Black History Month

4 posts

Black History Month: Henrietta Lacks

I’m currently reading The Emperor of All Maladies. It’s a great book on the history of cancer and cancer treatments. Reading it is like sitting in the observation desk of a surgical theater while a new and especially tricky procedure is being conducted. You are witnessing one of the scariest moments of someone’s life and the most triumphant moment in another’s. Yet your attention is not on the sedated person, the one who will pay with their life should things not go as planned. Your attention is on the person in the scrubs, with the knife. Continue reading →

Black History Month: Nancy Hicks Maynard

Nancy Hicks Maynard (1946-2008) was the first black woman reporter for the New York Times, to cover hard news. Together with her husband Robert Maynard they were the first and only black publishers of a daily metropolitan newspaper, the Oakland Tribune. Along with seven other journalists, they also founded the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, currently based in Oakland.

Maynard, born and raised in Harlem, paid her dues at the New York Post before she was hired by the Times at the age of 21. While not the first black woman reporter at the Times (that honor goes to society reporter Bernadette Carey), she did up the ante by covering some of the most important news  stories of the day. Continue reading →

Black History Month, Athlete Week: Debi Thomas


The 1980s was a huge decade for black women. Angela Davis made her first Vice Presidential run in 1980. In 1982, Alice Walker was the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple. Toni Morrison doubled down on the ass kicking when she won the Nobel Prize for literature later that year. On the opposite, but no less notable end of the achievement spectrum, Vanessa Williams was the first black woman to win the Miss America pageant, in 1984, and the first black woman to turn a public nudity and over-blown, puritanical rage incident into a hit record and successful acting career. Ah! The infancy of equality!

Returning to sports, one of the most notable people of this decade was groundbreaking, world champion, figure skater Debi Thomas. Continue reading →