GumGum Black History Month Spotlights : Week 4

In celebration of Black History Month, each week GumGummers will be spotlighting inspiring Black Americans throughout history through the present day who have made an impact and mark in the world.

This week we’ll be highlighting Sojourner Truth, Henrietta Lacks, Katherine Johnson, and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Read more about them below.

Sojourner Truth was born into slavery, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. She then sued for and won the return of her 5-year-old son who was illegally sold into slavery. In 1851, Truth began a lecture tour including an appearance at a women's rights conference that featured her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech. This speech challenged the prevailing notions of racial and gender inferiority and inequality at the root of American society. In addition to this, she collected thousands of signatures petitioning to provide former slaves with land.

Truth pursued political equality for all women and spoke against other abolitionists who were only pursuing civil rights for Black men. As the abolitionist movement advanced, so did Truth's reputation. Her memoirs - The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave - were published in 1850 and she toured and spoke before ever-larger crowds. During the Civil War, she helped recruit Black troops for the Union Army, which earned her an audience with President Abraham Lincoln.

I would encourage you all to read "Ain't I a Woman?" as well as to learn more about Sojourner Truth, whose principles are just as relevant today in the fight for racial equality and justice: https://www.nps.gov/articles/sojourner-truth.htm


Henrietta Lacks (1920-1951)

After being diagnosed with cervical cancer at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1951, a sample of Lacks’ cancer cells were taken without her consent by a researcher. And though she succumbed to the disease at the age of 31 that same year, her cells would go on to advance medical research for years to come, as they had the unique ability to double every 20-24 hours. “They have been used to test the effects of radiation and poisons, to study the human genome, to learn more about how viruses work, and played a crucial role in the development of the polio vaccine,” Johns Hopkins said. In 2017, Oprah starred in and executive produced HBO’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, adapted from the book by Rebecca Skloot.

For more information, please visit the Henrietta Lacks Foundation website: http://henriettalacksfoundation.org/

Katherine Johnson (1918-2020). The significance of NASA being able to send John Glenn around the earth three successful times is well-documented, well-reported on and appropriately looked at as one of the more important gains in air and space. The critical nugget that always was missing was the unseen black female force that helped him get there.

Katherine Johnson was a physicist and mathematician who helped launch the first use of digital electronic computers at NASA, the independent federal government agency that handles aerospace research, aeronautics and the civilian space program. Her wisdom with numbers and accuracy was so highly regarded that her sign-off was paramount for NASA to modernize itself with digital computers. To be clear, Johnson wasn’t alone — many black women were hired by NASA in the early 1950s to work in the Guidance and Navigation Department. But it was Johnson who was plucked out of the pool to work with an all-male flight research team. It was Johnson who helped calculate the orbit for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the moon. And it was Johnson who co-authored scientific papers, which NASA still links to via its archives.

Johnson was a genius. She was a math prodigy who was 14 years old when she graduated from high school, 18 years old when she earned a double degree in math and French from West Virginia State College. And she helped to integrate the graduate school at West Virginia University — where she was one of three black students and, ahem, the lone woman — after a Supreme Court ruling. Yes, she has a story worth telling. In 2015, then-President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her pioneering work that led black women to work in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (edited) 

Ketanji Brown Jackson (1970 - )  On the last Friday of Black History Month, history has been made with President Joe Biden selecting Ketanji BrownJackson as his nominee to the Supreme Court.  Judge Kentanji Brown Jackson is the first Black woman to be nominated to be a Supreme Court Justice and if confirmed, she will be the first Black Supreme Court Justice. Read more here: https://time.com/6146624/history-first-black-woman-supreme-court-justice-nominee



Special thanks to the Voice Coalition and all who participated in sharing the stories of Black Americans who made and are currently making history, during this Black History Month at GumGum.