Tag: Black History Month

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From Braces to Gold – Wilma Rudolph

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(June 23, 1940 – November 12, 1994)
Sometimes history runs faster than doubt.
Wilma Rudolph was born prematurely in Tennessee and spent much of her early childhood battling illnesses, including polio. Doctors warned that she might never walk normally again.
For years she wore a leg brace.
But Rudolph’s family refused to surrender to that prediction. With determination, therapy, and relentless support from her mother, Wilma eventually began walking without assistance.
Soon she began running. And she did not stop.
There is a verse in Philippians that says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” For Wilma Rudolph, those words would come to life in the most extraordinary way.
By the time she reached the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, Rudolph had become one of the fastest women in the world. There she made history, winning three gold medals in track and field, becoming the first American woman to achieve that feat in a single Olympic Games.
Her victories were not only athletic triumphs. They were symbols.
At a time when segregation still divided much of America, Rudolph returned home to Tennessee and insisted that her hometown parade honoring her victory be integrated. It became the first racially integrated public celebration in Clarksville’s history.
Wilma Rudolph ran past more than competitors. She ran past expectations. And in doing so, she reminded the world that sometimes faith, courage, and persistence can carry us farther than anyone ever imagined.
Sometimes the world writes a story about what you cannot do.
Wilma Rudolph once wore a leg brace and was told she might never walk normally again. Later, she became the fastest woman in the world.
The miracle is not always that the path is easy. Sometimes the miracle is that you keep moving forward anyway.


Steps From Our Sisters
Honoring the Women Who Marched Before Us
Curated by
Michelle Gillison-Robinson
DefyGravityWithoutWings.com

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Ketanji Brown Jackson -When preparation meets history.

Posted in Uncategorized, inspiration, relationships, God, work, Black History Month, women's history monthTagged , , , , , Leave a comment


Some victories do not come bursting through the door.
They come with their shoes in their hand.
With grace under pressure.
With long study hours, quiet discipline, and the kind of strength that has learned how to hold itself still.


Ketanji Brown Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., in 1970 and raised in Miami.
She went to Harvard, graduating from college in 1992 and law school in 1996, serving along the way on the Harvard Law Review.
She clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer.
Worked as a public defender.
Served on the United States Sentencing Commission.
Became a federal judge in 2013.
Rose to the D.C. Circuit in 2021.


Nothing about her path says sudden.
Everything about it says prepared.
And maybe that is what makes this kind of history so holy.
Because on April 7, 2022, when the Senate confirmed her by a 53 to 47 vote, and on June 30, 2022, when she was sworn in as the 104th Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, becoming the first Black woman ever to serve there, it was not the beginning of her worth.
It was the public naming of what had already been true.
Brilliant.
Capable.
Measured.
Ready.


She became the first former federal public defender to sit on that Court.
Only the sixth woman in its history.


A Black woman in a seat this nation took far too long to imagine her in, though women like her have always been here carrying wisdom, justice, memory, and backbone in places that rarely gave them the microphone.


So no, her presence does not just say look what happened.
It says look what endured.
Look what kept going.
Look what kept studying.
Look what kept showing up polished and prepared while carrying the weight of being doubted before speaking.
For every door that opened late
For every gift that had to prove itself twice
For every girl taught to be excellent and careful at the same time
Her presence speaks.
Not just I made it.
But women like her have always been here.


Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
Joshua 1:9


And maybe that is the part I love most.
Not just that she made it to the room
but that God walked her all the way there.

Steps From Our Sisters
Honoring the Women Who Marched Before Us
Curated by
Michelle Gillison-Robinson
DefyGravityWithoutWings.com

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The Doctor Who Chose to Heal the Forgotten – Rebecca Lee Crumpler

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(February 8, 1831 – March 9, 1895)

Sometimes healing begins where others refuse to go.

Rebecca Lee Crumpler grew up in a time when medicine was almost entirely closed to women, and especially to African Americans. Yet she believed deeply in the power of caring for the sick and protecting the vulnerable.

In 1864 she became the first Black woman in the United States to earn a medical degree.

After the Civil War ended, Crumpler moved to Virginia, where she treated newly freed men, women, and children who had little access to medical care. The conditions were difficult, resources were scarce, and prejudice remained strong.

But she continued her work.

Crumpler believed that knowledge should serve compassion. She later wrote A Book of Medical Discourses, one of the first medical texts written by an African American physician.

There is a verse in Jeremiah that says, “Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed.”

Rebecca Lee Crumpler answered that prayer not only with faith but with skill, dedication, and love for those who had long been ignored.

Sometimes the most powerful medicine
is the courage to care.

Bread Crumbs

Service does not always appear glamorous.

Rebecca Lee Crumpler chose to practice medicine where the need was greatest and recognition was smallest.

She reminds us that compassion often requires perseverance.

Sometimes the calling God places on your life
is simply to heal what others have overlooked.

Steps From Our Sisters
Honoring the Women Who Marched Before Us

Curated by
Michelle Gillison-Robinson
DefyGravityWithoutWings.com

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Bessie Coleman – The Woman Who Refused to Stay Grounded

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(January 26, 1892 – April 30, 1926)

Sometimes the sky becomes the only place left to prove you belong.

Bessie Coleman grew up in Texas at a time when both race and gender limited opportunity. When she dreamed of becoming a pilot, every flight school in the United States refused to teach her.

She was Black.
She was a woman.

So Bessie Coleman did something extraordinary.

She learned French and traveled to France, where she earned her pilot’s license in 1921, becoming the first African American and Native American woman in the world to hold an international pilot’s license.

When she returned to the United States, crowds came to watch her fly. Coleman became a famous stunt pilot, performing breathtaking aerial tricks that left audiences amazed.

But she used her platform for something deeper.

She refused to perform at air shows that did not allow Black audiences to attend. To her, flight was not just entertainment.

It was dignity.

There is a verse in Isaiah that says, “They will soar on wings like eagles.”

Bessie Coleman lived that promise with courage and determination.

Sometimes the first person to break a barrier
must build the runway herself.


Breadcrumb
The world may close doors in front of you.

Bessie Coleman did not accept the doors that were closed.

She crossed an ocean instead.

Sometimes God places a dream in your heart that cannot grow where you started.

And sometimes the path forward begins
with the courage to leave the ground.

Steps From Our Sisters
Honoring the Women Who Marched Before Us

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You Are Black History

Posted in Black History Month, faith, God, inspiration, love, relationships, Uncategorized, workTagged , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Black history does not live only in textbooks, timelines, or framed portraits. It lives in you.


It lives in the prayers your grandmother whispered that no one recorded. It lives in the courage it took for your parents and grandparents to keep going when quitting would have been easier.

It lives in the way you show up to work, to church, to community, to family — even when the reward is unclear.


Black history is not only something that happened. It is something that is still happening.


It is made every time you choose dignity over bitterness. Every time you carry joy in a system that profits from your exhaustion. Every time you tell the truth — even quietly. Every time you endure, love, build, teach, heal, or believe anyway.


Some names were written down. Many were not.
Some stories were celebrated. Many were survived.
But history is not only what is remembered — it is what continues.


You stand on the shoulders of those who were victorious without reward. Those who served faithfully without applause. Those who planted seeds they would never live to see bloom.


Their courage flows through you.


And we have always known how to leave something behind.


Breadcrumbs on the ground when the path was uncertain. Hushpuppies tossed not as waste, but as wisdom — a way to distract danger long enough to keep moving. Cornrows braided tight to the scalp, not only as beauty or tradition, but as memory — paths etched into hair, holding maps to water, to safety, to freedom.


What could not be written down was carried. What could not be spoken aloud was encoded. What could not be protected by law was protected by love, community, and God.


This was not myth. This was method.
A people learning how to survive systems designed to erase them — by remembering anyway.


If you are still leaving breadcrumbs for those coming behind you… still marking the way quietly… still choosing faith, dignity, and care when no one is watching…
You are doing what has always been done.


You are part of a holy lineage of guidance and endurance. A living echo of the God who makes a way where none seems visible and leads His people forward, step by step.


“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
— Galatians 6:9
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
— Psalm 119:105


If you are still standing, still hoping, still loving, still reaching for God and for one another — you are Black history in motion.
Not just because of where you came from, but because of how you choose to live.


We see you. We honor you. You matter.
Love, Chelle

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Hattie McDaniel, First In  A Segregated Room

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In 1940, Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win an Academy Award. She won Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939). She was also the first African American ever nominated for an Oscar. History shifted that night.


And yet, at the ceremony held at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, she was required to sit at a small segregated table against the wall, apart from her white castmates. Victory. With boundaries.


When the film premiered in Atlanta in 1939, Georgia’s Jim Crow laws barred Black cast members from attending. It is widely reported that her co-star Clark Gable objected strongly and threatened not to appear in protest. Accounts say Hattie encouraged him to attend, understanding the political climate and the fragile footing of her position in Hollywood. Public outrage from powerful allies could make headlines. But she would still have to live and work inside the system afterward. Strategy is not surrender.


MORE THAN MAMMY
Hattie McDaniel was born in Kansas to parents who had been enslaved.

She was among the first Black women to sing on American radio in the 1920s, a successful blues performer before Hollywood and recorded 16 blues sides between 1926 and 1929. She appeared in over 300 films, though many roles went uncredited. Her best known other major films are Alice Adams, In This Our Life, Since You Went Away, and Song of the South.

She became one of the highest-paid Black entertainers of her era and later starred in the radio show Beulah, becoming one of the first Black women to headline a nationally broadcast radio program.

In 1952, she became one of the first Black women to star in a television series when Beulah moved to television.

She holds two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — one for motion pictures and one for radio.


All of this was before Rosa Parks. Before Martin Luther King Jr. became a national figure. Before the Civil Rights Act.

Jim Crow was law. Black actors were largely confined to domestic or servile roles. Many within the Black community criticized those portrayals for reinforcing stereotypes.

Hattie’s response was pragmatic and pointed: “I’d rather play a maid than be one.”

Being first does not mean being free. McDaniel died of breast cancer on October 26, 1952, at age 59 in Woodland Hills, California. Her final wish to be buried in the Hollywood Cemetery was denied due to its segregation policy at the time.  Decades later, a memorial plaque was placed in her honor.

In  2006, she was honored with a US postage stamp, and in 2010, she was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame.

In 2006, the Academy replaced her long-missing Oscar, confiscated by IRS debt, with a replica, formally acknowledging her historic win.  The original was to have been displayed at Howard University but went missing in the 1970s

Notably, no other Black woman would win an Oscar for 50 years after Hattie. Not until Whoopie Goldberg won for Best Supporting Actress in Ghost.

Galatians 6:9

“Let us not grow weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”


CARRY THIS WITH YOU
Sometimes the door that opens to you is imperfect. Sometimes the room is segregated.
Sometimes you are allowed in — but only to the edge.

Hattie McDaniel walked in anyway. Not because the system was fair. But because excellence inside limitation still moves history forward.


BREADCRUMB
What opportunity are you resisting because the conditions are not ideal? Being the first often means carrying contradictions so others can inherit clarity.


SALUTE
We see you, Hattie McDaniel — for becoming the first when the room was not ready, and for claiming victory in a nation that tried to seat you in the shadows.

Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.

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A.D. King – The Other King

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Before history narrowed the movement to one name, there were two brothers.

Alfred Daniel Williams King. Born in 1930. Preacher. Organizer. Strategist. Three years younger than Martin Luther King Jr. but standing in the same danger.

When Birmingham, Alabama became ground zero in 1963, A.D. did not visit. He moved there.
Birmingham was nicknamed “Bombingham” because of the frequency of racial terror bombings. Churches. Homes. Black neighborhoods.

A.D. helped lead mass meetings and demonstrations alongside Fred Shuttlesworth and Ralph Abernathy. While Martin carried the national microphone, A.D. carried the local weight: Organizing. Stabilizing. Coordinating.
Keeping frightened communities steady.

He was arrested during the Birmingham Campaign.His home was bombed.  While Martin wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” A.D. was outside holding the infrastructure together.

Movements do not survive on speeches alone.
They survive on people whose names do not trend. After Martin was assassinated in 1968, A.D. stepped further into leadership. 
One year later, in 1969, A.D. King was found drowned in his swimming pool at just 38 years old. The death was ruled accidental. But many in the community questioned how a strong adult man, familiar with his own pool, could drown under unclear circumstances.

No national day of mourning. No holiday. No monument echoing his name. History has a habit of compressing movements into a single face. But there were always second lines. Siblings. Strategists. The ones who held meetings when the cameras left.

We still do it today. We elevate one leader.
We forget the organizers. We chant one name.
We overlook the network. A.D. King represents that hidden layer.

He stood in the same fire. Faced the same threats. Carried the same calling. But the spotlight did not linger.

Micah 6:8

“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

CARRY THIS WITH YOU
If your work is not visible, is it still valuable? Of course it is.  If your name is not printed, is your impact erased? Of course not.

BREADCRUMB
History may narrow the headline. But heaven keeps fuller records.

We see you, A.D. King — for carrying weight without applause.

Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.

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REFUSING TO BE EDITED: Zora Neale Hurston

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Before the acclaim.  Before the syllabus. Before the rediscovery. 

There was a girl in Eatonville, Florida. One of the first all-Black incorporated towns in America. A place where Black men held office. Black businesses lined the streets. Black authority was ordinary. Zora did not grow up learning inferiority. She grew up witnessing Black self-governance.She later said she only felt “colored” when she left Eatonville. That foundation mattered.


Her mother told her to “jump at the sun.”
Then her mother died when Zora was thirteen.
Stability fractured. She was sent away. She worked as a maid. She fought for schooling. She even shaved years off her age to qualify for education she refused to surrender. She made her way to Howard University. Then to Barnard College — the only Black woman in her class.

Zora did not enter literature quietly. During the Great Depression, she worked under the Works Progress Administration, a federal New Deal program created to provide jobs for unemployed Americans. Through its Federal Writers’ Project, writers were paid to document American life.

Zora used that platform to travel the South collecting Black folklore. She sat on porches recording stories, sermons, songs, dialect. She preserved language as it was spoken — not polished for respectability. That was civil rights work.

She treated everyday Black life as worthy of scholarship at a time when much of the country treated it as caricature. But Zora did not always align with the popular script.

She did not write protest novels on demand.
She did not center white oppression in every paragraph. She resisted narratives that reduced Black identity to suffering alone. And when the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 — declaring segregated public schools unconstitutional — Zora publicly criticized aspects of the ruling.

Not because she supported segregation.
But because she rejected the quiet assumption that proximity to whiteness was the only path to equality.  She believed integration should not come at the cost of Black institutional pride or self-determination. She worried that dependence on white approval could weaken Black autonomy.

That stance placed her at odds with much of the civil rights leadership of her time. Some admired her independence. Some felt she undermined the movement. Some labeled her out of step. She kept writing anyway.

Their Eyes Were Watching God centered a Black woman’s voice, love, desire, and interior life. Not as political slogan — but as full humanity.
Joy, for Zora, was not a distraction from struggle. Joy was defiance.

And then — she died in 1960, poor and largely forgotten. Buried in an unmarked grave in Florida. No parade. No national mourning.
No bestseller comeback.

Years later, her work was rediscovered. Her grave was marked. Her voice returned to classrooms and conversations. Forgotten in her time. Found again by the next.

Zora reminds us that civil rights is not only marches and lawsuits. It is also narrative. It is who defines Black life. It is the refusal to shrink complexity for acceptance. She was brilliant and sometimes difficult. Independent and sometimes misunderstood. Unapologetic when it cost her.

CARRY THIS WITH YOU
Where have you been told that success requires you to leave something of yourself behind? Zora teaches us that preserving who you are — even when misunderstood — is its own form of resistance.

BREADCRUMB
Not all revolution is loud. Some of it sounds like porch laughter, a stubborn pen, and a woman refusing to be edited by her era.

We see you, Zora Neale Hurston — for telling our stories without apology.
Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.

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Pig Foot Mary: The Woman Who Pushed Her Future Down the Street

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Before food trucks.  Before catering contracts.
Before pop-up kitchens. There was a formerly enslaved Black woman  pushing a baby carriage filled with pickled pig’s feet.

Her name was Lillian Harris Dean. History remembers her as Pig Foot Mary. And what some would have called scraps, she called strategy.

Born in Mississippi around 1870. She migrated north during the Great Migration era. She was reported a woman of large stature (striking fear in even some men).

THE BABY CARRIAGE BEGINNING

After emancipation, economic opportunity for Black women was painfully narrow. Formal loans were not available. Property ownership was rare. Protection under the law was inconsistent at best.

So Mary did what resilient women have always done. She looked at what she had.
She cooked pig’s feet — inexpensive cuts that working people could afford — and loaded them into a baby carriage. That’s  right no baby, just a baby carriage purchased with two of the five dollars she arrived with and a tin pot she brought with her.

Then she walked the streets of Washington, D.C., selling directly to laborers, porters, and government workers who had migrated from the South but desperate for a taste of home cooking lacking in the industrial north.

No storefront. No investors. No safety net.
Just legs, grit, and a carriage. That carriage gave her mobility. Mobility gave her customers. Customers gave her capital.
Capital gave her options. Consistency built reputation. Reputation built revenue.

From those early street sales, though unable to read, she negotiated contracts with suppliers, opened restaurants, operated boarding houses, acquired property, and became one of the wealthiest Black women in New York City  during her time. She later married a prominent black lawyer she had hired to keep her financial empire safe.

Later in life, she faced legal troubles that interrupted her business, a common vulnerability for Black entrepreneurs in that era. When her power and influence started to invade beyond the black community and into  white upper Manhattan,  a racist court system convicted her of running a disorderly house.    After her release from prison, she retired to California.

She did not inherit influence. She built it.
She did not wait for approval. She moved.

Pig Foot Mary represents a pattern we see over and over in Black history:
Innovation born from restriction.
Mobility created from limitation.
Enterprise rising from overlooked ingredients.

She took something humble and made it sustaining.

“She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.” — Proverbs 31:16

Mary did not own fields at first. She owned a route. But the principle is the same.
Use what you have. Work what you have.
Move what you have.

CARRY THIS WITH YOU
You may be waiting for a storefront when all you have is a carriage. Push anyway.

You may be waiting for funding when all you have is a recipe. Cook anyway.

You may be waiting for someone to validate the vision. Walk anyway.

BREADCRUMB

Sometimes the business plan is wrapped in something people underestimate. And sometimes the thing you’re pushing… is actually pushing you into destiny.

We see you, Lillian Harris Dean for turning a baby carriage into a business model. We see you for feeding working hands and building wealth from what others discarded.

Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.

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Henry Box Brown – He Mailed Himself To Freedom

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In 1849, an enslaved man in Virginia made one of the most daring escapes in American history. His name was Henry Box Brown.

Born around 1815 in Louisa County, Virginia, Brown was enslaved by John Barret, a former mayor of Richmond. After Barret’s death, Brown was sent to Richmond and hired out to work in a tobacco warehouse. He married while enslaved. He had children.

In 1848, his wife and children were sold to a plantation in North Carolina. That loss changed everything.

On March 23, 1849, Brown arranged an extraordinary plan with the help of free Black and white abolitionists. He had himself sealed inside a wooden crate measuring approximately three feet long, two feet wide, and two and a half feet deep. The box was labeled “Dry Goods.”

It was shipped from Richmond, Virginia, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, via Adams Express Company. The journey lasted 27 hours. The crate traveled by wagon, railroad, steamboat, and carriage. At times it was placed upside down. Brown later wrote that blood rushed to his head and he feared suffocation. To steady himself, he sang hymns.

When the box was opened in Philadelphia at the Anti-Slavery Office, Brown stepped out alive and reportedly greeted the astonished men in the room with calm composure.
His escape was immediate national news.

After gaining freedom, Brown became an abolitionist lecturer. He traveled throughout the Northern states, speaking about slavery and reenacting his escape by climbing into a replica box during performances.

Following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which increased the risk of capture even in free states, Brown moved to England. He remained there for more than two decades, performing as a speaker, showman, and later as a magician, continuing to tell his story.

He eventually returned to the United States later in life and remained a public performer until his death, believed to have occurred in 1897.

Henry Box Brown did not wait for rescue.
He engineered it. He endured confinement to secure freedom. He turned survival into testimony. He transformed a shipping crate into a symbol of resistance.

His story remains one of the most vivid examples of self-emancipation in American history.

Psalm 18:19
“He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.”


CARRY THIS WITH YOU
Freedom sometimes requires courage that feels impossible. Do not underestimate what can happen when resolve meets faith.


BREADCRUMB
When systems close in, imagination becomes strategy. When doors are locked, courage builds another exit. History remembers those who refused to accept chains as final.


SALUTE
We honor Henry Box Brown, whose 27-hour journey inside a wooden crate became a permanent witness to the will to be free.
We salute the man who trusted movement over fear, faith over despair, and action over surrender.

Your box became a doorway.
Your confinement became testimony.
Your name remains a symbol of self-determined freedom.


Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward. Still here.