Aural Sects

afrodiaspores:

“African American Midwife Maude Callen Delivering a Baby” by W. Eugene Smith, 1951

One remarkable moment in the public depiction of the midwife occurred in December 1951, when in a photo-essay for Life magazine, W. Eugene Smith introduced Mrs. Maude Callen, a nurse midwife practicing in rural South Carolina.

Callen traveled 36,000 miles a year over back roads to administer the only medical care many poor [B]lacks were likely to receive.

Maude Callen persuaded [the Division of Maternal and Child Health assistant director] to secure Penn Center, originally a school for newly freed slaves, as a site for the [midwifery] institutes because of its symbolic value in the Lowcountry communities served disproportionally by midwives. Training took place in the historic school buildings beneath moss-draped live oaks on a barrier island claimed by [B]lack farm families after the Civil War. Participants frequently described the experience as “inspirational.”

Working in the rural South in the 1950s, in “an area of some 400 square miles veined with muddy roads,” as LIFE put it, Callen served as “doctor, dietician, psychologist, bail-goer and friend” to thousands of poor (most of them desperately poor) patients…After the piece was published, LIFE subscribers from all over the country sent donations, large and small, to help Mrs. Callen in what one reader called “her magnificent endeavor”…

Maude Callen died in 1990 at the age of 91 in Pineville, South Carolina, where she had lived, and served, for seven decades.

oh wow…now that’s a true fucking hero. What an amazing person.

(via feminismisprettycool)

wyntergordon:

Flower girl

hollygossip:

The Sexiest Actresses Michelle Rodriguez

(via waxjism)

a 17 year old girl has found a possible cure for cancer. She created a nanoparticle that can be delivered to tumours, which then kills cancerous stem cells.

(via shickalenia)

blackhistoryalbum:

Black Beauty | 1910s
Credit: Missouri Historical Society

via Black History Album, The Way We Were
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itcouldbeamazing:

Sophie Blanchard (25 March 1778 – 6 July 1819) was a French aeronaut and the wife of ballooning pioneer Jean-Pierre Blanchard. Blanchard was the first woman to work as a professional balloonist, and after her husband’s death she continued ballooning, making more than 60 ascents.

In 1819, she became the first woman to be killed in an aviation accident when, during an exhibition in the Tivoli Gardens in Paris, she launched fireworks that ignited the gas in her balloon. Her craft crashed on the roof of a house and she fell to her death.

On hearing she had died, the proprietors of the Tivoli Gardens immediately announced that the admission fees would be donated for the support of her children, and some spectators stood at the gates appealing to the citizens of Paris for donations. The appeal raised 2,400 francs, but after the collection it was discovered that she had no surviving children, so the money was used instead to erect a memorial, topped with a representation of her balloon in flames, above her grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery. Her tombstone was engraved with the epitaph “victime de son art et de son intrépidité” (“victim of her art and intrepidity”)

(via shickalenia)

obitoftheday:

Obit of the Day (Historical): Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1931)

Simply put Ida B. Wells-Barnett was one of the greatest leaders of the early civil rights movement in the United States. The daughter of slaves, Mrs. Wells-Barnett was inculcated with an appreciation for education as well as political involvement. (Her father was active in campaigning for black candidates in Mississippi during that short period between the end of the Civil War and the end of Reconstruction when blacks in the South were encouraged to vote.)

She lost both of her parents and one sibling during a yellow fever epidemic when she was 16 years old. Now responsible for five younger sisters. she moved her family to Memphis, Tennessee to live with an aunt. She would work as a teacher and in the summer attend Fisk University in Nashville.

In 1884, when she was 24, Ms. Wells (she married in 1895) was traveling on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in the “ladies’ car.” When a white man could not find a seat on the train, a conductor came to Ms. Wells and demanded that she move to the train car designated for black passengers.

Here is how she recounted the event: “I refused…I proposed to stay…[The conductor] tried to drag me out of the seat but the moment he caught hold of my arm I fastened by teeth in the back of his hand. I had braced my feet against the seat in front and was holding to the back, and as he had already been badly bitten he didn’t try it again by himself. He went forward and got the baggageman and another man…and…they succeeded in dragging me out.” [Italics added for emphasis.]

Ms. Wells sued the railroad - and won in a Tennessee Circuit Court. Unfortunately the Tennessee Supreme Court found in favor of the railroad. (In 1897, the Supreme Court established the legal doctrine of “separate, but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson which codified segregation across the U.S.)

This moment began Ms. Wells’ lifelong fight for the rights of African Americans and women. She purchased part-ownership in The Memphis Free Speech, an all-black publication which boldly covered civil rights issues in Tennessee. She ended up leaving the business and fleeing to Chicago in 1892 after the paper published her articles investigating the lynching of three black grocers. She received death threats.

In Chicago, she and Frederick Douglass co-wrote a pamphlet titled, The Reason Why the Colored American is Not at the World’s Columbian Exposition. (The 1893 Exposition was made famous in the book, Devil in the White City.) In response the leadership of the fair initiated a “Negro Day.” Ms. Wells and Mr. Douglass were unimpressed.

But her primary goal was to end lynching in the South. Peaking between the 1880s and the 1960s, Southern whites would take extra-legal actions against blacks who violated an unwritten “code” of behavior. Often in collusion with law enforcement lynch mobs would beat, burn, and hang black men, women, and children for unsubstantiated crimes, for speaking inappropriately, or any reason that would fire up the white population.

During her long fight for basic rights, Ms. Wells would meet with President William McKinley, tour England, and was a founding member of the NAACP and the National Association of Colored Women. 

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, whose husband Ferdinand founded the first black newspaper in Chicago, The Conservator, was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1988 and was honored with a U.S. postage stamp in 1990.

She passed away on March 25, 1931 at the age of 68.

Sources: www.idabewells.org, Webster University, Duke University, College of Staten Island, Encyclopedia of Chicago, The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History & Culture, National Women’s Hall of Fame, and Wikipedia

(Image of Mrs. Wells-Barnett is circa 1893 when she was in her early 30s. It is courtesy of www.googleartproject.com)

(via shickalenia)

unapproachableblackchicks:

TONI STONE
aka Marcenia Lyle Alberga

Toni Stone maybe one of the best ballplayer you’ve never heard of.

As a teenager she played with the local boy’s teams,in St.Paul, Minnesota. During World War ll she moved to San Francisco, playing first with an American Legion team, and then with the San Francisco Sea Lions, a black, semi-pro barnstorming team. She drove in two runs in her first time up at bat. She didn’t feel that the owner was paying her what they’d originally agreed on, so when the team played in New Orleans, she jumped ship and joined the Black Pelicans. From there she went to the New Orleans Creoles, part of the Negro League minors, where she made $300 a month in 1949.

The local press reported that she made several unassisted double plays, and batted .265.( Although the all American Girls Baseball League was active at the time, Toni Stone was not eligible to play. The AAGBL was a “white only” League, so Toni played on otherwise all-male teams. In 1953, Syd Pollack, owner of the Indianapolis Clowns, signed Toni to play second base, a position that had been recently vacated when Hank Aaron was signed by the Boston (soon to be Milwaukee) Braves. Toni became the first woman to play in the Negro Leagues. The Clowns had begun as a gimmick team, much like the Harlem Globetrotters, known as much for their showmanship as their playing. But by the 50’s they had toned down their antics and were playing straight baseball. Although Pollack claimed he signed Toni Stone for her skill as a player, not as a publicity stunt, having her on the team didn’t hurt revenues, which had been declining steadily since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the Majors, and many young black players left the Negro Leagues. She played the 1954 season for the Monarchs, but she could read the hand writing on the wall. The Negro Leagues were coming to an end, so she retired at the end of the season. She was inducted into the Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1993. She is Honored in two separate sections in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown; the “Women in Baseball” exhibit, and the Negro Leagues section.

Jackie who?

(via shickalenia)