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Posts tagged as “National Women’s Hall of Fame”

Inspirational Quote from Track and Field Legend Wilma Rudolph for #MothersDay (LISTEN)

Inspirational Quote from Track and Field Legend Wilma Rudolph for #MothersDay (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on May 8, 2022

[Wilma Rudolph and her parents Ed and Blanche Rudolph as they rode in a parade after Olympic victory in Rome. Rudolph agreed to participate only if the event was desegregated. This was the first desegregated public event in Clarksville, Tennessee. Photo credit: Bob Ray via https://digital.library.nashville.org/digital/collection/nr/id/2227/]

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

On Mother’s Day 2022, we offer a quote from three-time Olympic gold medalist and international track star Wilma Rudolph, who rightfully and fatefully choose to believe her mother.

To read it and about her, read on. To hear it and more about Rudolph, press PLAY:

[You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below]:

Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Sunday, May 8th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

US athlete Wilma Rudolph shows the gold medal she won at the Women’s 100 meters Summer Olympic Games sprint event on September 2, 1960 in Rome, Italy. (AP Photo)

Today, for Mother’s Day, we offer a quote from three-time Olympic Gold Medalist and National Track and Field Hall of Famer Wilma Rudolph, who had polio as a young child:

“My doctors told me I’d never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.”

Wilma Glodean Rudolph was born prematurely in June 1940 and after contracting Scarlet Fever, pneumonia, polio and infantile paralysis, Rudolph wore braces on her legs until she was nine years old.

Because there was so little medical care available to Black people in 1940s Clarksville, Tennessee, Wilma’s mother Blanche took her on weekly bus trips 50 miles away to Nashville to get Wilma treatment at Meharry Medical College.

Blanche and other family members also massaged Wilma’s weakened leg four times a week until Wilma had enough strength to no longer need braces, or the orthopedic shoe she wore until she was 11.

By the time she was 16, Wilma was running in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, bringing home a bronze medal in the 400-meter relay.

Rudolph earned a college scholarship to Tennessee State and in 1960, she headed to Rome with the goal of becoming the best woman runner in the world. She surpassed that goal, winning three gold medals and breaking world records in the 100 and 200 meters.

She was nicknamed “The Tornado” and became an international track star. Rudolph graduated college with a degree in elementary education, and taught for the majority of her life after she retired from athletics. Let’s hear a clip from Rudolph describing the last race she ever ran before she retired:

“It was Palo Alto, California, Stanford University, Russia versus the United States. I was running well, but the heart wasn’t there anymore. I mean, what do you dowhen you win all of it? To keep yourself motivated, you have to be a little bit hungry, to be there and stay there and to stay on top.

And this particular day, we were running a relay we were behind when we started off. And you always think on a staggered start and you know, on a staggered start that, okay, she’s gonna catch her in the turn. And by the time that baton is passed, we were going to be even. That didn’t happen. And then when they pass it the next time I said, well, by the time they get to the next person, we will be even, or be one step ahead.

And by the time it got to me, I saw that we were behind, and I made myself a promise that day I said, if you catch the Russian it’s history – retire. If you do not catch the Russian, you will have to run another four years for the Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. I caught the Russian. I retired, it became history.

It was the fastest single race that I’ve ever ran in the history of my career. And to get a standing ovation in my home country, outdoors, which I’ve never had before, I think it was the grandest moment in my career. I retired that day, and I have never regretted it.”

Rudolph passed in 1994 of brain cancer, the same year her mother Blanche passed. Rudolph has been honored with a U.S. postage stamp, induction into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame and National Women’s Hall of Fame, and in 2012 her hometown built the Wilma Rudolph Event Center. A life-sized bronze statue of Rudolph stands near the entrance of the building.

 To learn more about Wilma Rudolph, watch videos of her Olympic races on YouTube, read her 1977 autobiography Wilma: The Story of Wilma Rudolph, Wilma Rudolph: A Biography from 2006 by Maureen Margaret Smith and the children’s book Wilma Rudolph: Athlete and Educator by Alice K. Flanagan and check out the 1977 movie Wilma starring Cicely Tyson, Shirley Jo Finney and Denzel Washington, available on Vudu.

Links to these sources and more are provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, written, produced and hosted by me, Lori Lakin Hutcherson.

Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.

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BHM: Meet Mary Eliza Mahoney, 1st Licensed African-American Nurse in U.S.

By goodblacknews on February 15, 2019
Mary Eliza Mahoney (photo via essence.com)
by BREANNA EDWARDS via essence.com

If you are a medical professional (particularly a Black medical professional), or just an overall Black history buff, you likely have heard of Mary Eliza Mahoney.

For those who have been denied tales of Mahoney’s excellence, she is heralded as the first African-American licensed nurse.

Mahoney worked in nursing for almost 40 years before retiring, but during her time as a medical professional, as well as long after, she was a champion of women’s rights. A trailblazer, not just as a Black person, but also as a woman.

Mahoney’s story starts in 1845 in Boston, where she was born to freed slaves. Her exact date of birth is unknown, but she is believed to have been born in the spring, the National Women’s History Museum notes.

Even as a teenager, Mahoney knew she wanted to become a nurse, and she began working at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, which, as its name suggests, provided health care exclusively to women and their children. At the time, the hospital was also known for its all-women staff of doctors.

There, Mahoney worked from the ground up over the next 15 years, in jobs such as janitor, cook and washerwoman, while also seizing the opportunity to work as a nurse’s aide.

The hospital operated one of the first nursing schools in the United States, and as you can probably guess, in 1878 a then 33-year-old Mahoney was allowed to enter the hospital’s professional graduate school for nursing. During the intensive 16-month training program, students attended lectures and got hands-on experience in the hospital.

The program was rigorous, and according to the Women’s History Museum, of the 42 students who entered the program, only four, including Mahoney, completed the requirements in 1879. In the same breath, she became the first Black person in the U.S. to earn a professional nursing license.

Mahoney would go on to serve as a private-duty nurse for the remainder of her impeccable career (she decided against public nursing because of the rampant discrimination there) and became known across the East Coast for her “efficiency, patience and caring bedside manner,” according to the Women’s History Museum.

A staunch advocate of those within the profession, Mahoney became a member of the Nurses Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada (NAAUSC, later known as the American Nurses Association) in 1896. But she faced discrimination at NAAUSC, which had a predominantly white membership, so Mahoney took it upon herself to co-found the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) in 1908.

Keep reading: https://www.essence.com/black-history-month-2019/mary-eliza-mahoney-the-first-black-nurse/