Happy 69th birthday to Doctor and Engineer Mae Jemison! She was the first black woman in space. She flew aboard the space shuttle Endeavour in 1992, working on experiments including bone cell research. Dr. Mae Carol Jemison is a physician and retired astronaut. After her medical education and a brief general practice, Dr. Jemison served in the Peace Corps from 1985-1987, when she was selected by NASA to join the astronaut corps. She resigned from NASA in 1993 to form a company researching the application of technology to daily life. She has appeared on television several times, including as an actress in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Dr. Jemison is a dancer, and holds 9 honorary doctorates in science, engineering, letters, and the humanities. HONORS & AWARDS: 🏆1988 Essence Science and Technology Award 🏆1991 McCall's 10 Outstanding Women for the 90s 🏆1991 Pumpkin Magazine's (a Japanese Monthly) One of the Women for the Coming New Century 🏆1992 Johnson Publications Black Achievement Trailblazers Award 🏆1993 National Women's Hall of Fame 🏆1993 Ebony magazine 50 Most Influential women 🏆1993 Kilby Science Award 🏆1993 Montgomery Fellow, Dartmouth 🏆1993 People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful and sexy People in the World" 🏆1993 Turner Trumpet Award 🏆1997 Chicago History Museum "Making History Award" for Distinction in Science Medicine and Technology. 🏆2002 listed among the 100 Greatest African Americans according to Molefi Kete Asante. 🏆2003 Intrepid Award by the National Organization for girls 🏆2004 International Space Hall of Fame NASA Space Flight Medal 🏆2005 The National Audubon Society, Rachel Carson Award Institutions: 🚀1992 Mae C. Jemison Science and Space Museum, Wilbur Wright College 🚀1992 Mae C. Jemison Academy, an alternative public school in Detroit, Michigan 🚀2001 Mae Jemison School, an elementary public school in Hazel Crest, Illinois 🚀2007 Bluford Drew Jemison STEM Academy, a public charter school in Baltimore, Maryland Doctors honoris causa: 🚀1991 Doctor of Science, Lincoln College, Pennsylvania 🚀2000 Doctor of Humanities, Princeton University 🚀2005 Doctor of Science, Wilson College 🚀2006 Doctor of Science, Dartmouth College 🚀2007 Doctor of Engineering, Harvey Mudd College 🚀2007 Doctor of Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 🚀2008 Doctor of Humanities, DePaul University 🚀2009 Doctor of Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of NYU.

For generations, Black Americans were told that freedom and equality were fundamental American values while living under laws and institutions that repeatedly denied them both. That contradiction is one of the most important threads running through American history, from slavery and Reconstruction to Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement and the continuing debates over racial inequality today. When slavery ended in 1865, nearly four million formerly enslaved people entered freedom without the land, wealth or resources that generations of forced labor had created for others. Reconstruction briefly opened new possibilities. Black men voted, held public office and helped establish public education across the South. But those gains were met with organized resistance, racial violence and eventually new laws designed to restrict Black political and economic power. By the late 19th century, Jim Crow had transformed racial inequality into an elaborate legal structure. Black Americans could be forced into separate schools, neighborhoods and public facilities. Poll taxes, literacy tests and intimidation stripped many Black citizens of the vote. Even outside the South, discrimination in employment and housing restricted opportunities. During the 20th century, practices such as redlining and discriminatory lending made homeownership and wealth building considerably harder for many Black families. None of these barriers disappeared simply because Americans gradually recognized them as unjust. Black communities spent generations challenging them. People organized voter-registration drives, created businesses and institutions, filed lawsuits, staged boycotts and sit-ins, marched through hostile streets and sometimes risked their lives simply to exercise rights that already existed on paper. Those struggles changed the country. Brown v. Board of Education challenged legally segregated public schools, while the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed major forms of discrimination. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 attacked barriers that had kept Black citizens from the ballot, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited discrimination in housing.

A statue of La Mûlatresse Solitude, who in 1802, helpled lead a slave revolt while EIGHT Months pregnant in Guadeloupe. She became a martyr and symbol for all women and mothers who against all odds defended the ideals of freedom and equality. A THREAD!