A group of doctors reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in an effort to provide free flu vaccines to detained immigrants. The group is alarmed that the Trump administration “is denying flu vaccines to immigrants in custody,” which could have disastrous results, NBC News reports.

The physicians, all members of a new group called Doctors for Camp Closure (D4CC), sent a letter to DHS on November 5 asking the agency to stop denying detained migrants the flu shots they need. As NBC reports, at least three children detained by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which is part of DHS, died from flu-related complications in 2018. 

D4CC members have offered to set up a free, mobile flu shot station at the CBP processing and detention facility in San Ysidro, California. “We implore you to allow our volunteer physicians to hold our requested influenza vaccine clinic,” the doctors said in their letter to DHS. 

But CBP denied the doctors’ request. A spokesperson from the agency responded to the letter with a statement obtained by NBC. “As a law enforcement agency and due to the short term nature of CBP holding and other logistical challenges, operating a vaccine program is not feasible,” the spokesperson said.

Dr. Luz Contreras Arroyo, a member of D4CC, spoke to NBC about the potentially hazardous conditions that the agency could create. “This is how epidemics begin,” he said. “It’s not just migrants. Workers will come out to communities, potentially spreading that virus and it could get out of control.” Arroyo also stressed the importance of remembering that detained migrants are not criminals. “Seeking asylum is not a crime,” he said.

According to NBC, CBP isn’t supposed to hold anyone longer than 72 hours, but the agency typically detains people for far longer than that. 

Health care providers have protested longer detention periods for migrants, warning that children in particular would face more serious health risks with the extended incarcerations.

The doctors also wrote that detained children are nine times more likely to die from flu-related complications than other children. “In our professional medical opinion, this alarming mortality rate constitutes an emergency which threatens the safety of human lives, particularly children,” says the letter from D4CC. “As physicians, we have seen the effects of flu infections in the strongest as well as the most vulnerable, and the outcomes can be devastating.”

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

LGTBQ characters of color on television are steadily increasing, especially on television, where 47 percent of all regular characters on broadcast scripted TV series are people of color, a three percent increase and a record high, according to a new report released by GLAAD. In addition, and for the second year in a row, the report titled “GLAAD we’re on TV” confirmed that LGBTQ characters of color are outnumbering their White counterparts, representing 52 percent compared to 48 percent. GLAAD had challenged all platforms–broadcast, cable, and streaming–to make at least half of LGBTQ characters on each platform be people of color, within the next two years.  

“Last year, GLAAD called on the television industry to increase the number of LGBTQ characters and more accurately reflect the world we live in, and they responded by exceeding this challenge,” Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD told Deadline in an article published today (November 8). “At a time when the cultural climate is growing increasingly divisive, increased representation of LGBTQ stories and characters on television is especially critical to advance LGBTQ acceptance. Shows like ‘Pose,’ ‘Schitt’s Creek,’ ‘Batwoman’ and ‘Billions’ demonstrate that not only are LGBTQ stories and characters on TV becoming more diverse, but that viewers everywhere continue to respond with extreme positivity.”

The report emphasized the importance of TV watchers having access to diversity by noting that The Public Religion Research Institute found that less than 25 percent of Americans have a close friend or family member who is transgender, which means that much of what’s learned comes from what they see in media and on their screens. “This is why the historic casting of Brian Michael Smith as Paul Strickland–primetime scripted broadcast TV’s first Black, transgender man series regular character–on FOX’s mid-season drama ‘9-1-1: Lone Star’ is so important,” said the study.

Additional key findings from the report:

• When it comes to racial diversity, of the 120 regular characters on broadcast, 52 percent are people of color, a two-percentage point increase from last year with six more characters. This marks the second year in a row where LGBTQ people of color have outnumbered White LGBTQ people on broadcast, making broadcast the only platform to meet the goal of having at least half of LGBTQ characters be characters of color.

• Another record-high percentage was with Latinx characters, up one percent to nine. Black series characters held steady at 22 percent, while Asian Pacific Islanders represented eight percent across broadcast television regular characters. 

• On the cable and streaming side, diversity is moving a bit slower: Cable has 48 percent who represent characters of color–up two percentage points from last year–whereas streaming has shown 41 percent people of color, a seven percentage point drop from last year. 

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

Foster care and adoption agencies will soon be able to legally refuse their services to families in the LGBTQ+ community if a new rule put forth by the Trump administration goes into effect. 

On Friday (November 1), the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed a rule that would reverse a 2016 discrimination regulation that included sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes. Per the HHS:

The proposed rule represents the Trump administration’s strong commitment to the rule of law—the Constitution, federal statutes and Supreme Court decisions. These require that the federal government not infringe on religious freedom in its operation of HHS grant programs and address the impact of regulatory actions on small entities.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere told The Hill in an interview: “The administration is rolling back an Obama-era rule that was proposed in the 12 o’clock hour of the last administration that jeopardizes the ability of faith-based providers to continue serving their communities. The federal government should not be in the business of forcing child welfare providers to choose between helping children and their faith.”

The majority of the more than 400,000 children in the foster care system are people of color, according to a 2017 report, with 23 percent of them identified as Black, 21 percent as Latinx and 9 percent listed as “other races/multiracial.”

Reports The New York Times:

The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law estimated in a report that 114,000 same-sex couples in 2016 were raising children in the United States. Same-sex couples with children were far more likely than different-sex couples with children to have an adopted child, 21.4 percent versus 3 percent, the report found.

Alphonso David, president of Human Rights Campaign, called the proposal “horrific” in a statement and also said it would “permit discrimination across the entire spectrum of HHS programs receiving federal funding. The Trump-Pence White House is relying on the same flawed legal reasoning they’ve used in the past to justify discrimination against LGBTQ people and other communities.”

The rule is expected to be published in the Federal Register on Monday (November 4), after which there will be a 30-day comment period and an effective date for the rule unless a legal challenge halts implementation.

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

Against the advice of many scientists, policymakers and public health experts, the Trump administration is poised to pass new rules that will severely limit the scientific data that can be used to make public health regulations. It could also, opponents argue, expose more Americans to dangerous toxins and life-threatening pollution.

The New York Times obtained a draft of the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed rules, “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science.” The document states that the agency will only consider the conclusions of academic studies if scientists disclose all of their raw data, including confidential medical records.

While the EPA cites the new regulations as evidence of the agency being “committed to the highest quality science,” The Times reports:

The measure would make it more difficult to enact new clean air and water rules because many studies detailing the links between pollution and disease rely on personal health information gathered under confidentiality agreements. And, unlike a version of the proposal that surfaced in early 2018, this one could apply retroactively to public health regulations already in place.

Examples of studies that could be rejected—although they have been used in the past to write national policy initiatives—include ones that show how mercury from power plants impairs brain development and how lead in paint dust causes childhood behavioral disorders.

Paul Billings, senior vice president for advocacy at the American Lung Association, said in an interview with The Times: “This means the EPA can justify rolling back rules or failing to update rules based on the best information to protect public health and the environment, which means more dirty air and more premature deaths.”

The fossil fuel industry, as well as some Republican lawmakers and the American Chemistry Council, have publicly disagreed with the use of studies that cannot be independently verified via raw data, reports The Times. A 2015 report from the Congressional Budget Office found that it would cost the EPA hundreds of millions of dollars to redact private information if academics made their raw data available to the public. But in September, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, told a congressional committee, “Good science is science that can be replicated and independently validated, science that can hold up to scrutiny. That is why we’re moving forward to ensure that the science supporting agency decisions is transparent and available for evaluation by the public and stakeholders.”

On Wednesday (November 13), the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology will hold a hearing on the proposal. Key opponents from the medical and science fields are expected to testify.

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

Actor and comedian Mo’Nique filed a lawsuit against Netflix over race and gender discrimination in a Los Angeles court on Thursday (November 14), The Hollywood Reporter reported. “Netflix courted Mo’Nique, saw what she had to offer and made her an offer. But the offer Netflix made Mo’Nique wreaked of discrimination; it perpetuated the pay gap suffered by Black women,” notes the suit. 

The performer is suing the streaming company for racial and gender discrimination over the $500,000 offer she received to do a stand-up special. In the suit, Mo’Nique compares her offer to what other comedians were reportedly paid: Jerry Seinfeld ($100 million), Eddie Murphy ($70 million), Dave Chappelle ($60 million), Chris Rock ($40 million), Ellen DeGeneres ($20 million), Jeff Dunham ($16.5 million) and Ricky Gervais ($40 million). The 38-page suit also includes headshots of seven Netflix executives, all White, as visual support for the company’s “complete lack of racial diversity.”

“In short, as this lawsuit shows, Netflix’s treatment of Mo’Nique began with a discriminatory low-ball offer and ended with a blacklisting act of retaliation,” states the complaint. Netflix told THR that its offer to Mo’Nique was fair and that it will fight the lawsuit.

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

On Thursday (November 14), Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) introduced The People’s Justice Guarantee, a bill that calls for a sweeping overhaul of the justice system that centers “the voices of the people most impacted by injustice in America,” per a statement. From Pressley in the statement:

You cannot have a government for and by the people if it is not represented by all of the people. For far too long, those closest to the pain have not been closest to the power, resulting in a racist, xenophobic, rogue and fundamentally flawed criminal legal system. The People’s Justice Guarantee is the product of a symbiotic partnership with over 20 grassroots organizations and people impacted by the discriminatory policies of our legal system. Our resolution calls for a bold transformation of the status quo—devoted to dismantling injustices so that the system is smaller, safer, less punitive and more humane.

Pressley hopes to use policy to shift “the purpose and experience of the criminal legal system,” while dramatically reducing the U.S. prison and jail population. The proposed legislation calls for decriminalizing migration, ending mandatory minimum sentencing and abolishing the death penalty and sentences of life without parole. Per the statement, the legislation is based on five “guiding principles”: shared power, freedom, equality, safety and dignity.

The resolution highlights the need to uphold the dignity and humanity of those impacted most by the criminal justice system, and it proposes tax incentives to encourage local governments to decarcerate and moves to decriminalize sex work. Pressley also pushes for an end to the “draconian systems of mandatory detention and automatic deportation” of people crossing the U.S. border. Additionally, the resolution stresses the need to allow “transgender individuals to be housed in a facility that conforms with their gender identity” and calls for federal Pell grants to be rewarded regardless of incarceration status. 

“We have an incarceration crisis in America that is making us less safe and undermining the values upon which our country is built—liberty and justice for all,” said Rob Smith, executive director of The Justice Collaborative, in the statement. “The People’s Justice Guarantee is a bold, transformative plan to shrink our jail and prison populations sharply, end wealth-based discrimination in the criminal legal system, and invest heavily in the communities that have been the most destabilized by the failed policies of mass incarceration.”

The bill is endorsed by nearly a dozen organizations, including American Civil Liberties Union, Color of Change, UndocuBlack Network, National Immigrant Justice Center and URGE: Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity. Read it here.

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

African American Policy Forum kicked off season two of its podcast, “Intersectionality Matters,” on Wednesday (November 13) with an episode titled “What Slavery Engendered: An Intersectional Look at 1619.” Host Kimberlé Crenshaw—professor at Columbia Law School and the University of California, Los Angeles—walked through history with guest Dorothy Roberts, a professor and scholar in race, gender, bioethics and the law at the University of Pennsylvania. Per the episode description, they sought to “shed light on the lasting consequences of slavery, segregation and White supremacy and their impact on Black women specifically.”

“It wasn’t the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution nor the Stars and Stripes that gave birth to America; it was the Black vagina that laid the golden egg or rather the chattel slave,” Crenshaw said in the show’s introduction. “The property mortgaged to build America, slaves, was $12 billion dollars worth, [which] speaks on how Black vaginas have been appropriated, syndicated, capitalized but never vindicated.”

In highlighting the systemic erasure of Black motherhood and the creation and maintenance of the Black welfare queen trope, Roberts explains the long-reaching implications of these ideas. “It’s not just that Black women’s enslavement and forced reproduction paint Black women as the scapegoat towards the social problems,” said Roberts, “but it also laid the foundation for a whole future, including eugenics of government policies aimed at controlling the reproduction of people, including forced sterilization. It just seems natural that the government should be able to regulate the childbearing of Black women because Black women are dangerous reproducers.”

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

As Native American Heritage Month continues, the Shinnecock Indian Nation will describe their struggle to protect their ancestral and burial lands in a new PBS Independent Lens documentary, “Conscience Point,” which premieres tonight (November 18). The nation resides on a reservation in The Hamptons, New York, an area synonymous with golf courses and multimillion-dollar properties.

“As Native people, you feel a responsibility to your ancestral territory to protect the land as much as we can,” American Indian Movement advocate Rebecca Hill-Genia said in the film. “Its nearly impossible in this day and age, but we’re still gonna do the best we can.” Conscience Point is the site where Shinnecock ancestors met the first European settlers. 

Directed by Treva Wurmfeld, who summered in The Hamptons as a child, the film follows Hill-Genia and her long-standing battle over The Hamptons’ continual destruction of Shinnecock sacred burial grounds for mansions and marquee attractions. This film highlights the debate over who has rights to the land. “Some people say, ‘My family has been here four, five, six generations,’ well, we’ve been here 400 generations plus,” Hill-Genia said. 

The documentary gathers perspectives from a land developer, local officials, Shinnecock members and longtime fishermen and farmers who blame the developers and summer-vacationers for the destruction of the Shinnecock Bay’s ecological system. The changes to the environment are then compounded by the extreme wealth gap. “In 1640 when the first settlers arrived, we gave them eight square miles of land to use which is now current day South Hampton Village and we’ve paid the price for it ever since,” said Lance Gumbs, Shinnecock tribal trustee. “Here we sit in the middle of the lifestyle of the rich and famous and yet 60 percent of our people in our community are below the poverty level. That’s a problem.” 

The other problem that looms largely in this film is the blatant disrespect felt by the Indigenous people. Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, for example, was carved out of a sacred burial ground and uses a Shinnecock image in its logo, yet refuses to allow Shinnecock members access to the land. “This land was stolen from us,” Gumbs said. “Flat out, hands down, no questions, stolen.” Small victories are won, though the film showed that even those came with a price.

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

More than 2 million Americans live in residences without tap water or flushing toilets, says a new report—and Native Americans are the group most likely to be without them. 

The report, “Closing the Water Access Gap in the United States,” was conducted by the US Water Alliance and DigDeep, a nonprofit that has helped to build water systems for the Navajo Nation. It was released today (November 18) and concluded that race is the strongest predictor of water and sanitation access. Per NPR:

Fifty-eight out of every 1,000 Native American households lack plumbing, compared with three out of every 1,000 white people, according to the report. This disparity has implications for public health. They experience more deaths, poverty and higher unemployment rates.

The report was conducted after DigDeep founder George McGraw learned that there was no conclusive, national data on water access. “No one could tell us, from federal to state agencies to other nonprofits, just how many Americans still don’t have running water or a working toilet where they live,” he told NPR about why he commissioned water experts from across the country to pool their information to create the report.

On the Navajo Nation, the report found that some groundwater has been contaminated by the presence of 521 abandoned uranium mines. In addition, gastric cancer rates doubled in the 1990s in locations near the mining sites. According to the Indian Health Service, it would cost an estimated $200 million to provide basic water and sanitation access to the Navajo Nation.

“Our nations didn’t have access to funding for infrastructure in the same way that it’s federally allocated for cities and states overall,” Mahrinah von Schlegel, an anthropologist from New Mexico’s San Ildefonso Pueblo tribe, told NPR. “It’s been a struggle, one, to get the access to that infrastructure capital, and then, two, it’s really expensive to develop some of these remote areas.”

While an estimated 2 million people do not have water in their homes, over 44 million Americans get water from systems that were recently in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act, reports NPR.

 

 

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

The new documentary “Dear Walmart,” available Tuesday (November 19) via streaming services, tells the intimate stories of four Walmart workers who helped build a national grassroots movement that advocates for better wages, respect and updated family workplace policies.

An emailed statement notes that “Walmart is the largest employer of African Americans, women and Latinx workers in the United States.” But organizers say they are routinely mistreated. “Instead of helping people come out of poverty, they perpetuate it with the wages that they pay,” Organization United for Respect (OUR) Walmart leader Evelin Cruz, who died in 2016, says in the film. Cruz led the 2012 Pico Rivera strike via a strong Latinx coalition that inspired other Walmart employees around the nation to protest poor working conditions. 

Anthony Goytia, a Walmart worker who joined the protests, says in the film: “I did different things to make ends meet. I collect a lot of recyclables. A couple months ago we found ourselves selling breast milk.” Goytia continued, “That’s ridiculous. I work for this company that is the largest retailer in the world, and they want to get mad at me because I’m asking for more money. I can’t even raise my family.” And Bene’t Holmes tells of having a miscarriage at a store and then being reprimanded for taking leave.

As a result of the activists’ actions, Walmart instituted paid family leave for 500,000 workers and improved its family leave policy. Entry-level pay was raised from $9 and hour to $11. And in 2019, Organization United for Respect helped 33,000 laid off Toys R Us employees win a $20 million hardship fund after the company folded without offering severance.

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

Stand-up comedian Margaret Cho isn’t one to back down from a controversial topic, and her appearance on the latest episode of Daily Beast’s podcast The Last Laugh, which aired Tuesday (November 19), is right on brand. She talks about the new opportunities available to Asian-American comedians, Dave Chappelle’s criticism of the bisexual community, Shane Gillis’ firing from SNL for racist comments and the backlash she received for exaggerating a North Korean character at the 2015 Golden Globes. 

Cho broke boundaries in 1994 when she starred in the ABC sitcom “All-American Girl,” the first and only sitcom to center an Asian American family until “Fresh off the Boat” debuted 20 years later. But she never had the opportunity to write or produce that her White male counterparts enjoyed. “They never opened that door for me, I would have had to force it open and I just didn’t know. I didn’t know of any other Asian-American comedians who I could ask,” said Cho. “I just didn’t have the knowledge or capacity to know I should demand that.” But now that doors are opening, Cho said she’s hopeful. “I would love to see more and I have seen some more, but I think there’s still some way to go in terms of diversity.”

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

On Tuesday (November 18), a congressional watchdog agency announced that nearly 1,000 Superfund sites, the nation’s most contaminated hazardous waste locations, face increased climate threats and require dedicated government intervention.

In a new report, “EPA Should Take Additional Actions to Manage Risks from Climate Change,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that at least 945 toxic waste sites are in danger of rising seas, more intense inland flooding, forest fires and other environmental disasters. This number represents six out of 10 Superfund sites overseen by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The greatest threat facing the sites is flooding, according to the report. Nearly 800 sites are at risk due to increased rainfall caused by global warming. More than 200 are at high risk for wildfires and at least 187 are vulnerable to storm surges caused by Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, according to The Washington Post.

“We found that EPA has taken some actions to manage risks at these sites,” reads the report. “However, we recommend it provide direction on integrating climate information into site-level decision making to ensure long-term protection of human health and the environment.”

In 2014, under President Barack Obama, the EPA crafted a plan to address climate change that included action items for the Superfund program. But the Trump administration has reversed a number of Obama’s environmental policies that targeted climate change. Regarding Superfund sites, The Post reports, “Trump administration officials formally rejected a recommendation to clarify how preparing toxic sites to withstand the impacts of climate change is part of the EPA’s mission.” It continues:

After the release of the report, Senate Democrats sent a letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler demanding an explanation for agency leaders’ “failure to embrace addressing climate change as a strategic objective.”

“We believe that EPA’s refusal to implement GAO’s recommendations could result in real harm to human health and the environment as the effects of climate change become more frequent and intense,” the lawmakers told Wheeler.

As previous studies have shown, a disproportionate number of people of color live near these toxic sites. According to the EPA, 19 percent of all Black Americans and 23 percent of all Latinx people lived within three miles of a Superfund site in 2016.

“All Americans deserve timely action on Superfund site cleanups in their communities—not delays,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler stated last month. “We will continue to advance or accelerate Superfund cleanups across the country by addressing issues that cause site-specific delays.”

In contrast, Nancy Loeb, director of the Environmental Advocacy Center at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, told the Post, “The report raises critical issues that are not being addressed. It’s a huge shortcoming not to take climate change into consideration.”

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

It has been 30 years since the United States signed the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, a human rights treaty meant to protect children around the globe. In honor of this anniversary, a U.N. human rights expert was in Geneva on Monday (November 18) to discuss a new study on the current treatment of children around the world, NPR reports. In it, the author writes that the United States is guilty of “inhuman treatment for both the parents and the children.”

Manfred Nowak, a human rights lawyer based in Vienna, Austria, wrote “Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty,” which says the Trump administration’s family separation policy is “absolutely prohibited” by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The study was commissioned in October 2016.

“And there are still quite a number of children that are separated from their parents—and neither the children know where the parents are, nor the parents know where the children are. So that is something that definitely should not happen again,” Nowak said during his remarks, per NPR.

The study “estimates that the U.S. is still holding more than 100,000 children in migration-related detention,” NPR reports. Nowak added in his speech, “That’s far more than all the other countries where we have reliable figures.” In fact, he said the U.S. incarcerates more children than anywhere else in the world:

“In general, the incarceration rate in the United States is very high also of adults, and that you see also with children. So it’s about 60 out of 100,000” children, Nowak said. “And that is the highest that we could find, followed by others like Bolivia, or Botswana, or Sri Lanka….”In general,” Nowak said, “the North American region is the one with the by far highest regional imprisonment rate of children.”

As NPR reports, the U.S. signed but never ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which means the convention’s rules “do not formally apply to the United States of America.” However, Nowak still believes the country should be held accountable for its atrocities thanks to other civil rights treaties.

“In my opinion, the way, how they were separating infants from the families only in order to deter irregular migration from Central America to the United States of America, for me, constitutes inhuman and degrading treatment, and that is absolutely prohibited” by those other international treaties, he said.

“I am deeply convinced that these are violations of international law,” Nowak said. He added, “The same is also true for the high number of children being deprived of liberty in the administration of justice” in the U.S.

Nowak emphasized the importance of valuing children in his talk. “Children should live, or grow up, in families—their own families, foster families, family-type settings,” he said, “and not in institutions where they’re in fact deprived of liberty, where there’s strict discipline, there’s a lot of violence. There’s no love.”

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/

Throughout history, black women have faced the uphill battles of both racial and gender biases, especially in male-dominated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields. Even so, many overcome their adverse circumstances, making invaluable contributions to the scientific community, particularly in the United States Space Program. The issue, however, is that the contributions these brilliant pioneers made largely went unnoticed.

NASA scientists including Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson began to get some overdue credit, however, when author Margot Lee Shetterly released her 2016 tome, Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race. 

A film adaptation with the shortened title, Hidden Figures, hit theaters the same year to great acclaim, earning three Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture.

These works told the stories of the women of color largely hired by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, later NASA) during World War II to work as “human computers,” manually crunching numbers, filling the many vacancies left by those fighting the war overseas. 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a 1941 executive order into law that prohibited racial, religious and ethnic discrimination in the country’s defense injury, thus paving the way for these “hidden figures’” advancements. While there are no official numbers on how many women filled these roles over the years, experts have estimated there were several hundred over the years. (Shetterly’s estimate was in the thousands.)

Of course, black women’s contributions aren’t limited to NASA. Here are 10 of the women who used their brains to skyrocket to the top of their fields.

Katherine Johnson

 

Katherine Johnson poses for a portrait at work at NASA Langley Research Center in 1966

Photo: NASA/Donaldson Collection/Getty Images

Neil Armstrong's "one small step for man" may not have happened without this woman. Just weeks after Katherine Johnson began a position as one of Langley Research Center's human computers in 1952, supervisors transferred the summa cum laude West Virginia State College graduate (with degrees in both mathematics and French) from the African-American computing pool to the flight research division. There, Johnson performed the NASA calculations that made possible the manned space missions of the early 1960s as well as the 1969 moon landing.

Even astronaut John Glenn put his full faith in Johnson, requesting she re-do all-electronic computer calculations before he embarked on his 1962 Earth orbits. Glenn has been quoted as remarking, “If she says they’re good, then I’m ready to go.”

Aside from earning a 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom, Johnson was portrayed by actress Taraji P. Henson in 2016's Hidden Figures.

Dorothy Vaughan

 

Dorothy Vaughan (l) in 1950

Photo: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Also a central part of Hidden Figures (in which was played by actress Octavia Spencer), Dorothy Vaughan left her position as a high school math teacher for a "temporary war job" in Langley's all-black group of female mathematicians known as the West Area Computing Unit in 1949. During what would become a nearly decade-long career, Vaughan became NASA's first African-American manager, eventually heading up the West Area Computing Unit.

An expert in NASA's programming coding language known as FORTRAN, she worked on the SCOUT (Solid Controlled Orbital Utility Test) Launch Vehicle Program that put America’s first satellites into space. Before her retirement from NASA in 1971, she also worked closely with Johnson on the computations for Glenn's orbital space missions.

SIGN UP FOR THE BIOGRAPHY.COM NEWSLETTER

Mary Jackson

 

Mary Jackson poses for a photo at work at NASA Langley Research Center in 1977

Photo: Bob Nye/NASA/Donaldson Collection/Getty Images

Mary Jackson began working under Vaughan's supervision in the segregated West Area Computing section as a computer in 1951. After two years in that role, the former teacher (who was portrayed in Hidden Figures by actress and musician Janelle Monae) transitioned to working for engineer Kazimierz Czarnecki on wind tunnel experiments.

At Czarnecki's urging, she took engineering classes, and, after being promoted to aeronautical engineer in 1958, Jackson officially became NASA’s first black female engineer. After helping develop the space program throughout her successful career (during which she authored or co-authored about 12 research reports), the Virginia native took a demotion to fill the role of Langley’s Federal Women’s Program Manager. In that position, she devoted her time to helping other women find STEM jobs at NASA.

Dr. Gladys West

 

Dr. Gladys West at her induction into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. on December 6, 2018.

Photo: Adrian Cadiz

When Gladys West was inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame in December 2018, the organization hailed her as the hidden figure whose mathematical work lead to the invention of the Global Positioning System (GPS). In 1956, she began working at the U.S. Naval Weapons Laboratory and helped produce a study that proved the regularity of Pluto’s motion relative to Neptune.

Also while at U.S. Naval Weapons Laboratory, she programmed an IBM 7030 “Stretch” computer that delivered refined calculations for an “extremely accurate geodetic Earth model, a geoid, optimized” for what would eventually become known as GPS.

Dr. Mae Jemison

 

Mae Jemison

Photo: SSPL/Getty Images

Mae Jemison was a woman with many firsts to her credit. She was working in the medical field as a General Practitioner and attending graduate engineering classes in Los Angeles when NASA admitted her to its astronaut training program in June 1987. After more than a year of training, she became the first African-American woman astronaut, holding the title of science mission specialist.

On September 12, 1992, Jemison, along with six other astronauts, launched into space aboard the Endeavour, and with that earned the distinction of the first African-American woman in space as well. During her eight-day mission, Jemison conducted experiments on weightlessness and motion sickness. Prior to her career as an astronaut, she also acted as a Peace Corps medical officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Dr. Shirley Jackson

 

Dr. Shirley Jackson stands with President Barack Obama before receiving the National Medal of Science, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on May 19, 2016, in Washington, DC.

Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

A theoretical physicist, Shirley Jackson was the first black woman to graduate with a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in any field (Her Ph.D. is in Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics) and also just the second African-American woman to earn a doctorate in physics in U.S. history. 

During her tenure at what was formerly known as AT&T Bell Laboratories' Theoretical Physics Research Department in the 1970s and 1980s, she has been credited as helping develop the technology that enabled caller ID and call waiting.

President Barack Obama selected Jackson, a onetime chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to receive the National Medal of Science in 2015. She is currently serving as the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, also making her the first African-American woman to lead a top-ranked research university.

Dr. Patricia Bath

 

Dr. Patricia Bath

The first female African-American medical doctor to complete an ophthalmology residency and also the first to receive a medical patent, Patricia Bath invented a laser cataract treatment device called a Laserphaco Probe in 1986. (The co-founder of the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness patented her invention in 1988.)

Her research on health disparities between African-American patients compared to those of other races lead to the creation of a volunteer-based "community ophthalmology," offering treatment to underserved populations.

Dr. Marie M. Daly

 

Dr. Marie Daly

After receiving her B.S. and M.S. in chemistry from Queens College and New York University respectively, Marie Daly went on to complete her Ph.D. at New York City's Columbia University. Upon graduating in 1947, she earned the distinction of being the first African-American woman to receive a chemistry Ph.D. in the U.S.

Daly's groundbreaking research included studies of the effects of cholesterol on the mechanics of the heart, the effects of sugars and other nutrients on the health of arteries and the breakdown of the circulatory system as a result of advanced age or hypertension.

Annie Easley

 

Annie Easley

Photo: NASA/Interim Archives/Getty Images

Another major contributor to the U.S. Space Program, Annie Easley worked on myriad projects for NASA over the course of her 30-year careers as a mathematician and rocket scientist. Like Johnson, Vaughan and Mary Jackson, she first worked as a computer and then eventually became a programmer.

Aside from conducting studies on battery-powered vehicles, Easley also worked on shuttle launches and designed and tested a NASA nuclear reactor. She was also a "leading member of the team which developed software for the Centaur rocket stage, which laid the technological foundations for the Space Shuttle launches and launches of communication, military and weather satellites," per NASA.

Dr. Alexa Canady

 

Dr. Alexa Canady

In 1984, Alexa Canady, a cum laude graduate of the University of Michigan's medical school, became the first African-American woman to be certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery. Canada, who also earned B.S. in zoology from the University of Michigan, would later take on the role of chief of neurosurgery at Children’s Hospital of Michigan at just 36 years old, and, while there, she specialized in congenital spinal abnormalities, hydrocephalus, trauma and brain tumors.

Source: https://www.biography.com/

As the first black president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela fought for justice. Serving from 1994-1999, he led the anti-apartheid movement and fought against institutional racism, which eventually led to him serving 27 years in prison.

Although he was a controversial figure in some circles, Mandela received several awards throughout his life including the Nobel Peace Prize, the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Soviet Union’s Lenin peace prize. Sharing his fight with leaders from all over the world, Mandela also mingled with prominent leaders such as Fidel Castro and Bill Clinton.

Source: https://www.biography.com/

Just a head’s up that on Friday, the movie 42 comes out. It’s a biography of Jackie Robinson’s life and his utterly game-changing role in integrating baseball in America. If you know anything about this man, you’ll know that Jackie Robinson was arguably the most groundbreaking black athlete in history, and his role both on the field and off changed race relations in sports and society His legend continues today, and I’m so happy to see that his incredible story is being brought to the big screen. I know what I’ll be doing this weekend!

Source: http://www.sportsinblackandwhite.com/