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)
Josephine English was an American gynecologist who was the first black woman to open a private practice in New York. She was also known for her work in real estate and health care, in addition to her philanthropy in the arts. Her practice was jeopardized in 1995 due to financial issues with the Adelphi Medical Center. Many of her establishments have risked foreclosure, and lacked repair funds.
Biography
English was born on December 17, 1920 to Jennie English and Whittie Sr. in Ontario, Virginia. She moved to Englewood, New Jersey in 1939. Her family was one of the first black families in Englewood. She attended Hunter College for her Bachelor's Degree until 1949, and earned her Master's in Psychology at New York University. She initially wanted to become a psychiatrist, but ended up choosing gynecology after discovering her interest at Meharry Medical College where she earned her medical degree in gynecology.
Medical experience
English opened her practice at Harlem Hospital. Once in Brooklyn, she opened up a women's health clinic in Bushwick in 1956, as well as another in Fort Greene two decades later. During her career, English helped deliver 6,000 babies, including the children of Malcolm X, Betty Shabazz, and Lynn Nottage. In 1986, English received her license from the New York State Department of Health to establish her surgical center. She was the first minority and woman to be awarded this honor.
Philanthropy
English's interest in health care led her to establish the Adelphi Medical Center and child care programs, such as Up the Ladder Day Care and After School Program. Her passion for theater inspired her to establish the Paul Robeson Theater from a dilapidated church. She helped actors create performances to educate the populace on health and nutrition.
Death
English died on December 18, 2011 at 91 years old at the Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Nursing & Rehabilitation Center where she was recovering from surgery.
Legacy
English won the African Community Contribution Award as well as the Lucille Mason Rose Community Activist Award. In 1996, the Josephine English Foundation was created to fund English's pursuits.*
Beverley Drake (20 June 1956) is a Guyanese woman pilot and aviation expert who is an administrator and accident investigation analyst with the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). She was one of the first two woman pilots to work in the Guyana Defence Force, first woman commercial pilot of Guyana Airways, and was the first and only black woman to serve as a senior aviation accident investigator for the NTSB. She serves as the manager of the Federal Women's Program of the NTSB and program director of the Industry and Government Affairs division of the NTSB.
Early life
Beverley Drake was born on 20 June 1956 in Georgetown, Guyana ,to Elaine and Clive Drake. She grew up, youngest of two daughters of the family in the Costello Housing Scheme in the neighborhood known as "La Penitence". She was a tomboy and enjoyed playing cricket with the neighborhood boys and building model aircraft. She also shared a love of flying with her father, who had wanted to be a pilot. Drake attended St. Pius Primary School before graduating from St. Rose's High School in 1974. She went on to further her education, enrolling in a course for a degree in chemistry and biology at the University of Guyana in 1975. For two years, she pursued her scientific studies before winning a scholarship to study aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Ten days after she began her schooling, Drake's mother died suddenly. Through a difficult time, she resolved to remain in school and returned to her studies after the funeral. After completion of the coursework for instrument and crew management, as well as pilot licensing, Drake completed her flight training at the airfield, in Wallerfield, Trinidad. She received her commercial pilot's licence from Guyana in 1977.
Career
Upon completion of her training, Drake was hired as one of the first two woman pilots of the Guyana Defence Force, flying Britten-Norman Islanders. Her duties involved flying over Guyana's jungles, without navigational aids, to monitor the bush areas. Within six months, she was transferred to Guyana Airways as their first woman pilot and began flying Hawker Siddeley 748's and de Havilland Canada Twin Otters. Her flight schedule involved both local flying and international flights to Barbados, Dominica and Trinidad. During this time, she married an army major, Randolph Johnson.
Drake's first son, Kevin was born in 1979 in Guyana and came with her and her husband when they moved to the United States the following year. Johnson wanted to pursue career options in New York, but Drake found it difficult to continue flying in Brooklyn. She tried to join the US Air Force, but was turned away because she either didn't have the qualifications or wasn't a citizen. Four years after Kevin's birth, Drake had her younger son, Kurt. Unable to work in aviation, she took a temporary job in 1984 working for Goldman Sachs and joined clubs like the Negro Airmen International, for which she became secretary, and the Black Pilots of New York to keep up with her flying skills.
The job with Goldman Sachs as an analyst turned into a permanent position, though Drake recognized after the 1987 financial melt-down that it was unstable. As a working mother, she had to rely on babysitters, neighbors and friends to help out with her children when she worked nights. She also continued her networking with the Black Pilots of New York, and when another market crash occurred in 1989, Drake considered returning to aviation. One of the members of the pilots club encouraged her apply for a position as a junior investigator at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
In 1991, Drake was hired as an investigator and moved to Washington, D. C. When she joined the NTSB, Drake was surprised at the sexism she discovered and felt that she had to work "ten times better" than the others in the male-dominated field. She divorced in 1994 and returned to school, completing the program of the NTSB's Accident Investigation School and then a course on aircraft and helicopter accident investigation at the USC. Institute of Safety and Systems Management. Drake earned a bachelor's degree in aeronautics in 2002, and in 2005 completed her master's degree in Aeronautical Science, both with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. She later became the first black woman senior accident investigator of the NTSB. As of 2013, Drake was the only woman to in that capacity.
Drake serves as the manager of the NTSB's Federal Women's Program. As part of her duties in administration, Drake consults with aviation officials in various countries in an effort to improve their safety records. She has investigated over 300 crashes and shares her expertise as a means of helping reduce mechanical and environmental factors involved in aircraft accidents. In 2013, she was promoted to ProgramManager of the Office of the NTSB's Industry and Government Affairs division, which oversees forums and symposiums on air safety. She presents safety seminars throughout the United States, including those for the Experimental Aircraft Association and The National Air and Space Museum.
Legacy
In 2013, Drake's image was issued on a postage stamp in her native Guyana to honor her achievement as a pioneer pilot. She actively works to inspire and mentor young women to pursue careers in aviation and STEM fields.*
The purpose of practicing the synchronic order is to track multiple cycles , and to become aware of the synchronization of multiple cycles as different levels, stages or powers of consciousness.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2017-2018.
Sarah Douglass was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a prominent abolitionist family, the only daughter of abolitionists Robert Douglass, a baker, and Grace Bustill Douglass, a milliner and teacher. Douglass' grandfather, Cyrus Bustill, a Quaker who owned a bakery, operated a school in his home, was one of the early members of the Free African Society, an early African American charity organization. Douglass grew up among Philadelphia's elite, and according to C. Peter Ripley "[s]he received extensive [private] tutoring as a child."
She is part of the notable Bustill family in Philadelphia. Her brother was artist Robert Douglass, Jr. with whom she shared advertising space at his shop on Arch Street, where their family lived. Her cousin was artist David Bustill Bowser.
Education and career
In 1825, Douglass began teaching in Philadelphia at a school organized by her mother with James Forten, the wealthy African American sailmaker. Starting in 1833, she taught briefly at the Free African School for Girls, before establishing her own school for African American girls. She was soon recognized as a talented teacher, of the sciences and arts, at which she herself excelled, and for holding her students to high standards. In 1838, the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society took over the school, retaining Douglass as the headmaster. In 1854, the school merged with the Institute for Colored Youth – now Cheyney State University – on Lombard Street, and Douglass become the head of the primary department, a position she held until her retirement in 1877.
Douglass' role as an activist began as early as 1831, when at twenty-five, she organized the collection of money to send to William Lloyd Garrison to support The Liberator. Douglass also helped with the creation of the Female Literary Society, a group of African American women dedicated to improving their skills and deepening their identification with slave sisters.
Black literacy societies began forming in urban Northern cities in the late 1820's and early 1830's. These societies turned to reading as an invaluable method of acquiring knowledge and to writing as a means of asserting identity, recording information, and communicating with a black public that ranged from the literate to the semi-literate to the illiterate. Societies were based on the idea that for the welfare and survival of the community, individuals had to come together in larger groups that would both create a sense of national identity and collective spirit and would extend essential knowledge to the black community, both free and enslaved.
The Female Literacy Society (FLS) was formed in 1831 where Douglass was one of the organization leaders. The FSL was the first social libraries specially for African-American women. The Female Literary Society encouraged self-improvement through education for both the literate and illiterate and to both the free and enslaved. Education was to challenge white beliefs in the intellectual inferiority of African Americans. Douglass and the women of the Society believed that the "cultivation of intellectual powers" was the greatest human pursuit, because God had bestowed those powers and talents. It was their duty as women and African Americans to use those talents to try to break down the existing divides between African Americans and Whites, and to fight for equal rights to advance their race.
The members of the Female Literacy Society met every Tuesday with meetings devoted to reading and recitation for the purpose of "mutual improvement in moral and literacy pursuits". According to their supporter William Lloyd Garrison, nearly all of the members would weekly write original pieces, put anonymously into a box, that a committee afterwards criticized. Douglass herself often wrote prose and poetry, much of it published in "Ladies' Department" of The Liberator, The Colored American, and the Anglo-African Magazine under the pseudonym "Zillah" and possibly also "Sophonisba".
In an address to the Association in 1832 at a "mental feast", Douglass shared how the call to activism with the Female Literary Association came about:
"One short year ago, how different were my feelings on the subject of slavery! It is true, the wail of the captive sometimes came to my ear in the midst of my happiness, and caused my heart to bleed for his wrongs; but, alas! the impression was as evanescent as the early cloud and morning dew. I had formed a little world of my own, and cared not to move beyond its precincts. But how was the scene changed when I held the oppressor lurking on the border of my peaceful home! I saw his iron hand stretched forth to seize me as his prey, and the cause of the slave became my own. I started up, and with one mighty effort threw from me the lethargy which had covered me as a mantle for years; and determined, by the help of the Almighty, to use every exertion in my power to elevate the character of my wronged and neglected race."
With her mother, she was a founding member (1833) of the bi-racial Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. The Society, from the beginning, was interracial, including members of African American descent like Douglass along with white women members, like Lucretia Mott. The purpose of the society was to secure the total abolition of slavery as soon as possible, without any compensation to the slaveholders as well as to procure equal civil and religious rights with the white people of the United States.
On December 14, 1833, the society finalized their Constitution, which stated that they deemed it their duty "as professing Christians to manifest [their] abhorrence of the flagrant injustice and deep sin of slavery by united and vigorous exertions". Membership in the society was open to any woman who subscribed to these views and contributed to the Society.
The members of the Society subscribed to several antislavery journals such as Garrison's The Liberator and The Emancipator to circulate among the members and their friends. The Society also accumulated a small library of antislavery books and pamphlets for dissemination. "Within its first year, it also established a school for African American children. The Society also promoted the boycott of goods manufactured by slaves and lobbied for emancipation. This included circulating petitions to Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and other federal territories and for suppressing the slave trade between the American states." By 1840, Douglass had served in the group as a member of the board of directors, of the committee on annual fairs, of the education committee, recording and corresponding secretary, librarian, and manager.
From 1853 to 1877, Douglass studied anatomy, female health and hygiene, and acquired medical basic training at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania – becoming the first African American female student – and at the Ladies' Institute of Pennsylvania Medical University. Douglass' work at the medical institutes influenced her decision to lecture and teach evening classes to African American women at meetings of the Banneker Institute on issues of physiology and hygiene.
In 1855 she married William Douglass, the African American rector of African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, a widower with nine children. After her husband’s death in 1861, Douglass resumed her antislavery activities and teaching full-time.
She died in 1882 in Philadelphia.
In popular culture
Sarah Mapps Douglass appears as a main character in Ain Gordon's 2013 play If She Stood, commissioned by the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia.
Rosetta Douglass-Sprague (1839 June 24 – 1906) was a prominent African-American teacher and activist. She was a founding member of the National Association for Colored Women. Her father was Frederick Douglass.
Life
Rosetta was born to Anna Murray-Douglass and Frederick Douglass in 1839, in Bedford, Massachusetts. When she was five, she moved with her parents to Lynn, Massachusetts. She was the eldest of five children. Rosetta was a critical thinker like her father, but struggled against the demands of gender roles during her time. When she was six, she stayed with Abigail and Lydia Mott, from Albany, New York. Abigail taught her to read and write, and Lydia taught her to sew. At the age of 11, she assisted her father in making and packaging his newspaper. On December 24, 1863, she married Nathan Sprague. Her husband was an ex-slave and poorly educated, and struggled to find his footing and a job. She did not support her father's interracial marriage after her mother's death. She had seven children (including Fredericka Douglass Sprague Perry), and many grandchildren.
Education
In 1845, the Rochester Board of Education closed public schools to black students. Frederick Douglass sent Rosetta to a private school rather than send her to an all-black school that Rochester set up for black students. She eventually was tutored between the ages of two and seven. In 1848, Rosetta was admitted into the Seward Seminary in Rochester, New York. Rosetta was segregated from the white students while she was there, and her father spoke out against this in his newspaper. She also attended Oberlin College’s Young Ladies Preparatory and New Jersey's Salem Normal School.
Career
Douglass worked as a teacher. She eventually became primarily a homemaker and wife. She wrote the paper My Mother as I Recall Her in 1900, as well as the paper What Role is the Educated Negro Woman to Play in the Uplifting of Her Race?
Activism
Douglass worked with her father, and had a keen sense of social justice issues. She advised her father against accepting the presidency of the Freedman’s Bank. She went on to become a founding member of the National Association for Colored Women.*
Bernadine Newsom Denning (1930 – January 11, 2011) was an educator and civil rights activist.
She was born in Detroit. At the age of 16, she taught swimming at the Lucy Thurman branch of the Detroit YWCA. In 1951, she began work as a physical education teacher in Detroit public schools; she retired as assistant superintendent for community relations. She was also assistant professor of education at the University of Michigan. She served on the board of trustees for Central Michigan University.
Denning was director of the Title IV office for Detroit public schools and director of the human rights office for the city of Detroit. She was named director of the Office of Revenue Sharing for the United States Department of the Treasury by president Jimmy Carter. From 1975 to 1977, she was a member of the Michigan Women's Commission, also serving as vice-chair from 1976 to 1978 and as chair from 1981 to 1987. She was national vice-president and chairperson for the YWCA Convention, national vice president for the National Council of Negro Women and national project chairperson of Delta Sigma Theta.
In 1989, she was named to the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame. She also received the National Lifetime Achievement Award from the American YWCA.
Denning married baseball player Blaine Denning around 1957. The couple moved to Florida around2001.
She died at the age of 80 after suffering a heart attack at home in Port St. Lucie, Florida.*
