Love this thread. Alma Thomas, another DC local.

You can see her work here:
https://www.si.edu/exhibitions/composing-color-paintings-alma-thomas%3Aevent-exhib-6537

Anonymous wrote:Maude E. Callen



She was a 'doctor, dietician, psychologist, bail-goer and friend' to thousands of mostly African Americans crippled by poverty in the 1950s.

Yet tireless South Carolina nurse-midwife Maude Callen - who delivered hundreds of children, cared for the elderly and educated midwifery students in a 400-mile area 'veined with muddy roads' - never considered herself a hero.

Her's was a labor of love, captured in these extraordinary black and white photographs taken by legendary shooter W. Eugene Smith for LIFE magazine.

Smith's 20 picture-strong essay, splashed across a dozen pages in December 1951, was considered 'one of the most extraordinary photo essays ever to appear in [LIFE] magazine.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2380359/Photos-South-Carolina-midwife-Maude-Callen-nursed-1950s-community-living-crippling-poverty.html

Fascinating!

Henrietta Lacks

Maude E. Callen



She was a 'doctor, dietician, psychologist, bail-goer and friend' to thousands of mostly African Americans crippled by poverty in the 1950s.

Yet tireless South Carolina nurse-midwife Maude Callen - who delivered hundreds of children, cared for the elderly and educated midwifery students in a 400-mile area 'veined with muddy roads' - never considered herself a hero.

Her's was a labor of love, captured in these extraordinary black and white photographs taken by legendary shooter W. Eugene Smith for LIFE magazine.

Smith's 20 picture-strong essay, splashed across a dozen pages in December 1951, was considered 'one of the most extraordinary photo essays ever to appear in [LIFE] magazine.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2380359/Photos-South-Carolina-midwife-Maude-Callen-nursed-1950s-community-living-crippling-poverty.html

[not posting this to make a dig at Dolley Madison-truly--that post was interesting, and her situation was tragic--just ran across info on this guy when looking up Dolley Madison after her mention above]

Paul Jennings



Jennings was enslaved at birth at Montpelier in about 1799; his mother, who was African-Native American, was enslaved by the Madisons.[3] She told the boy his father was Benjamin Jennings, an English trader.[3] The mixed-race Jennings, as an enslaved child, was a companion to Dolley's son Payne Todd.[4] He began to serve James Madison as his footman and later was trained as his "body servant".[3] At the age of 10, Jennings accompanied Madison and his family to the White House after the statesman was elected president.[5] In his 1865 memoir, he noted that the East Room was yet unfinished from the first construction, most of the Washington streets were unpaved; the city was "a dreary place" in those years.

In 1814, during the Burning of Washington, as British troops were approaching the White House, Jennings, at age 15, with two other men, reportedly helped save the noted Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington known as the Lansdowne portrait. Other people enslaved at the White House helped save such valuables as silver. (The portrait was returned to the White House, where it is the only surviving item from before the War of 1812.) Legend has it that he assisted First Lady Dolley Madison in this effort. In his memoir, Jennings wrote that a French cook and one other person did the physical work of taking down the painting.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

https://www.amazon.com/American-Plague-Terrifying-Epidemic-Newbery/dp/0395776082

Jim Murphy
An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 (Newbery Honor Book)

That plague killed the husband, son, mother-in-law, and father-in-law of the woman who would later become Dolley Madison.

Oh wow, that is terrible!

Anonymous wrote:

https://www.amazon.com/American-Plague-Terrifying-Epidemic-Newbery/dp/0395776082

Jim Murphy
An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 (Newbery Honor Book)

That plague killed the husband, son, mother-in-law, and father-in-law of the woman who would later become Dolley Madison.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great thread, OP. I wish we could name and recognize the blue collar workers/unschooled black Americans who, literally, built this country. So many untold, unrecognized contributions and achievements.

My contribution to this thread is Onesimus, an African man sold to the infamous Cotton Mather. At the time, Boston was experiencing yet another smallpox outbreak. Onesimus described how he had been vaccinated against smallpox IN AFRICA! Cotton Mather then work with a Boston physician, despite huge opposition, on testing smallpox inoculation - including inoculating a person enslaved by the doctor who could not have given consent. The inoculations were successful.

https://www.history.com/news/smallpox-vaccine-onesimus-slave-cotton-mather
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1758062/pdf/v013p00082.pdf

You must read The Fever if 1721: The Epidemic That Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics.
https://www.amazon.com/Fever-1721-Epidemic-Revolutionized-Medicine/dp/147678311X

Discusses onesimus in depth and discusses how the newspapers took sides in the Epidemic, the virulence of the anti vaxxers, how black people were made scapegoats, and how the vaccine proponents were villanized but they persevered. This book was written before covid so in no way written as an allegory lesson. It is a history book that is just particularly resonant.

21:20 here. Yay! Another fan of The Fever of 1721! I've read it! There were SO many fascinating (to me) footnotes that it took me much longer to get thru it than is typical for me. SO well written and documented!

https://www.amazon.com/American-Plague-Terrifying-Epidemic-Newbery/dp/0395776082

Jim Murphy
An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 (Newbery Honor Book)

Richard Allen

Philadelphia's yellow fever epidemic of 1793 was the largest in the history of the United States, claiming the lives of nearly 4000 people. In late summer, as the number of deaths began to climb, 20,000 citizens fled to the countryside, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other members of the federal government (at that time headquartered in Philadelphia).

At the urging of Benjamin Rush, the support of Philadelphia's free black community was enlisted by Absalom Jones, Richard Allen, and William Gray, a fruitseller who along with Allen and Jones had secured support to build the African Church the previous year.

In an effort to prove themselves morally superior to those who reviled them, Philadelphia's black community put aside their resentment and dedicated themselves to working with the sick and dying in all capacities, including as nurses, cart drivers, and grave diggers. Despite Rush's belief that blacks could not contract the disease, 240 of them died of the fever.


This book is a must read, again written before the Pandemic.

[img]https://www.amazon.com/American-Plague-Terrifying-Epidemic-Newbery/dp/0395776082
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/810aJxGN0QL._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_FMwebp_.jpg[/img]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great thread, OP. I wish we could name and recognize the blue collar workers/unschooled black Americans who, literally, built this country. So many untold, unrecognized contributions and achievements.

My contribution to this thread is Onesimus, an African man sold to the infamous Cotton Mather. At the time, Boston was experiencing yet another smallpox outbreak. Onesimus described how he had been vaccinated against smallpox IN AFRICA! Cotton Mather then work with a Boston physician, despite huge opposition, on testing smallpox inoculation - including inoculating a person enslaved by the doctor who could not have given consent. The inoculations were successful.

https://www.history.com/news/smallpox-vaccine-onesimus-slave-cotton-mather
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1758062/pdf/v013p00082.pdf

You must read The Fever if 1721: The Epidemic That Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics.
https://www.amazon.com/Fever-1721-Epidemic-Revolutionized-Medicine/dp/147678311X

Discusses onesimus in depth and discusses how the newspapers took sides in the Epidemic, the virulence of the anti vaxxers, how black people were made scapegoats, and how the vaccine proponents were villanized but they persevered. This book was written before covid so in no way written as an allegory lesson. It is a history book that is just particularly resonant.

Anonymous wrote:Great thread, OP. I wish we could name and recognize the blue collar workers/unschooled black Americans who, literally, built this country. So many untold, unrecognized contributions and achievements.

My contribution to this thread is Onesimus, an African man sold to the infamous Cotton Mather. At the time, Boston was experiencing yet another smallpox outbreak. Onesimus described how he had been vaccinated against smallpox IN AFRICA! Cotton Mather then work with a Boston physician, despite huge opposition, on testing smallpox inoculation - including inoculating a person enslaved by the doctor who could not have given consent. The inoculations were successful.

https://www.history.com/news/smallpox-vaccine-onesimus-slave-cotton-mather
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1758062/pdf/v013p00082.pdf

You must read The Fever if 1721: The Epidemic That Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics.
https://www.amazon.com/Fever-1721-Epidemic-Revolutionized-Medicine/dp/147678311X

Discusses onesimus in depth and discusses how the newspapers took sides in the Epidemic, the virulence of the anti vaxxers, how black people were made scapegoats, and how the vaccine proponents were villanized but they persevered. This book was written before covid so in no way written as an allegory lesson. It is a history book that is just particularly resonant.

Love this