gender identity. Her father kicked her out, and Diamond moved in with a “privileged, white family.” She began hormone therapy at age 17.

Passionate about singing, Diamond frequently performed in Atlanta clubs and traveled to New York where she appeared on talk shows to discuss her transgender experience. Even so, she struggled to maintain a reliable income. She frequently faced discrimination when employers discovered she was a transgender woman.

In 2011 an emotionally abusive boyfriend convinced Diamond to pawn his stolen goods. He led her to commit nonviolent “crimes of survival” for which she was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Despite federal standards classifying transgender inmates as vulnerable and in need of continuously reviewed placement, Diamond served her time in an all-male prison. Officials forced her to strip naked in front of other inmates, an initiation that began years of “degrading and abusive treatment.” Fellow prisoners raped her repeatedly. Prison staff ignored her reports of assault, merely advising her to “be prepared to fight.”

Diamond was also denied the medically necessary hormones she had been taking for 17 years. The disruption triggered a painful physical and emotional transformation that led her to multiple suicide and self-castration attempts. Guards placed her in solitary confinement for “pretending to be a woman.”

In 2015 Diamond and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a class-action lawsuit against the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) for failing to provide transgender prisoners medically necessary hormone therapy and safe prison assignment. A few days after the case was filed, Diamond was released on parole. The following year, she reached a settlement with the GDC that prompted multiple statewide policy changes.

Diamond was reincarcerated for a parole violation in 2019. Despite Georgia’s new policies supporting transgender inmates, the state again placed her in a men’s facility, and she again endured abuse. In November 2020 she filed a second lawsuit.

Diamond continues to fight for a transfer to a women’s facility.