First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights leader Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune successfully advocated for the admittance of African American women as enlisted personnel and officers
I’ve always been grateful for people who go above and beyond and have a heart for helping others. As a child I experienced abandonment by my biological mother and sexual abuse by my father. I was raised primarily by my paternal grandmother who instilled certain core values into me that have guided my life. My grandmother encouraged my activities in school, church and community and because of the various activities I was involved with, I became a “product of the community.” As I worked in the community, the community sowed back into my life. Many people went above and beyond to help me, and they became the PLUS in my life.
Madeleine Albright said, “There is plenty of room in the world for mediocre men, but there is no room for mediocre women.” History will show 2018 as the year of the woman. Whether we look at what came from the #MeToo Movement or the results from the midterm elections where a record number of women around the country were voted to various positions. People have fallen in love with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and when she fell and broke several ribs, we were even willing to give up our own to help her heal. We have examples all around us every day of women who are anything but mediocre. Even when we fall, we get right back up.
Every day I wear a pair of medallions around my neck with portraits of two of my role models: Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. As a child I read books about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. She and indomitable and eloquent slave woman Sojourner Truth represent countless thousands of anonymous slave women whose bodies and minds were abused and whose voices were muted by slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and confining gender roles throughout our nation’s history. Although Harriet Tubman could not read books, she could read the stars to find her way north to freedom. And she freed not only herself from slavery, but returned to slave country again and again through forests and streams and across mountains to lead other slaves to freedom at great personal danger. She was tough. She was determined. She was fearless. She was shrewd and she trusted God completely to deliver her, and other fleeing slaves, from pursuing captors who had placed a bounty on her life.