A New Year, A New Focus
I am ringing in 2024 with a change in focus for this blog.
First, let me provide some context.
I am writing a medical mystery set in Harlem in 1935, which has required hours of (tedious, but fun) research on Harlem life during that era, including fashion trends, social and health issues, and discrimination faced by Black doctors, nurses, and patients in New York City public hospitals.
My research also revealed the long history of experimentation and medical abuse perpetrated against enslaved people, especially Black women, fueled by bogus theories of racial inferiority (i.e., eugenics) and misconceptions about Africans’ anatomy and their tolerance for pain.
Mostly, I was impressed by enslaved women’s knowledge of folk remedies and herbs, used to treat the ailments, injuries, and illnesses of their kith and kin. They also delivered babies, and oftentimes, assisted in their mistresses’ deliveries.
In books, scholarly papers, and personal narratives about the hardships and horrors under chattel slavery and Jim Crow laws, the voices of Black women spoke the loudest.
Our stories—from politics to medicine--are part of the fabric of American life, hence, my decision to recognize heroic Black women, past and present, who (in the words of Joe Madison, Sirius XM radio commentator) have been “undervalued, underestimated, and marginalized.”
Recent legal decisions, which overturned abortion rights, affirmative action, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in education, disproportionately affect Black women.
On January 4, in a New York Times essay, Claudine Gay, a Black woman and former president of Harvard University, who resigned amid accusations of plagiarism and antisemitism, wrote: “For weeks, both I and (Harvard) … have been under attack. My character and intelligence have been impugned. My commitment to fighting antisemitism has been questioned. My inbox has been flooded with invective, including death threats. I’ve been called the N-word more times than I care to count.
“ …. They recycled tired racial stereotypes about Black talent and temperament. They pushed a false narrative of indifference and incompetence.”
Beginning January 12, on the second and fourth weeks of the month, the focus of each blog will be the experiences of Black women, like Gay, in medicine, the arts, politics, finance, and so much more.
(I dedicate this blog to women in my family who struggled so that I might survive, or who inspired me with their business acumen: Victoria Johnson, Janie Gary, Mary Brown, Deallean Evans, Juanita Staggers, Pauline Pratt, Willie Jackson, Orastine Bolden, Vivien Thompson, and my mom, Catherine Rosebud Johnson.)
2024 Wista Johnson (Reprint by permission only.) Photo: PICHA Stock (pexels.com)