- Kimberley Guillemet
Geraldine “Jerrie” Lawhorn was a leader in the American deafblind community, a performer, actress, pianist, and an instructor. She was also the first deafblind African American person to earn a college degree in the United States.
Ms. Lawhorn was born on December 31, 1916, in Dayton, Ohio, to musicians Pearl Walker and William Bert Lawhorn. She was about eight years old when doctors discovered she had an eye condition. Shortly thereafter, Ms. Lawhorn learned Braille, but remained in classes with sighted students. Her integration at school was challenging in that her classmates booed, stigmatized, and discriminated against her.
Despite this adversity, Ms. Lawhorn persisted with her education, graduating with honors from Marshall High School. Upon graduating, Ms. Lawhorn became interested in writing and public speaking and won several prizes for her short stories.
At 19 years old, Ms. Lawhorn completely lost her hearing which prompted her to learn a new mode of communication: the One-Hand Alphabet. She did not allow this new challenge to deter her from writing. In fact, she continued entering and winning writing contests. She took a course at Columbia University and then went on to write a novel entitled The Needle Swingers' Baby.
In 1942, Ms. Lawhorn was admitted to the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, where she studied for four years. She performed monologues at the United Service Organization’s programs. She launched a one-woman show entitled Projected Hearts, and performed at Carnegie Hall.
After years as a performer, Ms. Lawhorn was offered a teaching position at the Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired. She would serve as an instructor for the Hadley Institute for over 40 years.
Obtaining a college degree was a lifelong goal for Ms. Lawhorn, but she had encountered incredible discrimination related to her disabilities and ethnicity whenever she had attempted to achieve this goal in the past. Through a friend, she learned about the University Without Walls program that many colleges offered. She applied to this program and was accepted at Northeastern Illinois University.
On March 23, 1983, Ms. Lawhorn earned her Bachelor's Degree in Rehabilitation of Deafblind Adults from Northeastern Illinois University. At the age of 67, she became the first deafblind African American person to graduate from college. She became only the sixth deafblind person in the United States to earn that achievement.
Ms. Lawhorn was featured on several nationwide television shows in celebration of her achievements. She was known for her optimism, tenacity and encouragement of deafblind people. In 1991, she wrote her autobiography entitled On Different Roads, which was a source of inspiration for the 2005 movie Black by Sanjay Leela Bhansali.
To learn more about Ms. Lawhorn’s enduring life and legacy, please visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldine_Lawhorn and: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2016/7/7/18325421/geraldine-lawhorn-author-performer-teacher-deaf-blind-pioneer and: https://ps-af.facebook.com/HeritASL/videos/geraldine-Ms. Lawhorn-lawhorn/635082203940072/.
The Honorable Constance Baker Motley was the first African American woman to ever be appointed to the federal judiciary. She was born September 14, 1921 in New Haven, Connecticut to working class parents who were immigrants from the Caribbean Island Nevis. Baker Motley showed an affinity toward civil rights early on and became involved in community activism alongside her mother during her teenage years. After hearing her speak at a community event, local businessman and philanthropist Clarence W. Blakeslee offered to pay for her college education.
Baker Motley began college at Fisk University, but later transferred to and graduated from New York University. She earned her law degree from Columbia University School of Law in 1946. Early in her legal career, Baker Motley joined the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) as a civil rights lawyer, becoming the LDF’s first female attorney. She was the lead trial attorney in a number of early and significant civil rights cases, representing Martin Luther King Jr., the Freedom Riders, and the Birmingham Children Marchers. She was lead counsel and principal strategist on all of the LDF’s major school and lunch counter desegregation cases, including the landmark case Brown vs. Board of Education. In 1962, she became the first African American woman ever to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court when she represented James Meredith in Meredith v. Fair. Because of her efforts, James Meredith became the first African American student to attend the University of Mississippi.
In 1964, Baker Motley became the first African American woman ever elected to the New York State Senate.
When Baker Motley was appointed to the federal judiciary in 1966, she became the first African American woman ever appointed to that bench. In 1982, she became the first woman and the first African American to serve as the Chief Judge for the Southern District of New York, the largest federal trial bench in the country. She assumed senior status on September 30, 1986. Her service terminated upon her death on September 28, 2005.
To learn more about Judge Baker Motley’s trailblazing life and legacy visit:
https://blackhistory.news.columbia.edu/people/constance-baker-motley and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constance_Baker_Motley.
To view footage chronicling her life, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t74Jhj7Q5oM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_qT7pZMQ20.
- Kimberley Guillemet
In 1983, Dianne Durham became the first African American gymnast to win the title as the all-round champion in the U.S. National Championship. She also won the individual titles for bars, floor and vault, becoming the first American woman to execute a full-twisting layout Tsukahara on vault. Later that year she won the all-around title at the McDonalds International Gymnastics Championships, beating Mary Lou Retton. Ms. Durham said later that despite these historic achievements, she was most concerned with them as part of her road to the Olympics, her ultimate goal.
At the Olympic trials, Ms. Durham suffered a string of injuries, culminating with a torn ankle ligament when she landed a challenging vault. This caused her to withdraw from the trials, with the expectation that she would be petitioned onto the Olympic team. However, through what the Olympic Committee Association later described as a combination of “injuries and a Byzantine selection process,” she was not offered a spot on the 1984 team. Her coach, Bela Karolyi, objected to denying the prior year's national champion a slot on the team, stating, "She was the first Black kid to ever make it to a national title. This is a pretty big injustice to not have Durham on the Olympic team. The team needs her, the country needs her." He did not succeed in persuading the USA Gymnastics Federation. Ms. Durham retired from competition in 1985. She then took a job coaching in Houston before relocating to Chicago. There, she met her husband and became a national-level judge, coach and gym owner.
U.S. Olympic Champion Mary Lou Retton said of her, “Dianne was one of the greatest athletes and the best gymnast of our generation. She had it all: personality, strength, grace. When we trained together, seven or eight hours a day, we really became like sisters. She was always my best and fiercest competitor.”
Ms. Durham was quoted as saying, “I don’t feel sorry for myself,” reflecting on her missed Olympic opportunity. “Nobody is going to give you anything in this life. You have to work for anything and everything you get. And sometimes it doesn’t go the way you want it to go. You fall, but you have to get back up . . . I am happy.”
Ms. Durham is remembered for introducing “power” to American women’s gymnastics and for paving the way for countless gymnasts after her including Betty Okino, Dominique Dawes, Gabrielle Douglas and Simone Biles.
To read more about Ms. Durham’s life and enduring legacy, please visit: