- Kimberley Guillemet
- Feb 1, 2022
Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler was born in Christiana, Delaware in 1831 to Matilda Webber and Absolum Davis. She was raised in Pennsylvania by her aunt who acted as the doctor in her community, caring for community members who fell ill. Inspired by her aunt, in 1852, Dr. Crumpler moved to Charlestown, Massachusetts, where she worked as a nurse for eight years.
In 1860, she was accepted to New England Female Medical College. When she graduated from medical school in 1864, Dr. Crumpler became the first African-American woman in the United States to earn an M.D. degree, and the only African-American woman to graduate from the New England Female Medical College, which closed in 1873.
Dr. Crumpler practiced medicine in Boston until 1865, when the Civil War ended. She then moved to Richmond, Virginia, because, in her own words, she felt it would be "a proper field for real missionary work, and one that would present ample opportunities to become acquainted with the diseases of women and children.” There she served the 30,000 African-American residents of her community, many of whom were indigent. She provided medical care to anyone who requested treatment, regardless of their ability to pay for her services. Dr. Crumpler also worked with the Freedmen’s Bureau, joining other Black physicians caring for freed slaves who would otherwise have had no access to medical care. As a Black physician, she experienced intense racism working in the postwar South.
Dr. Crumpler also experienced intense sexism, as during this time many men believed that a man's brain was 10 percent larger than a woman’s brain on average, and that a woman's job was to act submissively and focus on her appearance. Because of this, many male physicians did not respect Dr. Crumpler, and would not approve her prescriptions for patients or listen to her medical opinions. Undeterred by this unjust treatment, Dr. Crumpler persevered and continued to work passionately and with dedication.
Dr. Crumpler later moved back to Boston to continue to treat women and children. In 1883, she published a renowned book, Book of Medical Discourses In Two Parts, believed by many to be the first medical text written by an African-American author. The book has two parts that cover the prevention and cure of infantile bowel complaints, and the life and growth of human beings. Dedicated to nurses and mothers, it focuses on maternal and pediatric medical care.
Dr. Crumpler died in 1895, leaving behind a grieving husband, Arthur Crumpler (who died in 1910), and a daughter. Initially buried in unmarked graves, on July 16, 2020, Dr. Crumpler and her husband received new granite headstones through funds raised to celebrate her status as a pioneer in the medical field.
Shortly before her death the Boston Globe wrote the following about her, “Dr. Rebecca Crumpler is the one woman who, as a physician, made an enviable place for herself in the ranks of the medical fraternity.”
The Rebecca Lee Society, one of the first medical societies for African-American women, was named in her honor. In 2019, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam declared March 30 (National Doctors Day) the Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler Day. At Syracuse University there is a pre-health club named "The Rebecca Lee Pre-Health Society.” This club encourages people of diverse backgrounds to pursue health professions.
To learn more about Dr. Crumpler’s tremendous life and legacy, please visit: https://www.baystatebanner.com/2012/09/05/dr-crumpler-nations-first-african-american-woman-physician/, https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/news/g4431/black-history-month-unsung-heroes/, https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_73.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Lee_Crumpler.
- Kimberley Guillemet
- Jan 1, 2022
Dr. Ellen Lauri Ochoa was born on May 10, 1958 in Los Angeles, California to Joseph, a manager of a retail store, and Rosanne, a homemaker. Her paternal grandparents immigrated from Sonora, Mexico to Arizona and later to California where her father was born. Dr. Ochoa was the middle child of five.
Dr. Ochoa graduated from Grossmont High School in El Cajon in 1975. She received a bachelor of science degree in physics from San Diego State University and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1980. She went on to Stanford University where she earned a master of science degree and a doctorate in Electrical Engineering in 1981 and 1985, respectively.
In 1985, Dr. Ochoa applied for the NASA Astronaut Training Program. Although she was rejected, she decided to get a pilot’s license. She was certain she would enjoy flying and believed it might help build her resume for NASA. She applied again in 1987, but was once more turned down.
Undeterred, Dr. Ochoa joined NASA in 1988 as a research engineer at Ames Research Center and moved to Johnson Space Center. Finally, in 1990, on her third application to the NASA Astronaut Training Program, she was accepted.
In 1993, Dr. Ochoa became the first Latina woman to go to space when she served on the STS-56, a nine-day mission aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. A mission specialist and flight engineer, she has flown in space four times. She served as payload commander on STS-66, and was mission specialist and flight engineer on STS-96 and STS-110 in 2002. Dr. Ochoa was in Mission Control during the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and was one of the first personnel informed of Columbia's disintegration.
Beginning in 2007, after retiring from spacecraft operations, Dr. Ochoa served as Deputy Director of NASA's Johnson Space Center, helping to manage and direct the Astronaut Office and Aircraft Operations. On January 1, 2013, Dr. Ochoa became the first Latinx person and second female director of the Johnson Space Center.
Ochoa has received many awards among which are NASA's Distinguished Service Medal (2015), Exceptional Service Medal (1997), Outstanding Leadership Medal (1995) and Space Flight Medals (2002, 1999, 1994, 1993). In 2017, she was inducted into the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame, and in 2018, she was inducted into the International Air and Space Hall of Fame.
Ochoa is also a classical flutist and played with the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, once receiving the Student Soloist Award. She lives in Texas with her family.
To read more about Dr. Ochoa’s tremendous life and legacy, please visit:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Ochoa, https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/about/people/orgs/bios/ochoa.html, and https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.biography.com/.amp/astronaut/ellen-ochoa.
Footage of Dr. Ochoa can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G40G1q1I7u8.
- Kimberley Guillemet
- Dec 1, 2021
Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Chloe Anthony (“Toni”) Wofford Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio in 1931. She was the second of four children of working-class parents, George Wofford, a shipyard welder, and his wife, the former Ella Ramah Wofford, née Willis. When Morrison was two years old her family’s home was set on fire by their landlord while she and her family were in it. “People set our house on fire to evict us,” Morrison later told an interviewer. Morrison went on to state that her father refused to be intimidated by racially motivated hostility.
Morrison’s parents encouraged her early interest in literature, which encompassed Austen, Flaubert and Tolstoy. Her father instilled in her a sense of heritage and language by sharing with her traditional African-American folktales, ghost stories, and anecdotes he had heard growing up in the south. This nurtured Morrison’s interest in narrative and the African-American folklore tradition.
Morrison graduated with honors from high school and studied humanities at Howard University in Washington, D.C. In 1955, she earned an MA in English at Cornell University. Thereafter, she taught at Texas Southern University in Houston, and then Howard University. In 1964, after a divorce, Morrison left her position as a professor and moved to New York with her two young sons to join Random House as an editor in the fiction department. She would go on to become the first Black woman senior editor at Random House, a position she held for 20 years. One of her achievements there was, in her own words, developing “a canon of black work” in the fiction genre. In that capacity, Morrison played a vital role in bringing Black literature into the mainstream.
Eventually, Morrison began writing and publishing fiction pieces of her own. She authored 11 novels, as well as children’s books and essay collections. Her best-known works are the novels The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), and Beloved (1987) and the nonfiction volumes Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992) and Remember (2004).
In 1989, following the success of Beloved, Morrison was appointed professor of humanities at Princeton University. She also served as a visiting professor at Yale University and Bard College.
In 1993, Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making her the first African American woman to be selected for this distinction, and the first Black woman of any nationality to win a Nobel Prize in any category.
A quotation from Morrison’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech provides an appropriate epitaph: “We die,” she said. “That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
To read more about Ms. Morrison’s tremendous life and legacy, please visit: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/06/toni-morrison-obituary, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/books/toni-morrison-dead.html, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison. Footage of Ms. Morrison can be viewed at: https://nyti.ms/2lwJZ5a.
