Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross around 1820 in Bucktown, Maryland. She would escape to Pennsylvania in 1849 and return to Maryland to free her family and others for the next ten years through the Underground Railroad... making about 13 trips. She worked for the union army as a spy, scout, nurse and cook from 1862 to 1865 during the American Civil War and would become a supporter of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, joining their cause in campaigning for women's suffrage.
Sojourner Truth was born Isabella Baumfree around 1797 in New York to Dutch slaveowners, the Hardenberghs. Overcoming the challenges of slavery, illiteracy, poverty, prejudice, and sexism in her own lifetime, she worked for freedom, to end racism by mobilizing thousands to support the abolition of slavery and support women's suffrage.
On August 7, 1945, Lise Meitner received a call from a reporter with a Swedish newspaper. He would tell her that the first uranium bomb had been used over Hiroshima. Said to be the equivalent of 20,000 tons of ordinary explosives, the bomb had destroyed five square miles of Hiroshima, killing between 70,000 to 100,000 people. A second would be dropped on Nagasaki with similar consequences.
In honor of Black Poetry Day, today's post shares a poem written by Litha Sovell of the Green Belt Movement in Tanzania. The holiday was enacted to celebrate Jupiter Hammon who is considered the first published black poet in the United states, born on the 17th of October 1711.
Amelia Earhart was born July 24, 1897 in Atchinson, Kansas to Edward & Amy Earhart. She saw her first plane—a biplane with double wings and built of wood, wire and oiled canvas—while attending the Iowa State Fair in 1908.
