Gertrude Jeannette was an American playwright and film and stage actress. In 1935 she became the first woman to get a license to drive a motorcycle in New York City, and she joined her husband’s motorcycle club in the early 1940s. In 1942, she took and passed the cab driver’s test and became the first female cab driver in New York City. In 1949, she was present at the Peekskill Riots, when the Ku Klux Klan attempted to lynch Paul Robeson. Her husband worked as a bodyguard for Robeson, and during the riot, she and her husband rushed to the motorcycles to help get Robeson out. Using money she earned as a taxi driver, she enrolled in a speech class to help manage her stammer. The one class she could find was at the American Negro Theater in Harlem. Acting was part of the curriculum, and because of that, she studied along with notable actors such as Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis. She began writing plays in 1950, writing about strong women that “no one would be ashamed to play.”
Gertrude Jeannett
