Our blog tracks Jose Arguelles' Dreamspell Calendar. "As chaos and confusion rise, galactic consciousness based on the Law of Time serves as planetary medicine, lifting us into the awareness that we exist within a higher, more expanded realm of existence than the world of third-dimensional form and appearance. Daily practice will elevate consciousness and increase experiences of synchronicity." (Arguelles)
Marcy Borders (August 12, 1973 – August 24, 2015) was an American bank clerk who worked in the World Trade Center and survived its collapse, following the al-Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001. Stan Honda, a photographer for Agence France Presse, captured an image of Borders, completely covered in dust from the building collapse, that subsequently became widely described as "iconic". The image became so well-known and so widely distributed, that Borders became known as "The Dust Lady".
Personal impact
A resident of Bayonne, New Jersey, the 28-year-old Borders was working on the 81st floor inside of the North Tower at the time of the attack. According to The Routledge Companion to UK Counter-Terrorism, Borders said that she never recovered from the trauma of the attack. A decade-long depression led to a break-up with her partner, the loss of custody of her children, and an addiction to alcohol and drugs. Borders said that a key event in her recovery and return to sobriety was learning of the death of Osama bin Laden. Borders had preserved the outfit she wore in the iconic photo.
Cultural impact
The image Honda took of Borders became iconic; she was remembered in many retrospective articles about the attacks of 9/11. The Daily Telegraph chose her as one of the survivors they profiled on the tenth anniversary of the attack. Borders had been invited to spend the tenth anniversary of 9/11 at a memorial event in Germany.
Cancer diagnosis and death
Borders was diagnosed with stomach cancer in August 2014. Borders's cancer had already saddled her with a crippling debt of $190,000—even though she had not yet received surgery and she still needed additional chemotherapy. Borders said she could not even afford to get her prescriptions filled. She believed her cancer was triggered by the toxic dust she was exposed to when the World Trade Center collapsed, having once stated, "I definitely believe it because I haven't had any illnesses. I don't have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes." Borders died from cancer on August 24, 2015.
In fiction
Borders and Sharbat Gula are the two main characters of Pamela Booker's 2009 play Dust: Murmurs and a Play. Both Borders and Gula first became known to the public through iconic photos. Booker dedicated her play to Borders and Gula.*
The Black Women Oral History Project consists of interviews with 72 African American women from 1976 to 1981, conducted under the auspices of the Schlesinger Library of Radcliffe College, now Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Beginning in 1977, Ruth Edmonds Hill coordinated and devoted herself to the completion of the project and to creating awareness of the rich information contained in the transcripts. The project began with the goal of capturing the lives and stories of women of African descent, many already in their 70's, 80's and 90's. On the recommendation of Dr. Letitia Woods Brown, professor of history at George Washington University, and with funding secured from the Rockefeller Foundation, the project began to address what Dr. Brown noted as inadequate documentation of the stories of African-American women in the Schlesinger Library and at other centers for research.
The project sought a cross section of women who had made significant contributions to American society in the first half of the twentieth century. Many interviewees had professional careers in such fields as education, government, the arts, business, medicine, law and social work. Others combined care for their families with volunteer work at the local, regional, or national level. Most of the interviews explored topics such as family background, education and training, employment, voluntary activities, and family and personal life. The intention was to give the interviewee the opportunity to explore and reflect on the influences and events that shaped her life.
Participants
Among the participants were Melnea Cass, Zelma George, Dorothy Height, Queen Mother Moore, Rosa Parks, Esther Mae Scott, Muriel S. Snowden, and Dorothy West.
Volume 2 of the published work features conversations with Sadie Alexander, Elizabeth Barker, and Etta Moten Barnett.
Volume 3 includes interviews with Juanita Craft, Alice Dunnigan, and Eva B. Dykes, while Volume 10 features Charleszetta Waddles, Dorothy West, and Addie Williams.
All of the interviews are open for research with digitized materials, with the exception of the following: Merze Tate whose interview is not yet complete and five interviews that remain closed until 2027: Kathleen Adams, Margaret Walker Alexander, Lucy Miller Mitchell, Ruth Janetta Temple, and Era Bell Thompson.
Name Year(s) Note
Jessie Abbott 1977 Wife of Cleve Abbott; secretary to Margaret M. Washington, Jennie B. Moton, and George W. Carver
Christia Adair 1977Suffragist and civil rights worker
Frankie V. Adams 1977Atlanta-based educator, activist, and author
Kathleen Adams 1976, 1977One of the first black supervisors in Atlanta's public schools
Frances M. Albrier 1977, 1978Civil rights activist and community leader
Margaret Walker 1977Poet and novelist
Sadie Alexander 1977One of the first three black women in the United States ever to receive a PhD
Elizabeth C. Barker 1976, 1977One of the Cardozo Sisters; granddaughter of Francis L. Cardozo; niece of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller
Etta Moten 1985Opera star and actress
Norma Boyd 1976Educator, co-founder of Alpha Kappa Alpha
Melnea Cass1977Civil rights activist
May Chinn 1979Physician
Juanita Craft1977Civil rights activist
Clara Dickson 1978Mashpee, Massachusetts community activist
Alice Dunnigan 1977Journalist
Alfreda Duster1978Social worker; daughter of Ida B. Wells
Eva Dykes1977One of the first three black women in the United States to receive a PhD
Mae Eberhardt 1979Trade unionist
Florence Edmonds 1980Nurse and trainer of nurses
Lena Edwards1977Physician and educator; recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Dorothy Ferebee1979Obstetrician and civil rights activist
Minnie Fisher1979Teacher, lifelong resident of Mound Bayou, Mississippi
Katherine Flippin1977, 1978Head Start organizer
Virginia Gayton1977Granddaughter of Lewis G. Clarke, on whom the character of George Harris is based in Uncle Tom's Cabin
Zelma George 1978Musicologist, actress
Frances Grant1977Teacher at the Bordentown School and Fieldston School
Ardie C. Halyard1978Banker, first woman president of the Milwaukee NAACP
Pleasant Harrison1979Granddaughter of slave; craftswoman; built her own home
Anna A. Hedgeman1978, 1979Civil rights leader
Dorothy Height1974, 1975, 1976Educator and civil rights activist
Beulah Hester1978Boston Social Worker, graduate of Simmons College
May Hill 1978Social Worker; wife of Daniel Hill, theologian at Howard University; mother of Daniel G. Hill
Margaret C. Holmes1977One of the Cardozo Sisters; wife of Eugene C. Holmes, chairman of the philosophy department at Howard University
Clementine Hunter1979First black artist to exhibit at the New Orleans Museum of Art
Ellen S. Jackson1978, 1979Boston school desegregation pioneer
Fidelia Johnson1976Teacher; daughter of Grambling State University founder Charles P. Adams
Lois Mailou Jones1977Painter
Susie Jones 1977Wife of Bennett College president David Dallas Jones
Virginia L. Jones1978Librarian and educator
Hattie Kelly 1976Dean of women at the Tuskegee Institute; studied under Booker T. Washington
Maida S. Kemp1977Labor organizer
Flemmie Kittrell1977Nutritionist
Abna Lancaster1978Graduate of Shaw University; instructor at Livingstone College; daughter of Achimota College co-founder James Aggrey
Eunice R. Laurie1977Nurse and trainer of nurses
Catherine C. Lewis1980One of the Cardozo Sisters
Inabel Lindsay1977First dean of the Howard University School of Social Work
Miriam Matthews1977Librarian and historian
Eliza McCabe 1977Clubwoman, music teacher, member of Woman's Christian Temperance Union
Lucy M. Mitchell1977Pioneer in early childhood education
Audley Moore 1978Civil rights leader and black nationalist
Annie Nipson 1978Domestic worker from North Carolina; migrant to the North
Rosa Parks 1978Civil rights leader
Rucker Sisters1977Granddaughters of Georgia politician Jefferson Long
Esther Mae Scott1977Singer, musician, and composer
Julia Smith 1978Schoolteacher; donated hundreds of photographs to the Museum of Afro- American History
Muriel S. Snowden1977Founder of Freedom House
Olivia P Stokes1979Educator; the first African-American woman to receive a doctorate in Religious Education
Ann Tanneyhill1978Active in the National Urban League from 1930 to 1971
Merze Tate1978, 1979History professor at Howard University; expert on international relations
Ruth Temple 1978First black women to practice medicine in California
Constance Thomas1977Dancer, American Negro Theatre performer, speech therapist
Era Bell Thompson1978Editor of Ebony magazine
Mary Thompson1977Massachusetts dentist, humanitarian, NAACP branch co-founder
Bazoline Usher1977Teacher at Booker T. Washington High School; Georgia Women of Achievement inductee
Charleszetta Waddles 1980Activist, Pentecostal minister, and humanitarian
Dorothy West 1978Harlem Renaissance writer; friend of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and others
Addie Williams1977, 1978Schoolteacher; daughter of slaves
Frances H. Williams1977Civil rights activist
Ozeline Wise 1978Linotype operator; sister of Satyra Bennett, a Cambridge civic leader
Deborah Wolfe1979Educator, author, president of the National Alliance of Black School Educators
Arline Yarbrough1977Clubwoman; founder of a black historical society
Methodology
The interviews were recorded on audiotape and transcribed and each interviewee was given an opportunity to edit and correct the transcript prior to the final printing. Both the transcripts and audiotapes have been archived and preserved at the Schlesinger Library. Copies of these materials are also held in the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College and include the published guide to the transcripts; also the summary of each woman’s life and highlights of topics from their interviews, as well as an index. Furthermore, the interviews and transcripts have been digitized and are available from the Schlesinger Library collection Black Women Oral History Project finding aid.
Related projects
In 1981, Judith Sedwick offered to create portraits of a few of the interviewees, and later, with additional grant funding, photographed many more. The result is a collection of stunning photographs, which became a traveling exhibition, first shown in 1984 at the New York Public Library. All of these photographs are also catalogued at Harvard's Visual Information Access (VIA) database and available to view as a collection under "Black Women Oral History".*
The purpose of Cosmic History is to imprint those galactic frequencies into the noosphere which arouse a positive image or order of reality into the collective mind.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2017-2018.
Angela Benton (born May 22, 1981) is the Founder & CEO of NewME Accelerator. She has been recognized as a change agent and one of the Internet industries' influencers by numerous publications and outlets. NewME has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs launch businesses and raise funding from investors, most notably several companies from their equity portfolio have raised over $25MM in funding since its launch in 2011. Under NewME she publishes B20 (formerly Black Web 2.0) the premier online publication for African-Americans interested in Technology and New Media. Additionally, Angela and the NewME Accelerator were featured in CNN’s award winning documentary series Black in America: The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley in 2011.
Early life
Benton was born in Chicago, Ill., but spent most of her childhood growing up outside of Washington DC in Northern Virginia. She had her first child at 16 while attending Stonewall Jackson High School in Manassas, VA. Both resilient and determined, Benton graduated high school in 3 years and went on to attend several colleges, graduating magna cum laude in 2004. As a young, single mother, Benton made her own way into the world of design and coding in digital media, working in a number of capacities for the web giant, IAC. But Benton found her calling when she launched Black Web 2.0, which filled a gap for African-American professionals and aspirants in the digital space.
Early Career and Education
Benton’s experience spans a variety of industries and roles. She has worked at several IAC businesses including RealEstate.com, LendingTree.com, and RushmoreDrive.com. Additionally, she has held roles at Bizjournals.com, UPS, and Homes of Color Magazine. Throughout her career she has worked in a variety of roles in design, marketing, development, and digital strategy.
She graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Communications and a specialization in Digital Design. She has also completed postgraduate coursework in Graphic Design from Savannah College of Art and Design.
Black Web 2.0
Benton launched Black Web 2.0 in August 2007. It is said that the site was launched out of her frustration to find information on what Blacks were doing in technology both from an entrepreneurial/startup and corporate perspective. The site quickly gained community among Black digerati and early adopters, giving them a place to be heard and featured. Markus Robinson, a partner in the site and its COO until 2010, was a key figure in growing the platform. In the early days of Black Web 2.0 Benton served as the editor and main writer for the site, along with Robinson, and used the platform to feature and discuss key topics in Black Culture, technology, and the intersection of the two. The duo often critiqued products and the digital strategies of African-American media businesses. They also forecasted trends in the arena, quickly becoming leading experts in the space.
In late 2010 Markus Robinson became a technology executive at Interactive One (Radio One). In 2013 NewME Accelerator acquired Black Web 2.0 and re-branded the site as B20. The new direction is more inspirational than previous versions, curating up and coming innovators/entrepreneurs and profiling their businesses, lives, and backgrounds. Benton's role has transitioned from Editor to CEO of the company that owns the site.
NewME & NewME Accelerator
In May 2010 Benton held a private summit called NewME Conference in Washington DC. The day and a half program included Black and Latino entrepreneurs, private equity investors, and top government officials like FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. The event, similar to a think tank, focused on gathering information from its attendees on how to make minority tech entrepreneurs more successful.
In November 2010 Benton traveled to Silicon Valley on an invitation from Google to speak to the company's Black Googler Network (BGN). During the trip she held an informal meet-up called NewME Meetup in the heart of the startup world, Palo Alto. Benton's work with the NewME Conference was a key ingredient for the launch of the NewME Accelerator.
In early 2011 Benton and Wayne Sutton collaborated on the first technology incubator (accelerator) for minorities, NewME Accelerator. The pair worked on the first iteration for 3 months and launched the program that helped 10 minority technology founders (8 of whom traveled from across the country and lived in a home together), primarily Black at the time, in June 2011. Uniquely, both Benton and Sutton embedded themselves into the program while also working on startup ideas of their own (Cued and Vouch) and running the accelerator. The program lasted 9 weeks and was both pivotal and groundbreaking on several fronts.
The first year of the program was a success, connecting participating Founders with a Silicon Valley network, over half a million dollars in funding, and notoriety from leading publications (mainstream and industry trades) like The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, TechCrunch, and CNN. Key figures who participated in the program as mentors, speakers, or supporters are: Mitch Kapor, Tristan Walker, Vivek Wadhwa, Navarrow Wright, Google, Twitter, Facebook, et al.
In 2012 Sutton moved on to work with other projects in the technology industry and NewME. Accelerator was re-branded as NewME, which includes a variety of projects Benton works on to change the face of entrepreneurship in the technology industry. In 2013 NewME acquired B20, formerly Black Web 2.0, and launched a virtual version of the 12-week residential program called NewME VR. NewME has helped over 300 entrepreneurs in more than 5 countries. Its equity portfolio of companies has raised over $16MM since its launch in 2011.
CNN's Black in America & Silicon Valley's Race Problem
The NewME Accelerator's inaugural class was featured on CNN's fourth installment of Black in America, reported by award-winning journalist Soledad O'Brien. Benton was featured as one of the primary subjects in the documentary. The film's focus was on chronicling the stories of 8 NewME Accelerator participants who traveled to Silicon Valley to work on their startups, catapulted the NewME Accelerator to the national stage, and sparked a heated industry debate on the lack of minorities in technology. At the height of the debate tech maven Michael Arrington, known for his off- color comments, became a target of criticism.
Influence and accomplishments
Rankings Fast Company named Benton one of their Most Influential Women in Technology in 2010. Additionally, she has been included in Ebony’s annual Power 150 list since its December 2010/January 2011 issue. In 2010 she was ranked on The Root 100, an annual list of influential African-American's published by TheRoot.com, owned by The Washington Post. In 2011 she was ranked on that same list. In 2012, The Grio (founded by NBC News) published its list of African-American change makers, The Grio 100. Benton was ranked on that list. In February 2012 Benton was listed in 40 Women of Power under 40 by Black Enterprise Magazine. Business Insider named her one of the "25 Most Influential African-Americans in Technology".
Awards & Hall of Fame
Benton was inducted into Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC) Hall of Fame in 2010. She was 29 at the time of her induction and is the youngest to be inducted. Other notable individuals in MMTC's Hall of Fame include Bob Johnson, Cathy Hughs, etc.
In 2010 Benton was a Woman of Power honoree by the National Urban League at their centennial conference in Washington DC. Other honorees included Laila Ali, Angela Bassett, etc.
Goldman Sachs recently (2013) named her one of the "100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs."*
Patricia Era Bath (born November 4, 1942, in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City) is an American ophthalmologist, inventor, and academic. She has broken ground for women and African Americans in a number of areas. Prior to Bath, no woman had served on the staff of the Jules Stein Eye Institute, headed a post-graduate training program in ophthalmology, or been elected to the honorary staff of the UCLA Medical Center (an honor bestowed on her after her retirement). Before Bath, no black person had served as a resident in ophthalmology at New York University and no black woman had ever served on staff as a surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center. Bath is the first African-American woman doctor to receive a patent for a medical purpose. The holder of four patents, she also founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in Washington, D.C.
Early life and education
Born on November 4, 1942, in Harlem, Manhattan, Bath is the daughter of Rupert and Gladys Bath. Her father, an immigrant from Trinidad, was a newspaper columnist, a merchant seaman and the first black man to work for the New York City Subway as a motorman. Her father inspired her love for culture and encouraged Bath to explore different cultures. Her mother descended from African slaves. She decided to be a homemaker while her children were young and later became a housekeeper to help fund her children's education. Raised in Harlem, Bath struggled with sexism, racism, and poverty though she was encouraged academically by her parents. It was evident to Bath's teachers that she was a gifted student and they pushed her to explore her strengths in school. With the help of a microscope set she was given as a young child, Bath discovered her love for math and science. Bath attended Charles Evans Hughes High School where she excelled at such a rapid pace that she earned her diploma in just two and a half years.
There were no black physicians that Bath knew of in her youth. She was raised in a predominantly black community, where blacks were not accepted into many medical schools. It was difficult for her to attend medical school since her family did not have the financial resources.
Inspired by Albert Schweitzer's work in medicine, Bath applied for and won a National Science Foundation Scholarship while attending high school; this led to a research project at Yeshiva University and Harlem Hospital Center on connections between cancer, nutrition and stress which shifted her field of concentration to medicine. The head of the research program realized the significance of her findings and published them in a scientific paper which he later presented. In 1960, while still a teenager, Bath won the "Merit Award" of Mademoiselle magazine for her contribution to the project.
Bath received her Bachelor of Arts in chemistry from Manhattan's Hunter College in 1964. She relocated to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University College of Medicine, from which she received her medical degree in 1968. During her time at Howard, she was president of the Student National Medical Association and received fellowships from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health.
Bath interned at Harlem Hospital Center, subsequently serving as a fellow at Columbia University. Bath traveled to Yugoslavia in 1967 to study children's health which resulted in her awareness, that the practice of eye care was uneven among racial minorities and poor populations, with much higher incidence of blindness among black and poor patients. She determined that, as a physician, she would address this issue. She persuaded her professors from Columbia to operate gratis on blind patients at Harlem Hospital Center, which had not previously offered eye surgery. Bath pioneered the worldwide discipline of "community ophthalmology", a volunteer-based outreach service to bring necessary eye care to under served populations.
She served her residency in ophthalmology at New York University from 1970 to 1973, the first African American in her field to do so.
Career
After completing her education, Bath served briefly as an assistant professor at Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science before becoming the first woman on faculty at the Eye Institute. In 1978, Bath co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness, for which she served as president. In 1983, she became the head of a residency in her field at Charles R. Drew, the first woman ever to head such a department. In 1993, she retired from UCLA, which subsequently elected her the first woman on its honorary staff.
She served as a professor of Ophthalmology at Howard University's School of Medicine and as a professor of Telemedicine and Ophthalmology at St. Georges University. She was among the co-founders of the King-Drew Medical Center ophthalmology training program.
Bath has lectured internationally and authored over 100 papers.
Inventions
Bath holds four patents in the United States. In 1981, she conceived the Laserphaco Probe, a medical device that improves on the use of lasers to remove cataracts, and "for ablating and removing cataract lenses". The device was completed in 1986 after Bath conducted research on lasers in Berlin and patented it in 1988, making her the first African-American woman to receive a patent for a medical purpose. The device — which quickly and nearly painlessly dissolves the cataract with a laser, irrigates and cleans the eye and permits the easy insertion of a new lens — is used internationally to treat the disease. Bath has continued to improve the device and has successfully restored vision to people who have been unable to see for decades.
Three of Bath's four patents relate to the Laserphaco Probe. In 2000, she was granted a patent for a method she devised for using ultrasound technology to treat cataracts.
Honors
Bath has been honored by two of her universities. Hunter College placed her in its "hall of fame" in 1988 and Howard University declared her a "Howard University Pioneer in Academic Medicine" in 1993. A children's picture book on her life and science work, The Doctor with an Eye for Eyes: The Story of Dr. Patricia Bath (The Innovation Press, ISBN 9781943147311) was published in 2017, and was cited by both the National Science Teachers Association and the Chicago Public Library's list of best kids books of the year.*
