Today we kick off our celebration of Black History Month by celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first African American Girl Scout troop. While troops were racially segregated in the beginning, by the 1950s, Girl Scouts began a national effort to desegregate all Girl Scout troops and in 1956, Martin Luther King Jr. described the Girl Scouts as “a force for desegregation.”

Now after over 100 years, Girl Scouts has a record of noble leadership of African-American women within the Movement. These women include Dr. Gloria D. Scott, the first African American president of GSUSA,  Josephine Holloway, a champion of diversity within the Girl Scout Movement and one of the first African American Girl Scout troop leaders, and even Mary Jackson, one of the real-life women of Hidden Figures, story of the African American women mathematicians behind some of NASA’s greatest victories.

Stay tuned all month long to read about these women and their contributions to Girl Scouts!