THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 2, 1996 TAG: 9603020242
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Charlise Lyles
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
Just when you think you're done with those months commemorating minorities, here comes March, Women's History Month.
Of course, women are not a minority. But a lot of the time, we are stereotyped, underestimated and discriminated against. That good old minority ``treatment,'' if you know what I mean.
And what should arrive in the mail this week to help kick off the celebration?
``Black Women In America, An Historical Encyclopedia'' by Darelen Clark Hine, a Michigan State University historian.
Hmmmmm. . . . Let's see who is listed under V for Virginia. . . .
There are doctors, midwives, political advocates, educators, authors.
Women like Leontine T.C. Kelly, former pastor of the Asbury United Methodist Church in Richmond. She became the first black woman bishop of a major religious denomination.
``For me, the crux of the gospel message is the way we share power. One of the things women bring to the situation in terms of sharing power is new styles of leadership,'' Kelly is quoted as saying.
``I am no less the bishop. I know where the buck stops and who is responsible. But that doesn't mean that I have to exert power in such a way that other people feel they are less than who they are because of who I am.''
Military history abounds: Margaret Corbin, better known as Captain Molly, actually bore arms and was wounded in the 1776 attack on Ft. Washington. Mary Elizabeth Bowser, a slave girl, joined Harriet Tubman as a spy during the Civil War.
During the Spanish-American War, the U.S. Surgeon General requested a corps of black women to nurse a black regiment. Phyllis Daley broke the color barrier into the Navy Nurse Corps in 1945.
And take this, Saddam Hussein: A black woman downed the first Scud missile in the Persian Gulf War, according to Hine. That was Lt. Phoebe Jeter. Go, girl. As many as 40 percent of the 35,000 female troops were black women. Three did not come home.
There's a whole section on what avid club-founders black women are. Hampton Roads' own Joyce Brown gave birth to The CHUMS.
And there are unusual career categories to encourage those who march to a different beat: aviators like Willa Beatrice Brown who, with her husband, founded the Coffey School of Aeronautics in Chicago to train black pilots during the Depression; and modern women like Clementine LeTouze, who works in Paris as a press attache for major design houses and boutiques. The shell is just beginning to break for black women in the fashion industry on the other side of the cameras.
So many others: Educator Mary McLeod Bethune, who founded Bethune Cookman College; Marjorie Lee Browne, who was one of the first black women to receive a doctorate in mathematics; astronaut Mae Jemison.
There is even an insightful analysis of the stereotypes that have plagued black women, such as Aunt Jemima.
The encyclopedia has historical value and more.
I read a news story recently about low self-esteem in black female teenagers. Well, this 1,530-page, two-volume tome offers role models for days, enough to boost the sagging self-esteem of any girl whose mantra has become ``I can't.'' Just flip through the pages and see what a woman can do. Against incredible odds.
Urge your local public library to buy these volumes. Send your daughter, wife, mother, sister, father, brother to read about them.
Everywoman. They're all in these pages. by CNB