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Article

Jones, Edith Mae Irby  

Mary Krane Derr

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

physician and community leader, was born Edith Mae Irby in Conway, Arkansas, to Mattie Irby, a domestic worker, and her husband Robert, a sharecropper. Several childhood experiences—some traumatic—shaped Edith's early choice of medicine as her profession and the relief of racial health disparities as her special focus. When she was only five, an illness rendered her unable to walk for eighteen months. At six she lost her thirteen-year-old sister and almost lost an older brother in a typhoid fever epidemic. She noticed that people who could afford more medical care fared better with the disease. When she was eight a horse-riding accident fatally injured her father.

The year of her father s death a white doctor and his family hired Edith to help care for their eighteen month old child They told Edith that she was highly intelligent and encouraged her to consider a medical career Members ...

Article

Ocloo, Esther Afua  

Akosua Darkwah

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

Ghanaian entrepreneur and micro-credit pioneer in Ghana, was born at Peki-Dzake, a town located in the Volta Region of Ghana, on 18 April 1919. Her father, George Asia Kwami Nkulenu, and mother, Georgina Gblezo Gbo, were poor farmers who were supportive of her educational endeavors. With financial support provided by the Cadbury chocolate company, Ocloo was able to attend the prestigious Achimota School, from which she graduated in 1941 with a Cambridge Ordinary Level Certificate.

At Achimota, Ocloo took home science classes where she learned the art of marmalade-making. In 1943 with a gift from her aunt of ten shillings the equivalent of half a British shilling she bought oranges jars firewood as well as sugar and made twelve jars of marmalade which she sold for a shilling each around the government offices of Accra the capital city of Ghana Having made a 20 percent profit on her ...

Article

Ramphele, Mamphela  

Leslie Hadfield

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

political activist, medical doctor, academic, and businesswoman, was born on 28 December 1947 the third child of two Sotho primary school teachers in the Bochum district of South Africa s Limpopo province then the Transvaal Her father Pitsi Eliphaz Ramphele was the son of a trained evangelist or priest of the Dutch Reformed Church He met his wife Rangoato Rahab Mahlaela at the Bethesda Normal College where they both trained as teachers The two teachers provided a relatively comfortable life for their family and urged their children to succeed academically Ramphele learned from her mother and grandmothers of the strength of women through their strong work ethics and challenges to patriarchal traditions Ramphele was given the name Mamphela Aletta after her maternal grandmother Ramphele was born one year before the white Afrikaner Nationalist Party gained political power in South Africa and began to implement apartheid a set of policies ...

Article

Still, William  

Rodger C. Henderson

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
06 April 2006
Published online:
01 December 2006

William Still was born in Shamong, New Jersey, to Levin Steel and his wife, Sidney, both of whom were former slaves. Levin Steel bought his freedom and moved from Maryland to New Jersey; his wife escaped from slavery, was recaptured by slave hunters, escaped again in 1807 with some of her children, and finally joined her husband. To avoid reenslavement, they changed their last name to Still, and Sidney renamed herself Charity. William, the youngest of eighteen children, moved to Philadelphia in 1844 and married Letitia George in 1847. The couple had four children, Caroline, Ella, William W., and Robert.

Still took a job as a clerk at the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery in 1847, thus beginning his lifelong work of ending slavery and working for black civil rights. Shortly after Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 Still became an agent ...

Article

Switzer, Veryl Allen  

Angela Bates

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

professional football player, businessman, and historic preservationist, was the youngest of six children born to Fred and Ora Switzer of Nicodemus, an all African American town in northwestern Kansas. He grew up playing football on the dusty dirt streets of Nicodemus. He liked fishing and hunting and especially helping with farm chores. He attended grade school at Nicodemus until the eighth grade and then attended nearby Bogue High School. While in high school he played on the football and basketball teams and ran track. He lettered each year in all three sports.

Upon graduation in 1950, Switzer entered Kansas State University as one of the first African Americans to receive a football scholarship to the university. While at Kansas State he lettered three years in both football and track and was named to the All Big Seven three years in a row. In 1952 Switzer ...