Sarah Lee Brown Fleming

Throughout her life, Sarah Lee Brown Fleming was a tireless advocate for social, political and educational opportunities for African-American women. Born into poverty in Charlestown, South Carolina in 1876, Fleming was raised in Brooklyn, New York. As a child, she had aspirations to become a schoolteacher but her father believed that her only employment prospects lay in domestic work. She challenged him and went on to become the first Black teacher in the Brooklyn public school system. In 1902, she married Richard Stedman Fleming, an immigrant from St. Kitts, and in 1910 they moved to New Haven, Connecticut where he would become the first African-American dentist in the state. Fleming was an artist, writing songs, skits, musicals, poetry and works of fiction as part of the Harlem Renaissance. Her best-known work is a novel titled Hope’s Highway, one of the first to be published by a Black woman in America. Fleming’s other best-known work is the collection of poetry Clouds and Sunshine. Throughout her works she emphasized themes of racial uplift, the necessity of integration, and the importance of education and women’s suffrage. Fleming continued to be politically active in her later years, becoming the first African-American woman to earn the distinction of Connecticut’s Mother of the Year in 1952. In 1955, she testified in front of Congress, outlining her commitment to civil rights, equal education and the promotion of social welfare for women and children. Fleming died in New Haven in 1963, five days before her 87th birthday. Source