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Home Menu2020 Black History Month Profiles
A series highlighting Black/African American individuals who made amazing contributions to the United States in honor of Black History Month 2020.
Before reading Henrietta Lacks’s biography, I did not know her name. I did not know her story. I did not study her life in high school or college. I did not know about her significant contribution for the health of humankind. Nor did Henrietta Lacks.
In November 1950, after giving birth to her fifth child, at Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, Maryland, she remained there due to a severe hemorrhage, but was soon released. A few months later, she returned to John Hopkins, describing pain in her womb. At the hospital, doctors biopsied a tumor from her body; she was diagnosed with a certain type of cancer in the cervix.
At a time when patient rights were uncommon and not required as a part of medical practice, Henrietta was not informed that her cancerous cells were harvested for scientific research. Doctors discovered, that once removed, these particular cancerous cells continued to thrive even though the cells were outside of Henrietta’s body. These resilient cells were cultured and became known as the HeLa cell line, honoring her namesake, alas without informing Henrietta Lacks about what her body had produced.
The HeLa cell line was used as the foundation for the Polio vaccine and has been used in other research programs. Such as developing cancer medications, experimenting with early stages of gene mapping, and were even used to test the side effects of atomic radiation. The HeLa cell line continues to thrive to this day.
Henrietta Lacks died in the fall of 1951; she was 31 years old. Henrietta was buried in an unmarked grave in Virginia, where she was born in 1920.
It wasn’t until the 1970’s that her family became aware of her contribution and has since fought for recognition and compensation. Ironically, as the medical establishment profited from the HeLa cell line, Henrietta’s family did not have proper access to health care.
While her story does point to lack of access to healthcare and controversies over using these cells without consent, I am inspired by her story.
Henrietta Lacks’s story is profound and I think it is beyond inspirational. Just the sheer impact of her life-ending medical ordeal is mind-altering. She brought so much healing for all of humankind, beyond the color of one’s skin. She unified humanity, unknowingly, even for just a fleeting moment.
More Info:
New York Times Bestseller
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Written by: Rebecca Skloot
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2017) Film
Oprah Winfrey stars as Henrietta Lacks
Available on Amazon Prime
One of the least known or discussed racial incidents in modern American history is the Tulsa Race Massacre.
The community of Greenwood, Oklahoma was founded and built in 1906 in Eastern Oklahoma (outside of Tulsa) and eventually became known as “The Black Wall Street.”
As Greenwood grew from 1906 to 1921 and became a safe haven for many black families and was a thriving self-contained community with its own hospital, churches, schools, and hundreds of Black businesses. Unfortunately, this success also drew the attention of white supremacists who did not want to see Black citizens thrive. In an unbelievable development, the attack was also carried out by air bombings (sources claimed it was private planes doing the bombing but others accuse the U.S. Army and still others claim government officials were on the planes).
“During the Tulsa Race Massacre (also known as the Tulsa Race Riot), which occurred over 18 hours on May 31-June 1, 1921, a white mob attacked residents, homes and businesses in the predominantly black Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The event remains one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history, and one of the least-known: News reports were largely squelched, despite the fact that hundreds of people were killed and thousands left homeless.” (History.com)
Another source cites:
“During the night and day of the riot, deputized whites killed more than 300 African Americans. They looted and burned to the ground 40 square blocks of 1,265 African American homes, including hospitals, schools, and churches, and destroyed 150 businesses. White deputies and members of the National Guard arrested and detained 6,000 black Tulsans who were released only upon being vouched for by a white employer or other white citizen. Nine thousand African Americans were left homeless and lived in tents well into the winter of 1921.” (Common Dreams website)
Greenwood before and after photos:
Even though the incident was so massive and horrific, it was rarely discussed in that community, the state, or the country. In fact, there is much still being discovered to this day about the atrocities that were committed by white supremacists.
On February 3, 2020, Tulsa officially finally began searching for mass graves that survivors believe were used to hide the real number of murders (officially number was reported as 37).
Learn more from the sources below.
This documentary (older) has testimonials from survivors of the massacre:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=266&v=4UU7gsOCIJs&feature=emb_logo
https://www.tulsahistory.org/exhibit/1921-tulsa-race-massacre/
https://www.history.com/news/black-wall-street-tulsa-race-massacre
https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/tulsa-race-massacre
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/05/28/burning-tulsa-legacy-black-dispossession
Today, we look at these three amazing scientists who were literally “hidden” from public acknowledgement until very recently, when their stories were dramatized and popularized in a major motion picture, approximately four years ago.
One of these women entered began taking courses on a college campus at 10 years old.
Another one graduated high school and entered college at age 14.
And finally, one of them received a B.A. in Mathematics (with honors) at the age of 19.
The Real-Life Women of “Hidden Figures”
Top Left: Katherine Johnson, Top Right: Mary Jackson, Bottom: Dorothy Vaughan
Katherine Johnson
Katherine Johnson (née Katherine Coleman) was born in 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to Joylette and Joshua Coleman. She was the youngest of four children. Her mother was a teacher and her father was a lumberman, farmer, handyman, and worked at the Greenbrier Hotel.
Johnson showed strong mathematical abilities from an early age. Because Greenbrier County did not offer public schooling for African-American students past the eighth grade, the Colemans arranged for their children to attend high school in Institute, West Virginia. This school was on the campus of West Virginia State College (WVSC, now West Virginia State University). Johnson was enrolled when she was only ten years old. The family split their time between Institute during the school year and White Sulphur Springs in the summer.
After graduating from high school at 14, Johnson entered West Virginia State, a historically black college. As a student, she took every math course offered by the college. Multiple professors mentored her, including the chemist and mathematician, Angie Turner King, who also had mentored Johnson throughout high school, and W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African-American to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics. Claytor added new mathematics courses just for Katherine. She was graduated summa cum laude in 1937, with degrees in mathematics and French, at age 18. She took on a teaching job at a black public school in Marion, Virginia.
In 1939, after marrying her first husband, James Goble, Johnson left her teaching job and enrolled in a graduate math program. She quit after one year, after becoming pregnant and choosing to focus on her family. At the time of her entry, she was the first African-American woman to attend graduate school at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. Through WVSC's president, Dr. John W. Davis, she became one of three African-American students, and the only woman, selected to integrate the graduate school after the United States Supreme Court ruling Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938). The court had ruled that states that provided public higher education to white students also had to provide it to black students, to be satisfied either by establishing black colleges and universities or by admitting black students to previously white-only universities.
Mary Jackson
After graduation, Mary Jackson taught mathematics for a year at an African-American school in Calvert County, Maryland. At that time, public schools were still segregated across the South. She also began tutoring high school and college students, which she continued to do throughout her life.
By 1943, she had returned to Hampton, where she became a bookkeeper at the National Catholic Community Center there. She worked as a receptionist and clerk at the Hampton Institute's Health Department. She was pregnant during this time and eventually returned home for the birth of her son. In 1951, she became a clerk at the Office of the Chief Army Field Forces at Fort Monroe.
In 1951, Jackson was recruited by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which in 1958 was succeeded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She started as a research mathematician, or computer, at the Langley Research Center in her hometown of Hampton, Virginia. She worked under Dorothy Vaughan in the segregated West Area Computing Section.
In 1953, she accepted an offer to work for engineer Kazimierz Czarnecki in the Supersonic Pressure Tunnel. The 4 by 4 foot (1.2 by 1.2 m), 60,000 horsepower (45,000 kW) wind tunnel used to study forces on a model by generating winds at almost twice the speed of sound. Czarnecki encouraged Jackson to undergo training so that she could be promoted to an engineer. She needed to take graduate-level courses in mathematics and physics to qualify for the job. They were offered in a night program by the University of Virginia, held at the all-white Hampton High School. Jackson petitioned the City of Hampton to allow her to attend the classes. After completing the courses, she was promoted to aerospace engineer in 1958, and became NASA's first black female engineer. She analyzed data from wind tunnel experiments and real-world aircraft flight experiments at the Theoretical Aerodynamics Branch of the Subsonic-Transonic Aerodynamics Division at Langley. Her goal was to understand air flow, including thrust and drag forces, in order to improve United States planes.
Dorothy Vaughan
Vaughan was born September 20, 1910, in Kansas City, Missouri, the daughter of Annie and Leonard Johnson. Her family moved to Morgantown, West Virginia, where she graduated from Beechurst High School in 1925 as her class valedictorian. Vaughan received a full-tuition scholarship from West Virginia Conference of the A.M.E. Sunday School Convention. In 1929, she graduated cum laude at the age of 19 with a B.A. in mathematics from Wilberforce University, a historically black college in Wilberforce, Ohio.
In 1932, she married Howard Vaughan. The couple moved to Newport News, Virginia, where they had six children: Ann, Maida, Leonard, Kenneth, Michael and Donald. The family also lived with Howard's wealthy and respected parents and grandparents on South Main Street in Newport News, Virginia. Vaughan was very devoted to family and the church, which would play a huge factor in whether she would move to Hampton, Virginia, to work for NASA. As a college cum laude graduate and a teacher in Mathematics, she was seen as a woman of superior intellect and as an elite among the African American community.
The other amazing Black women of NASA that have largely gone unrecognized include:
Miriam Daniel Mann,
Kathryn Peddrew,
Christine Darden,
Annie Easley, and
Mary Jackson, among others.
RESOURCES:
Link to more of the hidden historical figures mentioned above: https://www.biography.com/news/hidden-figures-movie-real-women
Hidden Figures book at the GCC Library: Hidden figures : the American dream and the untold story of the Black women mathematicians who helped win the space race
Book about the first African American scientists and engineers who worked at NASA: We could not fail : the first African Americans in the Space Program (Available at the GCC library in print and as an ebook with an unlimited license.)
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Jackson_(engineer)
I saw the story of this gentleman posted on a friend’s social media and I was fascinated. Mr. Smalls actually freed himself and several other slaves by commandeering a confederate war ship while the Civil War was being waged.
“Smalls was born on April 5, 1839, behind his owner’s city house at 511 Prince Street in Beaufort, S.C. His mother, Lydia, served in the house but grew up in the fields, where, at the age of nine, she was taken from her own family on the Sea Islands. It is not clear who Smalls’ father was.”
“What is clear is that the McKee family favored Robert Smalls over the other slave children, so much so that his mother worried he would reach manhood without grasping the horrors of the institution into which he was born. To educate him, she arranged for him to be sent into the fields to work and watch slaves at “the whipping post. In fewer than four hours, Robert Smalls had done something unimaginable: In the midst of the Civil War, this black male slave had commandeered a heavily armed Confederate ship and delivered its 17 black passengers (nine men, five women and three children) from slavery to freedom.”
Eventually, Smalls served in the U.S. House of Representatives (representing South Carolina) from 1882 to 1887. He also became a successful business owner and entrepreneur during Reconstruction. What an amazing life.
Lynda Blackmon Lowery
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile (87 km) highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery. The marches were organized by nonviolent activists to demonstrate the desire of African-American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of segregationist repression; they were part of a broader voting rights movement underway in Selma and throughout the American South. By highlighting racial injustice, they contributed to passage that year of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark federal achievement of the civil rights movement.
Blackmon Lowery began her civil rights activism as a child in the early 1960s. She was on the front lines of the struggle in Alabama, marching on “Bloody Sunday,” “Turn Around Tuesday,” and was the youngest marcher to walk every step of the successful march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. On “Bloody Sunday” March 7, 1965, Blackmon Lowery and other marchers were beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. She needed 35 stitches as a result of her injuries and participation in that march. She was also imprisoned 9 times by the time she reached the age of 15 for marching and demanding voting rights.
Ever since then, Blackmon Lowery has dedicated herself to not only civil rights but voting rights in Alabama and all across the country. She wrote a book titled: Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March, a book for young adults.
Here is a short excerpt from her book: “It was my grandmother who first took me to hear Dr. King—that's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That was back in 1963, when I was just thirteen years old. The church was packed. When Dr. King began to speak, everyone got real quiet. The way he sounded just made you want to do what he was talking about. He was talking about voting—the right to vote and what it would take for our parents to get it. He was talking about nonviolence and how you could persuade people to do things your way with steady, loving confrontation. I'll never forget those words—"steady, loving confrontation"—and the way he said them. We children didn't really understand what he was talking about, but we wanted to do what he was saying.”
Here is a link to her reading from her book at the Library of Congress event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I9XUTn88y4
Short NPR interview with her about the march: https://www.npr.org/books/titles/377197283/turning-15-on-the-road-to-freedom-my-story-of-the-1965-selma-voting-rights-march#excerpt
Sources: