Vanilla Powell Beane, known as "DC's Hat Lady", was an American milliner and business woman. One of her hats was displayed and is in the collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). In Washington, D.C., there is a Vanilla Beane Day on September 13.

Dorothy Irene Height was an African-American civil rights and women's rights activist. She focused on the issues of African-American women, including unemployment, illiteracy, and voter awareness. Height is credited as the first leader in the civil rights movement to recognize inequality for women and African Americans as problems that should be considered as a whole. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years. Height's role in the "Big Six" civil rights movement was frequently ignored by the press due to sexism. In 1974, she was named to the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which published the Belmont Report, a bioethics report in response to the infamous "Tuskegee Syphilis Study.