It’s impossible to spotlight all of the Black women locally and nationally, past and present, who have provided heroic service in the realm of politics without getting their just due.
Vice President Kamala Harris, for example, is one such sister. Though she only had roughly 100 days to organize a bid for the White House, Harris led an energized and nearly flawless campaign, heroically calling for Americans to choose between joy, hope, policies, and job title qualifications or anger, racism, misogyny, and white privilege. Though the majority of voters chose hate, over 85% of Black voters cast ballots for Harris, whose impact on the body politic will reverberate for generations.
Many Black women in Houston deserve much more praise than they currently receive for their impact on politics. Here, we define politics in a much broader and truer sense; not just those who hold political office, but those who impact(ed) the quality of every aspect of our lives.
LOCAL PAST
Every Black woman in Texas who has impacted politics deserves mention on this list, as historians rarely spotlight Black women from the Lone Star State. Names like Christia Adair, Julia C. Hester, Beulah Shepherd, and Holly Hogrobrooks were all political giants in their own right.
Those listed below dedicated their lives to improving the lives of others.
Lulu White
Lulu Belle Madison White was a civil rights activist in the 1940s and 1950s who devoted most of her adult life to the struggle against Jim Crow in Texas. She campaigned for the right to vote, equal pay for equal work, and desegregation of public facilities.
According to historian and TSU professor Dr. Merline Pitre, White was also the driving force behind the growth of the NAACP in Texas, the destruction of the all-white state Democratic primary, and several game-changing, landmark court cases.
“If you’re from Houston, you hear a lot about Christia Adair… but it was Lulu White who was out there organizing branches, who was out there saying we got go to the Supreme Court, we’ve got to get this money to go. She and her husband funded all of the [Texas-all] white primary cases. Therefore, not only did she stop that, but she pushed Black people to run for office. She was the one who got Heman Sweatt to go to the University of Texas. She was tough,” shared Pitre.
Josie Robinson
When people discuss the founding of Houston’s Pleasantville, the first master-planned community for middle-class Blacks in the United States, Judson Robinson Sr.’s critical role in marketing the new community of Black people and selling homes is spotlighted. However, according to Mary Fontenot, president of the Pleasantville Historical Society, Robinson’s wife deserves much more credit than history has afforded her for her part in Pleasantville’s founding, growth, and success. “Josie Robinson really had her hands in a lot of building and selling homes in Pleasantville, and a lot of people don’t know that,” stated Fontenot. “She was quiet, but she was a darn good businesswoman.”
Nellye Joyce Punch
A legend of Houston’s Fifth Ward, Punch was said to have elevated the consciousness and involvement of the neighbor’s residents and organizations over several decades. Punch, a dedicated educator and activist, taught science at E. O. Smith Jr. High School for 36 years, chaired the science department, and worked as a consultant for HISD before her retirement. Some of the students Punch mentored include the late congresspersons Barbara Jordan and Mickey Leland, state legislators Harold Dutton and the late Al Edwards, along with Dr. Ruth J. Simmons, the first Black president of an Ivy League institution and former president of Prairie View A&M University. Outside of the classroom, Punch helped organize a new voting location where she served as precinct judge, and much more, earning the honorific title of the “unofficial congresswoman of Fifth Ward.”
LOCAL PRESENT/FUTURE
The list of present/future unsung Black women can fill an entire Defender edition. Certainly, there are elected officials like State Rep. Jolanda Jones and Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth, along with Houston City Councilmembers Martha Castex-Tatum, Dr. Tiffany Thomas, and Letitia Plummer, whose accomplishments and dedication to making the Houston area better don’t garner enough kudos. Yet, each continues to make a difference for their constituents.
Below, are a few more Black women on the local level making big things happen in Houston/Harris County’s political scene.
Dr. Annie Johnson Benifield
League of Women Voters President Dr. Annie Johnson Benifield actively helps register voters but says that’s only half the battle.
“Women have been determining who was going to win elections for quite some time now. We put a lot more energy in the registration effort than we do in the get-out-to-vote,” said Benifield, who is the first woman of color to lead the League, whose organization educates voters via their Voter’s Guide.
Tracy Yvette Scott
Scott, president of the Black Women’s PAC, is a political force to be reckoned with. She, like Benifield, believes education is key.
“We’ve got to educate people as to who is on the ballot, what role they play and how it connects with your life specifically. If your cousin was arrested, who is the judge? Is that person on the ballot? How does that police chief come into play? The mayor, the city council member; take some time and ask, how does this affect my life? Who are these people? And are they on my ballot and then decide how you’re gonna vote,” Scott said.
Carla Brailey
Brailey is the vice chair of the Texas Democratic Party and a longtime professor at Texas Southern University. Along with impacting policy positions and statewide party agenda focuses, Brailey also trains up the next generation of political leaders.
Reverend Dr. Angela Raven-Anderson
Raven-Anderson, director of the Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church Social Justice Ministry, is on a mission to convert voter “fickleness” into voting fanaticism. “It is important that people understand that their vote matters, that their voice is their vote. And we need for people to come out and elect just officials to legislate on behalf of our people,” she said.
Shekira Dennis
Dennis was a different kind of child who was fascinated by all things politics from her earliest memories. While a student at TSU, Dennis served as the Student Government Association president. But she created a company that allows her to do what she really loves – impacting politics behind the scenes, crafting political strategy and public engagement opportunities for individuals and organizations.
Sharon Watkins Jones
Watkins Jones runs Watkins Jones LLC, a consulting company specializing in political advocacy, with her husband Michael. She is also a leading voice of advocacy as the chief equity officer for Children at Risk. She’s not an elected official. She makes her impact by challenging lawmakers to set a just and equitable legislative agenda for children and really all of society.
NATIONAL PAST
Nationally, there is also a bevy of Black women difference-makers in the realm of politics, both past and present. Here are just a few.
Jo Ann Robinson
A college educator by trade, Jo Ann Robinson, along with legendary pastor and activist Rev. E.D. Nixon, provided the brains, vision, and organizing genius behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the entire movement in that city preceding the famous boycott. For decades, countless people heaped all the praise on Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for being the spokesman for that movement, but without Robinson that movement would have never moved.
Rosa Parks
Some might be surprised by this name added to the list because she’s one of the few Black women that we actually do hear about during annual Black History Month Celebrations. However, as is shared in the must-read book “The Rebellious Life of Rosa Parks,” most of her story has been either untold or incorrectly told. Parks had a long history of service fighting for the rights of Black people and women before refusing to give up her seat on that bus. She did “Me-Too” movement work decades before it had a name.
Her seat on that bus was not about some old lady not moving because she was physically tired. It was a courageous strategic play of a revolutionary who was tired of seeing her people being mistreated. When asked about that incident, she said she remembered her grandfather, her hero, who always kept a shotgun close and used it to defend his family from white domestic terrorists. Additionally, Parks and her husband couldn’t find work in Montgomery after the boycott. They moved to Detroit, and there Parks began an even longer career as an activist. She is truly unsung for all the service she gave to her people before and after refusing to give up her bus seat.
NATIONAL PRESENT/FUTURE
Minyon Moore
The most successful, creative and most watched Democratic National Convention in history was chaired and coordinated by this unheralded Black woman, Minyon Moore. She was said to have been tasked with “slightly restructuring the DNC with the switch from President Joe Biden to Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the Democrat’s ticket. But she did much more than give the DNC a slight tweak. She set a new standard folk never conceived possible. And Moore is no political newcomer. A long-time Democratic political advisor, Moore got her start in politics working on Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign. She also worked in former President Bill Clinton’s White House. According to social commentator Jeff Johnson, she has mentored and “put on” countless young sisters and brothers, allowing them entrance and participation at the highest heights of political doings.
U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett
With all her relatively recent notoriety, it’s hard to view Crockett as unsung. But I dare say she’s a fighter extraordinaire, and the future is wide open for this dynamic lawmaker.
LaTosha Brown
Brown is the co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, which aims to increase political power in Black communities, says the time is now for Black women to lead again.
“This is what we do,” Brown said. “We want to take it to another level. We see what’s happening in this country. We know how to fight, we know how to win, we know how to transform, we know how to build power. We have everything we need.”
