Tag: Family

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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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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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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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Garrett Morgan — The Man Who Built What Was Missing

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He was born in 1877 in Paris, Kentucky, the son of formerly enslaved parents. His formal education ended early, but his learning did not. As a young man, he moved north and eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked as a sewing machine repairman. Watching machines fail and fixing them taught him how systems worked and how they could be improved.

Now here’s something you may not know.

Before the safety hood and the traffic signal, Garrett Morgan developed an early chemical hair refining cream that loosened curl patterns and funded his manufacturing company. The discovery reportedly began while he was working with sewing machine lubricants and noticed how a chemical solution altered fabric fibers. Curious and observant, he experimented further — first testing a diluted version on a dog’s hair before refining it for human use. The results were dramatic enough to build a thriving business. It became part of a broader wave of Black innovation in the early 20th century that included pioneering women entrepreneurs in the beauty industry.

His more recognized contributions came from witnessing people placed in danger without protection.

He ivented a safety hood in 1912, an early form of the modern gas mask  and demonstrated its effectiveness during the 1916 Lake Erie tunnel explosion, helping rescue trapped workers.  His safety hood influenced firefighter equipment and later military safety gear .


Most notably, he invented an improved traffic signal in 1923 after witnessing a severe automobile accident. He added a caution phase between stop and go, reducing collisions. He then sold the traffic signal patent to General Electric.


Sadly, he faced racial barriers when marketing inventions and sometimes was forced to use white actors for demonstrations.

Garrett Morgan did not invent for applause. 
He invented because danger was preventable and someone had to act.  He built solutions so essential they became invisible 

SCRIPTURE THREAD

“Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you.” — Proverbs 2:11 

Garrett Morgan’s wisdom became protection. His understanding became guardrails long before the world learned to credit him.

CARRY THIS WITH YOU

What risk have you noticed that others have learned to tolerate? Morgan reminds us that calling does not always arrive as a dream. It often arrives as a problem you refuse to ignore.

BREADCRUMB

Sometimes the work God gives you is not to be seen, but to quietly make the way safer.

SALUTE

We see you, Garrett Morgan — for building protection where none existed. 

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

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Bill “Bojangles” Robinson — The Man Who Danced Forward

Posted in Black History Month, faith, God, inspiration, love, money, relationships, selfhelp, Uncategorized, workTagged , , , , , , 2 Comments

Born in 1878 in Richmond’s Jackson Ward, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson did not inherit ease. He inherited survival.

Orphaned young, he found rhythm before he found security. Instead of letting the world bend his back, he stood straight and tapped anyway.

He did not shuffle.

He clarified tap. Clean lines. Upright posture. Dignity in every strike of the shoe.

He
• Redefined tap dancing
• Became one of the highest-paid entertainers of his era
• Performed with excellence on segregated stages without lowering himself
• Created the legendary stair dance
• Gave generously back to Richmond

And when the city would not install a traffic light in Jackson Ward to protect Black children crossing the street, he did not argue.

He reached into his own pocket. He paid for the light. Not for praise. For protection.

Today his bronze statue stands in Jackson Ward beneath that light, shoes mid step, forever guarding the intersection.

On screen with Shirley Temple, he smiled.
Off screen, he built safety.

And Scripture whispers underneath his steps:

“Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.”
— Proverbs 22:29

He stood before kings.
But he made sure children could cross safely at home.

From Jackson Ward to Broadway lights, he proved something we still hold close:

You can climb the stairs without bowing.
And you can light the street when the city will not.

And somewhere in Jackson Ward, if you listen close enough, you can still hear the stairs answering his shoes.

May we be the kind of people who do not just climb them, but leave the light on behind us.


BREADCRUMB
Sometimes progress dances—and still changes the street.


We see you, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson — for dancing forward and making the way safer behind you.


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

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Barbara Johns: She Was Fifteen and Would Not Wait

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Barbara Johns was fifteen years old when she decided that waiting politely for justice was no longer an option.


In 1951, in Prince Edward County, Virginia, Barbara was a student at Robert Russa Moton High School — a segregated Black school with no gym, no cafeteria, overcrowded classrooms, and tar-paper shacks used as makeshift buildings. Meanwhile, white students nearby learned in brick schools with resources and space.


Barbara saw it.
Barbara lived it.


And Barbara refused to accept it.


Without permission from adults, administrators, or movement leaders, she organized a student strike. She convinced her classmates to walk out, not knowing if anyone would listen — only knowing that staying silent was no longer an option.


Adults were furious.
Leaders were nervous.
Teachers were afraid they would lose their jobs.


Barbara’s name was almost removed from the complaint.
But the case moved forward anyway.
Her courage became part of Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, one of the five cases folded into Brown v. Board of Education.


History changed.
And Barbara Johns?
She received death threats.
She had to leave her hometown.
She lived the rest of her life quietly.
Her name was rarely spoken when Brown was celebrated.
She was victorious without reward.


Barbara Johns teaches us something uncomfortable and holy:
Sometimes the people who force history to move are the ones most quickly pushed out of the picture.
She was young.
She was female.
She was uncompromising.
And she was inconvenient.


“Let no one despise you for your youth.” — 1 Timothy 4:12


Barbara didn’t wait to be older.
She didn’t wait to be chosen.
She didn’t wait to be safe.
She acted — and the system scrambled to catch up.


If you have ever been told you were too young to understand, spoken truth that made adults uncomfortable, sparked change and then watched others take credit, or paid a personal cost for doing the right thing early — Barbara Johns stands with you.


She reminds us that courage does not require credentials — only conviction.
She lit the match.
The world tells the story without her name.
But God remembers.


We see you, Barbara.
We tell it right.


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


Love, Chelle

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Robert Smalls: He Knew the Way Through

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Robert Smalls was born enslaved in South Carolina, in a world where freedom was forbidden and intelligence was dangerous.


But Robert learned the waterways.
He learned the tides.
He learned the rhythms of ships and schedules and signals.
And when the moment came, he used what he knew.


In 1862, Robert Smalls did something no one thought possible. He commandeered a Confederate ship, the CSS Planter, disguised himself in the captain’s uniform, navigated past enemy forts using the correct signals — and delivered himself, his family, and others to freedom.


He did not fire a single shot.
He trusted knowledge.
He trusted timing.
And he trusted that God had already made a way through the water.


In my own family, there are those who make a “not quite”  substantiated claim to Robert Smalls — simply because his last name appears in our family line.
I don’t have records to prove it or disprove it.
I don’t make the claim as fact. But who can deny greatness.


However, the instinct matters.
Because sometimes what we are really claiming is not blood —
but admiration.
Not lineage —
but legacy.


Robert Smalls didn’t stop with freedom.
He went on to serve in the U.S. Navy, help recruit Black soldiers, become a U.S. Congressman, and fight for education, voting rights, and dignity for formerly enslaved people.


And still — he faced resistance.
He was pushed aside.
His leadership was minimized.
His voice was not always welcomed in the halls he helped open.


He was victorious without reward in more ways than one.


More than a century after his courage changed the course of history, the nation finally spoke his name aloud.
In 2023, the U.S. Navy commissioned a ship in his honor — the USS Robert Smalls.


It did not restore what had been denied.
It did not erase the years of resistance he faced.
It did not repay the cost of standing firm in a country slow to remember.
But it did stand as a quiet admission.
The Navy knew who led that ship long before history said it plainly.


And eventually, even delayed recognition had to follow truth.


Robert Smalls teaches us that God often prepares people long before the moment arrives.
“I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” — Isaiah 43:19


Robert didn’t create the river.
He learned it.
He didn’t invent the escape.
He recognized the opening.


Faith sometimes looks like courage.
Sometimes it looks like preparation.


And sometimes it looks like steering calmly through danger because you know where the water leads.

For the One Reading This Today

If you have ever:

prepared quietly for something no one else saw coming

felt drawn to a story because it felt familiar in your spirit

honored someone not because they were yours — but because they were right

trusted God to guide you through impossible terrain

Robert Smalls stands with you.


You don’t have to claim someone as family to carry their courage forward.
Legacy travels deeper than blood.


We see you, Robert.
We honor the way you led others through.


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


Love, Chelle

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Susie King Taylor: She Served Anyway

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Susie King Taylor was born enslaved in Georgia in 1848, in a world where teaching Black people to read was a crime and Black women’s labor was expected but never honored.


From a young age, Susie learned to read and write in secret. She was taught quietly, moving from place to place so no one would notice. Knowledge, for her, was not just education—it was resistance.


When the Civil War came, Susie did not wait to be invited into history.


She followed Union troops, and at just fourteen years old, she began teaching formerly enslaved soldiers and children how to read. She became the first Black woman known to openly teach formerly enslaved people in a Union camp.


She did not stop there.
Susie served as a teacher, a nurse, a laundress, and a caregiver to wounded Black soldiers. She worked in field hospitals. She tended infections. She cleaned wounds. She buried the dead. She did the work that kept soldiers alive long enough to keep fighting.


She did this without rank.
Without formal pay.
Without protection.
Without promise of recognition.
And when the war ended, the men she served alongside received pensions.
Susie did not.


Her body carried the cost of years of labor and exposure. Her hands had held dying boys. Her back bore the weight of war. Yet the government decided her service did not count.
She was victorious without reward.


In 1902, Susie King Taylor published Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops—one of the only Civil War memoirs written by a Black woman.

She wrote because she knew that if she did not tell the story, it would be told wrong—or not at all.


She documented unequal treatment, exhaustion, racism within the Union Army, and the quiet strength required to keep serving anyway.


Recognition did not follow.
She died poor.
Her contributions remained footnotes.
Her name was largely absent from textbooks.


And yet, without women like Susie King Taylor, the war would not have been survivable for Black soldiers.


Susie King Taylor teaches us that some people do the work because it needs doing, not because they expect to be thanked.
She was not disguised like Cathay Williams.
She was not sidelined like Claudette Colvin.
She was fully visible—and still denied.


“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” — Colossians 3:23


If you have ever done essential work no one wanted to name, given care without credentials, served faithfully while others were promoted, or known your contribution mattered even when systems said it didn’t—Susie King Taylor stands with you.
She served anyway.
History followed later.


We see you, Susie.
We honor you now.


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

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My Survivor Song Knows My Name.

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I was listening to one of my favorite songs—“He Knows My Name”—and my emotions spilled out before I could stop them.
It happens like that sometimes.
After a rough moment.
After allowing myself—again—to be hurt by someone who never really took the time to know me.
Not my heart.
Not my story.
Not the way I learned to survive.


I didn’t even realize how much I was carrying until that song started playing.
And suddenly, there it was—grief, relief, truth—all at once.


Because here’s the greatest thing about God:
He knows my name.
And not just my name—He knows my nickname too.
The one spoken by people who love me.
The one I only answer to when I feel safe.


He knows me with the mask—the strong one, the capable one, the superhero version that keeps showing up.


And He knows me without it—the tired, tender, still-hoping version I don’t always let the world see.


The real me.
Not the performance.
Not the usefulness.
Not the resilience résumé.


This song reminds me that I don’t confuse God.
I don’t disappoint Him by being human.
I don’t have to explain myself into being worthy of love.
It’s my Survivor Song because it tells the truth I forget when I’m hurting:
I am already known.
Already named.
Already held.
And when I rest in His arms, I don’t need armor.
I don’t need a script.
I don’t need to be brave for one more minute.
I am safe.


With and without the mask.
With and without the cape.
Somewhere along the way, I learned to confuse being needed with being known.
But God never made that mistake.


So today, if you’re feeling unseen—
if you’re nursing the quiet ache of being misunderstood—
let the reminder rise up like a song in your chest.
You are known by name.
You are held without pretending.
You are safe in His arms.
And sometimes… surviving looks like letting yourself be known—first by God, and then by yourself.
“I have called you by name; you are Mine.” — Isaiah 43:1


Love, Chelle