Since the 1800s, Ohio was at the heart of social change led by African American women. Not only was it was the first free state established from the Northwest Territory, it was home to some of the earliest universities for African Americans. Ohio drew Black women from across the country who found there wasn’t space for them in their chosen professions, in education, or in society at large, and so they claimed that space here.

These queens broke barriers, but they are more than a list of firsts. They collaborated and formed collectives, they were friends and teachers, one generation of bricklayers after another. Meet some of these architects of change, like poet and abolitionist Frances Watkins Harper, educator and suffragist Hallie Quinn Brown, author Lucretia Newman Coleman, and civil rights leader Marian Spencer.