Black History-Making Women
They are their ancestors' wildest dreams
Dasia Taylor - A stitch in time saves lives
As a 17-year-old student at Iowa City West High School, Dasia invented color-changing sutures to detect infection.
Working with an eye on equity in global health, Dasia intends the color-changing sutures will aid in timely detection of surgical site infections so patients can seek medical care when it matters most.
Viola Desmond - She fought the law & the law won... ish
In 1946, Nova Scotia's Viola Desmond was a successful 32-year-old who, inspired by Madame C.J.Walker, owned her own salon, beauty school & the makeup line Sepia for "darker skin tones". Accomplishments that would be impressive in their own right, but... of course... racism.
Canada didn't have legally mandated segregation, so she could never have imagined that her seat in a movie theater would, 10 years later, be compared to that of Claudette Colvin or Rosa Parks. Or, that 72 years later, the government would apologize with an honor previously bestowed solely to the Queen.
Pictured: Wanda Robson, Viola's sister, at 91 accepting the first bill in 2018,
Olayemi Olurin - Her mission is abolition
Olay's mission is decarceration and the abolition of the prison industrial complex. She'll be the first to tell you, she doesn't love the law, she loves what she can do with it; and as a Legal Aid lawyer in NYC she serves as an advocate for those who would get lost and, likely, abused in prisons like Riker's for months and even years before their due process.
As the host of the podcast & YouTube channel, Olurinatti, Olay talks hosts conversations and debates on justice, injustice and intersectional civil rights with some of The Culture's greatest minds on topics you likely won't hear anywhere else, and with a candor you most definitely won't hear anywhere else.
Dr Uché Blackstock - How US Healthcare Harms Black Health
It's hard to wrap one's head around racism's effects on a molecular level, but ask Dr Blackstock what the #1 killer of Black people is, and she'll tell you racism. Through her work, she encountered a phenomenon known as weathering - the stress of racism is literally aging Black people's bodies at a faster rate; not only faster than their white contemporaries but faster than immigrants from majority Black countries.
She and her twin sister's mother was also a doctor, all 3 Harvard Medicine graduates, and all three making Black American-informed medicine a necessary part of their practice. The twins continue their mother's legacy by working to correct racial medical inequities.