Quick quote from amazing physicist Shirley Ann Jackson (quoting her father): "Aim for the stars so that you can reach the treetops, and at least you'll get off the ground."

Shirley Ann Jackson -- the first black woman to earn a doctorate from MIT (1973) -- did far more than merely reach the treetops: she went to the heart of matter itself. Starting off at MIT in 1964 after graduating as Valedictorian of her high school earlier that year, Jackson decided to attend the famed institution rather than go to another one with a higher black population (she was accepted at Brown, U of Chicago and Harvard), saying she wanted to encourage other black students do the same. 

Dr. Jackson has a lifetime of awards, distinctions and special qualifications, and is currently president of Renssealaer Polytechnic, and has served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations.

Inventor, forensics scientist and physical therapist Bessie Blount Griffin (born 11/24/1914) is a terrific example of how the world economy can better the lives of people rather than simply exploit them. Upon graduating from the Panzer College of Physical Education and Hygiene, she moved to Chicago to study physical therapy.

During her time working with wounded WW2 veterans, Bessie invented a machine that allowed amputees to feed themselves by biting down on a tube that released food one bite at a time. When the US government wasn't interested in buying the invention, she sold it to the French government instead. 

Bessie worked as a physical therapist for the mother-in-law of Theodore Edison (son of Thomas Edison) and while caring for her, she invented the cardboard emesis basin -- which is a shallow basin with sloping walls used in the care of bedridden people -- but again, the US  did not want the invention, so she sold it to Belgium instead. These days, emesis basins are a common sight in most care facilities, and Bessie is credited for the invention.

In the late 1960s, Bessie switched gears and decided to go to work in forensics, and in this field she also quickly excelled, becoming the Chief Document Examiner at the Vineland Police Department. She eventually outgrew the position, and in 1977 she studied with Scotland Yard (she was the first African-American woman to do so) in hopes of learning the latest techniques and improving her skill set. She ran her own forensics consultancy until the late 1990s, and spent her time verifying the authenticity of slave, Civil War, and Native American documents.

She was named as a Notable Woman by Virginia Women of History in 2005. 

Katherine G. Johnson, born on August 28th, 1918, spent her early childhood living in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia with her mother, Joylette, and her father, Joshua. Her mother was a teacher, and her father alternated between farm and janitorial work. When Katherine's local education ended -- the local school regrettably accomodated African American only children until 8th grade -- her father committed to driving her (and the rest of the kids in the family) 125 miles to a school in another city so she could continue learning.

A brilliant student, Katherine graduated from high school at age 14, and from college -- she attended West Virginia State University -- she went on to graduate school at West Virginia University, where she received her degree in math.

After teaching grade school for 17 years, she was recruited by Langley Research Center to work as a mathematician in 1953. In 1958, she went to NASA to be a part of the formerly all-male Flight Mechanics Branch, and later to the Spacecraft Controls Branch. 

Among her accomplishments: calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepherd's space flight in 1959. 2) calculated Alan Shepherd's Project Mercury Mission in 1961. 3) plotted backup navigational charts 4) called upon to verify the computer's numbers for John Glenn's orbit around the earth 5) calculated trajectory for Apollo 11's flight to the moon.

Katherine retired from NASA in 1986 and she currently lives in Hampton, Virginia with her husband. 

Occasionally I'll take a look on the internet and information about the person I'm researching is hard to come by at first. With Ruth Ella Moore -- despite her accomplishments -- I found the very same problem.

Ruth Ella Moore was the first African American woman to receive a PhD; she accomplished this at Ohio State University. Her dissertation concerned bacteriology. While a graduate student from 1927-1933, she taught at Tennessee State College (now Tennessee State University). She worked on tuberculosis research -- and taught -- at Howard University in Washington, DC from 1940 until she retired in 1973.

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Believe in the power of truth... Do not allow your mind to be imprisoned by majority thinking. Remember that the limits of science are not the limits of imagination. - Patricia Bath

Opthamologist Patricia Bath (born in 1942 in Harlem, NY) is the first African-American woman to have been given a patent for a medical purpose. The device is used to ablate and remove cataract lenses. 

Bath graduated from Hunter college in 1964, and from Howard University School of Medicine in 1968. She was the first female opthamologist at UCLA's John Stein Eye Institute, and the first black female surgeon at UCLA medical center. 

Patricia Bath's legacy is also one of bringing services to those who need them most, and she was instrumental in helping opthamologic surgery come to Harlem Hospital's Eye Clinic in 1970.

By 1983, Bath was the chair of the opthamology residency program at Charles Drew/UCLA, and is the first woman to have held the position in the US.

After her time at Drew/UCLA ended, Patricia Bath traveled to other eye institutes around the world to conduct her research. She retired from UCLA in 1993, and is now an advocate of telemedicine, which brings medical knowledge via electronic communications to remote places around the world. 

Kingsley Plantation, also called Laurel Grove. is known today as a park on Fort George Island in Jacksonville, FL, but not many people know about its history or the woman behind it.

Anna -- then known as Anta Majigeen Ndiaye -- was born around 1793 in land held by both the Wolof and Fula peoples. According to local legend, she was likely the daughter of a ruling family in the area. At 13, she was believed to have been kidnapped by raiders from the Foota Tooro, who sold her into slavery.

Upon her arrival in Havana, Cuba, Anna was sold to Zephaniah Kingsley, a merchant and planation owner living in southern Florida. Unlike a lot of other slave owners at the time, Kingsley allowed the slaves living on his property pursue interests outside of work once quotas had been filled; he encouraged them to make and sell their own wares and art, to learn, and to tend to their own personal gardens and plots of land on the property. Zephaniah's property, called Laurel Grove, was prosperous and fertile.

Unlike the other slaves on the plantation -- who shared houses on the plantation -- Anna lived in the main plantation house with Zephaniah. She eventually bore three children with him, and Zephaniah stated (years later) that he and Anna had been married in a traditional African ceremony. In 1811, Anna was granted her freedom, and her husband promised the emancipation of their children as well. She became the manager of Laurel Grove, running the affairs of the plantation while her husband was away on business, at the age of 18.

The Patriot Rebellion, whose supporters wanted Florida to be annexed into the United States, captured Anna's husband later during the year of 1811. They wanted him to endorse the Rebellion, and intended on holding him until he did. Both Americans and Creek Indians raided Laurel Grove; they took 41 slaves -- plus any other black person, free or not -- that they could capture. They then set up shop at the plantation, and it wasn't until Anna negotiated both her escape and that of her children and 12 of her own slaves that members of the Rebellion were run off; with the help of the Spanish, Anna burned the plantation to the ground.

For her role in displacing the Rebellion, the Spanish granted 350 acres of land to her. By then, her husband had been released from captivity. He bought another plantation on Fort George, and rebuilt his business with Anna's help.

Over time, Kingsley took on three more wives (themselves former slaves), and Anna's household became a polygamous one. Two of the new wives brought children with them, and Anna helped redesign the plantation to resemble an African village; slave homes  -- 32 in all -- were developed in a semi-circular pattern.

After Spain handed Florida to the US in 1822, Kingsley fled with his family and slaves to Puerto Plata in Haiti, where they started a plantation called Mayorasgo de Koka. Kingsley died in 1843.

Kingsley's sister Martha and her family contested Kingsley's will as invalid just a year after his death, as US law at the time stipulated that mixed-race children couldn't hold property, but Anna fought and won. The US upheld a previous treaty with Spain which stated that all free blacks born before 1822 could enjoy the same legal freedoms as they could under Spanish law. 

Anna Kingsley -- Anta Majigeen Ndiaye -- died at home in Jacksonville at the age of 77 in 1870.

Patricia Hill Collins, born just before Beltane in 1948 in Philadelphia, PA, is a brilliant sociology professor and theorist. Considered to be one of the foremost scholars on black feminist thought, her analysis often transcends that of her peers.

Collins earned her Bachelor's degree from Brandeis in the late 1960s, and her MFA teaching degree from Harvard University in 1970.

"Despite long-standing claims by elites that Blacks, women, Latinos, and other similarly derogated groups in the United States remain incapable of producing the type of interpretive, analytical thought that is labeled theory in the West, powerful knowledges of resistance that toppled former social structures of social inequality repudiate this view. Members of these groups do in fact theorize, and our critical social theory has been central to our political empowerment and search for justice."

Author Michelle Cliff (a Jamaican-American born 11/1946) brings together beautiful prose and a deep understanding of intersectionality and the conflicts of race, sex, and colonization. As a bisexual woman raised in a violently homophobic culture, Michelle's bravery, humanity and sense of justice are as much needed now as they were when she wrote her first novel, Abeng, which tells the story of a mixed-race Jamaican girl growing up in the 1950s.

From her book If I Could Write This in Fire:

With all of the commentary -- both positive and negative -- concerning the new movie Precious, I think it's important to remember where the original novel came from.

When Sapphire's Push (which Precious is based on) -- a frightening, deeply moving, but ultimately triumphant novel -- arrived on the literary scene in 1996, the author's exact sentiment was (via interviewer William Powers) "...she noticed Push for sale in one of the Penn Station bookstores, and that moment it struck her she’s no longer a creature of the tiny world of art magazines and homeless-shelters from which she came”. Push (and the film based on it) was based on Sapphire's heart-felt emotions, and like all great works of fiction, holds grains of rich truth within.

However, despite the fact that the book was written by a black author, and the film was made mostly by black cast and crew, some critics and audience members can't help but pick at the work. When a NYTimes columnist stated that "The blacks who are enraged by 'Precious' have probably figured out that this film wasn’t meant for them."

Excuse me? The only reason I heard about Push was because a black lesbian I knew as a teenager in Houston, TX recommended the book to me! She'd read an early copy of Push and she related to it as a black person and as a woman who had been abused by her father, not because she thought white people might like it! On the contrary, she'd been looking for forthright commentary on the world she grew up in, and as it was mostly lacking, Push was at the top of her favorites list.

If you'd like to learn more about Sapphire -- and why she wrote Push and how she feels about the film adaption -- read this wonderful interview with her @ Speakeasy. Here's another interview. This one includes a page from the book.

One thing people seem to miss out on is that Precious -- and Push -- go beyond race to address gender as well. Both are intertwined in aspects of oppression, and Sapphire handles the subjects beautifully.

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly -- businesswoman, seamstress, and confidant to the rich and powerful -- both made her own history and witnessed that of other famous figures, including Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, for whom she made some of her best clothing. Though Keckly started her life as a slave in Dinwiddie, VA, the state could not hold her -- nor break her -- and she won the freedom of herself and her son in 1855.

Upon winning her freedom, Keckly went to St. Louis, and then onto Baltimore, MD, where she had hoped to open a school for young black women to teach them to make clothing and become seamstresses themselves. However, the school idea did not take, and Keckly left for Washington, DC in 1861, choosing to take on wealthy patrons of her fine craftsmanship.

Making clothing for the wealthy and powerful (General Robert E. Lee's wife was a client of Keckly's) brought her to the attention of Margaret McLean, a Scottish Australian women's rights advocate. Though Keckly was already swamped with other clients, she decided -- in part because McLean wouldn't take no for an answer -- to make the requested garment. 

After McLean received the garment, she made a request of Keckly -- to meet Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of President Abraham Lincoln -- on the day of the new president's inaguration.  She left with a load of Mary's clothing, and a new friend. For the next several years, Keckly served as The First Lady's designer and seamstress. 

When President Lincoln was shot, it was Elizabeth Keckly who provided much of the emotional support Mary Lincoln sought, and Mary never forgot Keckly's friendship. At one point after her husband's death, Mary hired Keckly to work for her as a personal assistant, and even though much of the work was long distance, the two remained close and kept in touch with letters until 1868. In 1867, Mary Lincoln sold a great deal of her personal effects to pay off creditors and stay above financial water, and Keckly was instrumental in helping her do this.

However (ironically enough), when Keckly sold some of her Lincoln memorabilia in order to help her son's university recover from a terrible fire, Mary Lincoln was not nearly as helpful or supportive. Mary Lincoln did not understand why Elizabeth wanted to part with the gifted former President's effects, and their friendship essentially ended until just around the turn of the century, when an undocumented reconciliation was said to have taken place.

Elizabeth Keckly died in 1907 at the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children in Washington, DC.

The dress that Elizabeth Keckly made for Mary Lincoln (her first for the First Lady) just before Abraham Lincoln's inaguration is currently hanging in The Smithsonian.