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Jeh V. Johnson
Professor and architect Jeh Vincent Johnson was born on July 8, 1931 in Nashville, Tennessee to Marie Antionette Burgette and Charles Spurgeon Johnson. He graduated from Pearl High School in Nashville, Tennessee in 1949. Johnson received his A.B. degree from Columbia University in New York in 1953 before being drafted to serve in the Counter Intelligence Corps of the U.S. Army until 1954. He then earned his M.A. degree in architecture in 1958 from Columbia University.
In 1956, Johnson was hired by Paul R. Williams as a designer. After graduate school, he received the William Kinne Fellows Fellowship and traveled throughout Europe studying architecture. He later joined the architectural firm of Adams and Woodbridge Architects in 1958. In 1962, Johnson co-founded Gindele and Johnson, along with William Gindele, where the focus of their work was on single and multi-family housing, community centers, churches, and schools. Two years later, Johnson accepted a faculty position in architecture and design at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. In 1967, he was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to serve on the National Commission on Urban Problems. He also served as chair of the National Committee on Housing for the American Institute of Architects (AIA). In Detroit in 1971, Johnson co-founded the National Organization of Minority Architects along with several fellow members of AIA. In 1977, he was elected to the AIA's college of fellows. Johnson later served as partner at the architectural and design firm of LeGendre, Johnson, McNeil Architects from 1980 to 1990. Johnson's many architectural projects include the former Poughkeepsie Day School building, the Susan Stein Shiva Theater, the Poughkeepsie Catharine Street Center and Library, and the ALANA Center on the Vassar College campus. He retired from Vassar College in 2001 after thirty-seven years of teaching.
In 1997, Johnson was awarded a special citation from the New York chapter of the AIA for his advocacy on behalf of equal opportunity and housing issues.
Johnson and his wife, Norma Edelin Johnson, have two adult children, Jeh Charles Johnson and Marguerite Marie Johnson.
Jeh Vincent Johnson was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on April 8, 2019.
National Organization of Minority Architects
National Commission on Urban Problems
National Committee on Housing
Pearl-Cohn Entertainment Magnet High School
St. Vincent School
Jeh
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Professor and architect Jeh Vincent Johnson (1931 - ) served as a professor of architecture at Vassar College for thirty-nine years and co-founded the National Organization of Minority Architects in 1971.
LeGendre, Johnson, McNeil Architects
Gindele and Johnson
Adams and Woodbridge, Architects
Paul R. Williams
Read more about Jeh V. Johnson
Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey
Non-profit executive Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey was born on September 25, 1954 in Seattle, Washington to Dr. Blanche Sellers-Lavizzo and Dr. Philip Lavizzo. She attended the University of Washington before transferring to the State University of New York-Stony Brook for two years. Lavizzo-Mourey then continued her education at Harvard Medical School, graduating in 1979. In 1984, she was selected as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar, and earned her M.B.A. degree in health policy from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1986.
Lavizzo-Mourey joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania as an assistant professor. During her tenure, she served as the director of the Institute on Aging from 1984 to 1992. She took a leave of absence from the university to work as deputy administrator for the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research under President George H.W. Bush's administration. Lavizzo-Mourey then served as quality of care chair for President Bill Clinton's panels on health care until 1994, when she returned to the University of Pennsylvania as a professor. Lavizzo-Mourey served as the associate executive vice president for health policy for the health system from 1994 to 2001, and the Sylvan Eisman professor of medicine and health care systems at the university from 1997 to 2002. In 2001, Lavizzo-Mourey was hired as a senior vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and was appointed to serve as the president and CEO of the foundation in 2003. While at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Lavizzo-Mourey continued to see patients at a clinic in New Jersey, and launched an influential campaign against childhood obesity in 2007. The initiative decreased the obesity rate among children aged two to five years and halted its rise among those aged two to nineteen years.
Lavizzo-Mourey was the recipient of numerous awards, including twenty honorary doctorates from institutions like Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, Tufts University, Morehouse School of Medicine, Meharry Medical College and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. She appeared on Forbes' list of the most important women in the world eight times, and as one of Modern Healthcare's one hundred most influential people in health care eleven times.
Lavizzo-Mourey and her husband, Robert Lavizzo-Mourey, have two adult children.
Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on December 14, 2016.
Lavizzo-Mourey
Nonprofit Chief Executive
American College of Physicians - American Society of Internal Medicine
National Medical Association
Association of Academic Minority Physicians
Gerontologic Society of America
National Heart Lung & Blood Institute
Our Lady of Mount Virgin
Asa Mercer Middle School
The Bush School
LAV03
Roasted chicken, fresh salad
Non-profit executive Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey (1954 - ) advised on health policies for the Bush and Clinton administrations, and became president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2002.
Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School
The Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
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Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey's interview
Tape: 1 Story: 2 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey lists her favorites
Tape: 1 Story: 3 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her mother's family background
Tape: 1 Story: 4 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls her mother's childhood in Atlanta, Georgia
Tape: 1 Story: 5 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey talks about her mother's aspirations in the medical field
Tape: 1 Story: 6 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her father's family background
Tape: 1 Story: 7 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls her father's childhood in New Orleans, Louisiana
Tape: 1 Story: 8 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her father's education
Tape: 1 Story: 9 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls how her parents met
Tape: 1 Story: 10 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her father's medical paper
Tape: 1 Story: 11 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her parents' personalities and who she takes after
Tape: 2 Story: 1 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls her parents' careers after medical school
Tape: 2 Story: 2 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her parents' private practice in Seattle, Washington
Tape: 2 Story: 3 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her earliest childhood memory
Tape: 2 Story: 4 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey remembers the Mount Baker neighborhood in Seattle, Washington
Tape: 2 Story: 5 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes the sights, sounds and smells of her childhood
Tape: 2 Story: 6 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey remembers Our Lady of Mount Virgin School
Tape: 2 Story: 7 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls discrimination in elementary school
Tape: 2 Story: 8 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey remembers her early aspirations to become a doctor
Tape: 2 Story: 9 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her family's religious and civic involvement
Tape: 2 Story: 10 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls her high school education
Tape: 2 Story: 11 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her early mentors
Tape: 3 Story: 1 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls the economic climate of Seattle, Washington during the late 1960s
Tape: 3 Story: 2 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey talks about the recession in Seattle, Washington
Tape: 3 Story: 3 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls famous people from Seattle, Washington
Tape: 3 Story: 4 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey remembers the assassination of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Tape: 3 Story: 5 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey talks about the Black Panther Party in Seattle, Washington
Tape: 3 Story: 6 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her experience at The Bush School in Seattle, Washington
Tape: 3 Story: 7 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey remembers her father's death
Tape: 3 Story: 8 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her college education
Tape: 3 Story: 9 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her influences at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York
Tape: 3 Story: 10 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls her acceptance to Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts
Tape: 3 Story: 11 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey talks about affirmative action
Tape: 4 Story: 1 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her experiences at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts
Tape: 4 Story: 2 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her mentors at Harvard Medical School
Tape: 4 Story: 3 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls the controversy involving Dr. Bernard D. Davis
Tape: 4 Story: 4 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey remembers her challenges in medical school
Tape: 4 Story: 5 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls the racial climate of Boston, Massachusetts during the 1970s
Tape: 4 Story: 6 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey talks about her former classmate, Jill Stein
Tape: 4 Story: 7 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her former classmate, Dr. Augustus A. White, III
Tape: 4 Story: 8 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls her residency at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts
Tape: 4 Story: 9 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey talks about health care legislation
Tape: 4 Story: 10 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey talks about preventive medicine
Tape: 4 Story: 11 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes the challenges of medical residency
Tape: 5 Story: 1 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls completing her medical residency
Tape: 5 Story: 2 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes the Lewis Katz School of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Tape: 5 Story: 3 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls the history of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey
Tape: 5 Story: 4 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her decision to specialize in geriatric medicine
Tape: 5 Story: 5 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls attending the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
Tape: 5 Story: 6 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her responsibilities at the University of Pennsylvania
Tape: 5 Story: 7 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey remembers her role as the W.E.B Du Bois College House faculty advisor
Tape: 5 Story: 8 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey talks about racial tensions in Philadelphia, Pennslvania during the 1980s
Tape: 5 Story: 9 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey remembers notable students and professors at the University of Pennsylvania
Tape: 5 Story: 10 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her work for the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality
Tape: 5 Story: 11 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls working with Hillary Rodham Clinton on The Health Security Act of 1993
Tape: 5 Story: 12 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey talks about universal healthcare reform
Tape: 6 Story: 1 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey talks about her medical research
Tape: 6 Story: 2 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey talks about violence as a public health issue
Tape: 6 Story: 3 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls her appointment as Sylvan Eisman Professor of Medicine and Health Care Systems
Tape: 6 Story: 4 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes her program to reinstitute house calls
Tape: 6 Story: 5 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey talks about alternatives to home health care
Tape: 6 Story: 6 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey recalls becoming president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Tape: 6 Story: 7 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey talks about her campaign to combat childhood obesity
Tape: 6 Story: 8 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes the factors of a healthy childhood, pt. 1
Tape: 6 Story: 10 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey talks about the endowment of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Tape: 6 Story: 11 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey reflects upon her legacy
Tape: 6 Story: 12 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey talks about the health crisis in Flint, Michigan
Tape: 6 Story: 13 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey reflects upon her life
Tape: 6 Story: 14 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey reflects upon her family
Tape: 6 Story: 15 - Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey describes how she would like to be remembered
Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey remembers her early aspirations to become a doctor
Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey talks about her campaign to combat childhood obesity
I'm thinking you've got two parents [Blanche Sellers Lavizzo and Philip V. Lavizzo] who are physicians, did you spend or did your siblings spend a lot of time in the office?$$Um-hm.$$Or yeah, you know, downtown [Central District, Seattle, Washington]?$$I, that's a, that's a great question, we did, I probably spent more than the others, my fondest memory really is Saturday mornings because Saturday mornings was the special time that I had with my mother, she practiced on Saturday mornings, so a pediatrician, you--good time to be in the office if you're gonna take care of kids right? Saturday mornings, so every Saturday morning she and I would drive down to her office which was about three or four blocks from the YWCA [Young Women's Christian Association] and I would then walk to the Y, get a swimming lesson and after my swimming lesson I'd walk back to her office and hang out for the rest of the morning with her and thinking I was helping out in the lab and, you know, sitting in the waiting room with her patients and just being there and seeing her do her work and how people responded to her. And I think that, that really instilled in me the joy of being a doctor, yeah. There were other times that we spent time with them and those were usually when there was an emergency in the evening and they had to go into the hospital there was, there wasn't anybody who could take care of us, you know? The, they were three thousand miles away from their family and anybody who could really come and, come over and help out in the evening, so when that happened we all piled into the car and went to the emergency room, my parents would do their work and my brother [Philip Lavizzo] and I would hang out at the nurses station and, again that was, that was pure joy for me, I think it was just the opposite for my brother.$$Okay, okay. So, so you--you're learning, I guess directly and vicariously about the profession--$$Um-hm.$$--the medical profession by being around--$$Yeah (simultaneous).$$--(simultaneous) two doctors.$We've invested in ensuring that kids have a healthy weight, it really--a billion dollars in reversing the epidemic of childhood obesity (simultaneous).$$(Simultaneous) You know that was a big initiative that was launched soon after you joined Robert Wood (simultaneous).$$(Simultaneous) Yes.$$The Johnson Foundation [Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, New Jersey], and one in which the first lady participated in, you know, to a great extent, I mean she was, you know, she made commercials and, and appeared around the country, you know, on behalf of exercise and eating the right foods and--$$Shortly after I became president, I really initiated our commitment to reversing the epidemic of childhood obesity. At the time, there were a lot of debates about whether it was really a problem and we were largely as a country ignoring the, the fact that rates of childhood obesity were steadily going up and the consequences of children being obese at a young age were going to be devastating because all of the illnesses that are associated with obesity like high blood pressure and heart disease and asthma were things that they would start to get at a much younger age. So instead of getting them, these diseases in middle age, they would--we were starting to see diabetes in childhood and in children in their teens and in their early twenties and that of course could lead to a situation where we were producing a generation that was gonna die younger than their parents' generation, in fact, we are seeing now a decrease in life expectancy. So we at the foundation and, and really was a signature program under my administration to address childhood obesity and I remember going to meet with Michelle Obama before she was the first lady, when she was Senator Barack Obama's [HistoryMaker President Barack Obama] wife working in community programs at the University of Chicago [Chicago, Illinois]. And it was very clear that then that she was passionate about this issue and so it was extremely gratifying to see her take that on when she became first lady and to essentially become a champion for good policies for educating parents and for changing the, the ways that communities addressed the health of children.
Read more about Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey
R & B singer and songwriter Kim Lamont Owens (KEM) was born in Nashville, Tennessee. When he was young, his family moved from Nashville to the Detroit suburb of Southfield, Michigan. Owens began to explore the keyboard when he was four, and became fascinated by music in high school in the 1980s. However, upon graduation, he dealt with homelessness, addiction, and isolation from his family. Owens recovered in 1990 and took a job as a waiter at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Dearborn, Michigan. He also booked weddings and other shows that allowed him to perform original music.
In February of 2001, Owens self-released his first album, Kemistry, which sold nearly 15,000 copies and piqued the interest of Motown Records. Motown signed Owens to a five-record deal in November of 2001 and re-released Kemistry in 2003. The album reached the Top 20 of the Top Hip-Hop/R&B Albums chart, its first single, "Love Calls," became a hit, and the record went gold. Owens' second CD, Album II, was released in 2005 and sold over 500,000 copies in the United States. The album included the hit single "I Can't Stop Loving You," a #1 at urban adult contemporary radio. In 2010, he released his third album, Intimacy, which debuted at #2 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. The record's first single, "Why Would You Stay," spent several weeks at #1 on the Urban AC Radio charts. Owens went on to produce a Christmas album entitled What Christmas Means in 2012, and then a follow-up deluxe edition of the CD in October of 2013.
In 2012, Owens established Mack & Third, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting the homeless by gathering food and raising funds for Detroit's shelters and food banks. He also presents the annual 'Mack & Third' event, an all-day free concert to benefit and recognize the city's homeless citizens.
Owens won the Billboard Music Award for Top Adult R&B Single of the Year in 2005, and was nominated for two NAACP Image Awards in 2006. He was also nominated in 2010 for a Soul Train Award for Best Male R&B/Soul Artist; two Grammy Awards for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Song; and the BET Centric Award. Owens was nominated four more times at the 44th NAACP Image Awards in 2013.
Kem was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on June 23, 2014.
R & B Singer
McCarroll Center
Whitmer Human Resources Center
Michigan Institute for Child Development
Pontiac Northern High School
Southfield Senior High School for the Arts and Technology
OWE02
Any Place Near The Ocean
It's All Good.
R & B singer and songwriter KEM (1967 - ) was a recording artist with Motown Records, and his albums include Kemistry, Album II, Intimacy, and What Christmas Means.
Motown Record Corporation
Mack & Third, Inc.
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Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of KEM's interview
Tape: 1 Story: 2 - KEM lists his favorites
Tape: 1 Story: 3 - KEM describes his mother's family background
Tape: 1 Story: 4 - KEM talks about his maternal grandparents and his mother's upbringing
Tape: 1 Story: 5 - KEM describes his biological father
Tape: 1 Story: 6 - KEM recalls his relationship with stepfather
Tape: 1 Story: 7 - KEM describes his parents' personalities and who he takes after
Tape: 1 Story: 8 - KEM lists his siblings
Tape: 1 Story: 9 - KEM describes his earliest childhood memory
Tape: 1 Story: 10 - KEM describes the sounds of his childhood in Michigan
Tape: 1 Story: 11 - KEM recalls his neighborhood in Pontiac, Michigan
Tape: 2 Story: 1 - KEM talks about his early education
Tape: 2 Story: 2 - KEM describes his childhood personality and activities
Tape: 2 Story: 3 - KEM remembers the popular culture of the 1970s
Tape: 2 Story: 4 - KEM talks about his early interest in music
Tape: 2 Story: 5 - KEM describes his early academic experiences
Tape: 2 Story: 6 - KEM remembers his music teacher at the Michigan Institute for Child Development in Detroit, Michigan
Tape: 2 Story: 7 - KEM describes the musical legacy of Michael Jackson
Tape: 2 Story: 8 - KEM recalls learning about Motown Records
Tape: 2 Story: 9 - KEM describes his friendship with music producer Brian O'Neal
Tape: 3 Story: 1 - KEM talks about the musicians from the Minneapolis, Minnesota
Tape: 3 Story: 2 - KEM recalls leaving Southfield High School in Southfield, Michigan
Tape: 3 Story: 3 - KEM talks about the start of his struggle with addiction
Tape: 3 Story: 4 - KEM remembers his experiences of homelessness and addiction
Tape: 3 Story: 5 - KEM describes his breakthrough in overcoming his addictions
Tape: 3 Story: 6 - KEM talks about how his spirituality contributed to his sobriety
Tape: 3 Story: 7 - KEM remembers working as a waiter while pursuing his music career
Tape: 4 Story: 1 - KEM describes his early jobs in the music industry
Tape: 4 Story: 2 - KEM remembers Brian O'Neal's relocation to Atlanta, Georgia
Tape: 4 Story: 3 - KEM talks about his band members
Tape: 4 Story: 4 - KEM recalls independently recording and marketing his first album
Tape: 4 Story: 5 - KEM remembers signing a recording contract with Motown Records
Tape: 4 Story: 6 - KEM explains the alternate spelling of his stage name
Tape: 4 Story: 7 - KEM talks about his musical influences and philosophy
Tape: 4 Story: 8 - KEM describes his hit song, 'Love Calls'
Tape: 4 Story: 9 - KEM talks about the subject matter of his music
Tape: 5 Story: 1 - KEM talks about his song, 'Brotha Man'
Tape: 5 Story: 2 - KEM talks about the time gaps between his album releases
Tape: 5 Story: 3 - KEM describes his second album, 'Album II,' and creative process
Tape: 5 Story: 4 - KEM talks about his third studio album, 'Intimacy'
Tape: 5 Story: 5 - KEM reflects upon his life
Tape: 5 Story: 6 - KEM describes his hopes for the African American community
Tape: 5 Story: 7 - KEM reflects upon his professional legacy and family
Tape: 5 Story: 8 - KEM describes how he would like to be remembered
KEM remembers his music teacher at the Michigan Institute for Child Development in Detroit, Michigan
KEM recalls independently recording and marketing his first album
So, when you were growing up would you say that you didn't have like much of an outlet for your creativity? I mean, you know, aside from, 'cause I was reading that in high school [Southfield High School; Southfield High School for the Arts and Technology, Southfield, Michigan] you'd spend your lunch hour doing music.$$I would skip classes to do music.$$Okay.$$So, I would not go to class and I would be in the music room. And, I don't know that, I mean, there was, you know, there was an outlet for it but it was also a, you know, 'cause I was in choir in, in high school. There--it wasn't in my house but I mean I, you know, I was, I was trying to write songs. I was, I was, you know, have, not having, not having it in, in the home was not a, was not a deterrent.$$Okay. 'Cause you had, you had friends that you could (simultaneous)--?$$(Simultaneous) You know, I had, I had friends that were into music or, you know, I mean, you know, yeah, so we, we got it done.$$Now, were there any, any teachers in high school, or any adult figures, aside from your parents [Elizabeth Hardy and KEM's step father, Erick Hardy] of course, that were like a role model for you, or mentors?$$In middle, in middle school [Michigan Institute for Child Development, Detroit, Michigan] there was a, there was a teacher named Greg Smith. And, I wish I knew where he was today. And, he sat me down and, 'cause in middle school, I started singing, a ver- my version of George Benson's 'Broadway' ['On Broadway'] in front of my class, acapella. And, and they dug it, you know. And, and it was the first time that I had gotten, it was, it was the first time in middle school, you know, the thing for, the thing in middle school that I was, that I was, I was known for that I got positive feedback for, positive attention from doing. And, and Greg Smith recognized that, and, and he sat me down and, and helped me start writing a song. Well, we were, we were actually, we were actually reassembling a song that already existed. Like, it may have been from The Temptations or the, The Manhattans or somebody. And, he was, you know, coaching me through the process of, of writing a song. And, he would get me, he would do things to, or say things that would get me to, you know--he may write a line down and then he would get me to write the line. And, we were actually recreating a song that was already, you know, in, in existence. And, I can't remember what the song was. And, at the time, you know, I didn't know how important that was at the time, you know. I didn't know, you know, what that was. And, but, some of my most positive musical experiences happened in middle school, and I didn't really think about that until today.$$Now, did you play any instrument?$$I mean, I play piano, I mean, you know, I played piano. I don't know if there was--I don't think there was a piano in school. I don't know.$$Now, you're like a self taught piano player, right?$$Yeah. 'Cause I don't play, I mean, I'm not a virtuoso by any means, you know what I mean. I don't even--I can't even--I don't even read music, you know. And, and I only play my own songs, you know. And, you know, I've tried to study it but I just--I'm not, I mean, you know what, I mean, you know what, I mean, go figure, man. I'm not acclimated to that aspect of, of music. I just, you know, I've never, you know, I've sat in classes and I've taken, you know, I been choir where, you know, it was all laid out, you know, I've, you know, and I've just never been able to get it, you know. And, you know, I think it's the, I think it's the, you know, the math thing, the numbers thing. I've never been, you know, it's just not my thing. I can count money though, so, if I'm supposed to get paid, we gonna, we gonna, you know (laughter).$$All right--$So, the songs that are on the Motown [Motown Records] 'Kemistry' CD were the same songs that are on the first one you did (unclear) (simultaneous)?$$(Simultaneous) The fr- most of those songs are, all of those songs are on that record, right. And, the thing is, is that people, even though we never released it, people got the CD [compact disc]. People would get, people had access to it, or had found it, or somebody gave it to 'em, and they were playing it. And, people were digging it. You know, unbeknownst to me, you know, people were digging it. And, by the time I started doing shows, doing that music, there were, you know, a small group of people we would perform at Half Past 3 [Detroit, Michigan], which was a club that was over on Grand River [Grand River Avenue]. And, people were sitting in the audience, man, and they would be singing this stuff. They would be singing this stuff off of that CD that I couldn't stand, you know. And, I, and I went back into the studio. I got a business line of credit, and keyboard thing, you know, and it all works together, you know. It's all good. All of those things work together, you know, everything works together. The keyboard thing helped me, you know, not spending that money on the Mary Kay [Mary Kay Inc.]. Which my mother [Elizabeth Hardy] hated me for at the time (laughter), in which she's probably now looking back knows that--you know, she's grateful for it, you know what I mean, about the keyboard. Established credit and then later one down the line, I was able to get a business line of credit from American Express [American Express Company]. Which I had financed my first CD on. Now, American Express didn't know that's what I was gonna do with the money. But, that's what I did. And, I, and when I got, when American Express gave me a seventeen thousand dollars business line of credit, and I quit my job. Do not do this at home (laughter). Do not try this at home, you know. I quit my job. I quit my day--no, I didn't quit my job. I quit working at the hotel, working at The Ritz [The Ritz-Carlton Dearborn; The Henry, Autograph Collection, Dearborn, Michigan]. But, I was still singing in the choir [at Renaissance Unity, Warren, Michigan] and doing the, doing the wedding band thing. But, I, you know, I was like you know what, you know, and went and I recorded the 'Kemistry' CD, you know, in the studio. I still, we heading up with these same guys, didn't know what I was doing, you know. And, kind of like stumbled and fumbled, you know, our way into making the 'Kemistry' CD, you know. And, and the rest is history.$$So, so the way this, you finance your own CD, and it, how does it come to the attention of the Motown label?$$Because I set the, you know, I put a barcode on the CD, I put a barcode on the CD so that when--and the CD was on, I had it in retail outlets which are, you know, are not, you now, I mean, the mom and pop stores, man. And, you know, all the, all the record shops in town had my CD, and I put 'em in there on consignment. So, every time somebody bought a CD, you know, if they bought Luther [Luther Vandross] CD it blipped somewhere. If they bought my CD, you got the, you got a blip too. I mean, I was in the, I was in the system like that. And, and, we were, you know, and, you know, the best market in the world was giving the CD away and putting it in people's hands, you know, and having them like it, you know. Best, you know, have something that people like and put it in their hands, you know. And, and we started to build momentum. So, the record label, you know, people are watching and the industry are watching that, you know, this guy in Detroit [Michigan] is selling records, and he's, he doesn't have a label. And, we're getting, we started to air play in different, in different cities, as well as Detroit. And, it had a momentum of its own, you know. So, you know, it made us, it made us ripe for, for a label to come and, and wanna partner with us.$$Okay. So, you, you marketed the CD in beauty salons and black restaurants, and gave a lot 'em away.$$Absolutely, yeah.$$Okay.$$Absolutely.
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Dr. L. Natalie Carroll
Obstetrician and gynecologist L. Natalie Carroll was born on January 26, 1950 in Nashville, Tennessee. Her father, Dr. Carl Mark Carroll, was a physician; her mother, Ruth (Carter) Carroll, a librarian. Carroll studied psychology at Lake Forest College, in Lake Forest, Illinois, for three years, then continued her education at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, where she earned her M.D. degree in 1974. While at Meharry, Carroll completed an externship at Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, D.C. in pediatrics, and an externship at Baylor College of Medicine, Jefferson Davis Hospital, Houston, Texas in obstetrics and gynecology. She also completed her surgery rotation at Harvard University School of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital in the Harvard-Meharry Exchange Program.
In 1975, Carroll became the first woman to complete a surgery internship at the Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C.; and, in 1978, became the first African American woman to complete an obstetrics/gynecology residency at the same facility. From 1978 to 1980, she served as chair of the Quality Assurance Review for Women's Clinic, supervisor/chair of Routine Obstetrics/Gynecology Care, and supervisor of the Nurse Midwife/Nurse practitioner program for obstetrics and gynecology at Darnall Army Hospital in Fort Hood, Texas. In 1980, Carroll opened her own Houston, Texas-based private ob/gyn practice and was named an associate clinical instructor, staff physician and a member of the Quality Assurance Sub-Committee for Obstetrics/Gynecology at Hermann Memorial Hospital, University of Texas Health Science Center. From 1983 to 1985, she chaired the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Houston, and served as chairman of the Quality Assurance and Utilization Review. In 2002, Carroll was elected president of the National Medical Association (NMA), the oldest and largest organization of black healthcare professionals in the United States.
She has served on the boards of the Depelchin Children's Center and the Harris County Children's Protective Services, and on the Texas Department of Health Advisory Board Commission on Birth Defects and Genetic Abnormalities. Carroll was president of the Lone Star State Medical Association and an officer of the Houston Medical Forum. She also served as board chair of the Riverside National Bank and of the NMA. Carroll has been a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society and The Links, Inc., a Fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG), and a member of the Texas branch of ACOG, the Diabetic Epidemic Action Council of the American Diabetes Association, and the Stakeholders of AHRQ
Carroll's awards include the March of Dimes' Outstanding Service Award and the NMA's Outstanding Leadership Award for chairing the Health Policy Committee in 1997. She was honored by Aetna as a black American physician in 2002, and was named one of Ebony magazine's 100 List of Organizational Leaders in 2003. Carroll has also received an honorary Doctorate of Science degree from Lake Forest College in Illinois, and a Distinguished Physician of the Year Award from the University of Texas Health Science Center, Memorial Hermann Hospital.
Carroll and her husband, Warren B. Dailey, live in Houston, Texas.
L. Natalie Carroll was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on May 8, 2014.
5/8/2014 |and| 12/1/2016
Obstetrician and Gynecologist
Depelchin Children\'s Center
Harris County Children\'s Protective Services
Texas Department of Health
Lone Star State Medical Association
Houston Medical Forum
Riverside National Bank
Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society
The Links, Inc.
American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology
American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Texas Branch
Stakeholders of AHRQ
Atherton Elementary
Turner Elementary School
William E. Miller Junior High School
Crispus Attucks Middle
Jack Yates High School
Meharry Medical College
CAR30
Nothing beats a failure but a try.
I love steak, but don't eat it much any more
Obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. L. Natalie Carroll (1950 - ) served as president of the National Medical Association from 2002 to 2003. She operated her own ob/gyn practice in Houston, Texas since 1980.
Washington Hospital Center
Dept. of Army Darnall Army Hospital
Hermann Memorial Hospital, University of Texas Health Science Center
St. Elizabeth's Hospital
Read more about Dr. L. Natalie Carroll
Art Gilliam, Jr.
Radio station owner Art Gilliam was born on March 6, 1943 in Nashville, Tennessee to Leola Hortense Caruthers and Herman Arthur Gilliam, Sr. Gilliam attended the Westminster School in Connecticut, and, at the age of sixteen, enrolled in Yale University. He graduated with his B.A. degree in economics from Yale University in 1963 and then joined the U.S. Air Force Reserve. Gilliam went on to receive his M.B.A degree from the University of Michigan in 1967.
Upon graduation, Gilliam returned to Memphis, Tennessee to work with his father at Universal Life Insurance Company, where he remained until 1975. In 1968, he began writing a weekly editorial for The Commercial Appeal and was hired by WMC-TV in Memphis as the weekend news anchor. Gilliam was the first African American to write for The Commercial Appeal and the first African American on-air reporter and anchor on Memphis television at WMC-TV. Then, from 1975 to 1976, he worked as an administrative assistant to U.S. Congressman Harold Ford, Sr.
In 1977, he launched Gilliam Communications, Inc. and bought the WLOK radio station. In doing so, WLOK became the first African American-owned Memphis radio station and the city's first locally owned station. As president and CEO of Gilliam Communications, Inc., Gilliam has also operated radio stations in New Orleans, Louisiana, Jacksonville, Florida, and Savannah, Georgia. He also sponsors the annual WLOK Stone Soul Picnic, which draws thousands of attendees.
Gilliam's WLOK has earned the title of #1 Gospel Station in the nation by Religion & Media Quarterly for several consecutive years; and, in 1997, was recognized by the Tennessee Historical Commission as a Tennessee Historical Landmark. Gilliam has also received the Black History Men of Honor Leadership Award, the Gospel Bridge Lifetime Achievement Award, the Rainbow/PUSH Martin Luther King, Jr. Award, the Memphis Advertising Federation's Silver Medal Award, and the Downtown Memphis Commission's Visionary Award. He was also honored with the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Outstanding Community Service Award, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Citizen of the Year Award, Phi Beta Sigma African American Male Image Award, and the Delta Sigma Theta's Outstanding Community Service and Florence Cole Talbert McCleave Awards. In addition, Gilliam was recognized as one of the "Top 25 African Americans in Radio" by Radio Ink Magazine's, and one of "Ten Outstanding Young Men in America" by the United States Jaycees.
Gilliam has sat on the boards of the Memphis Advertising Federation, the Society of Entrepreneurs, Memphis Zoo, Inc., the National Federation of State Humanities Council, and Lemoyne-Owen College. He served as chairman of the Black Business Association of Memphis and the Tennessee Humanities Council, and was an advisory board member of the University of Memphis College of Communications and the Memphis Sheriff's Department. Gilliam is also a member of the Tennessee Association of Broadcasters, Leadership Memphis, NAACP, and Leadership Music – Nashville.
Art Gilliam was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on April 26, 2014.
Radio Station Owner
Advertising Federation of Memphis
Black Business Association of Memphis
Memphis Sheriff\'s Department
Society of Entrepreneurs
Tennessee Association of Broadcasters
University of Memphis College of Communications
Cleaborn Homes Adoption
Federation of State Humanities Councils
Humanities Tennessee
Leadership Memphis
Leadership Music - Nashville
Lemoyne-Owen College
Memphis Zoo, Inc.
The Assisi Foundation of Memphis, Inc.
Hamilton High School
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MediaMakers:Radio
Radio station owner Art Gilliam, Jr. (1943 - ) was president, CEO and owner of Gilliam Communications, Inc. and WLOK, the first African American-owned Memphis radio station and the city's first locally owned station. He was the first African American to write for The Commercial Appeal and the first African American on-air reporter and anchor on Memphis television at WMC-TV.
Gilliam Communications, Inc.
WMC-TV
The Commercial Appeal
Universal Life Insurance Company
Harold Ford, Sr. Congressional Campaign
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Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of Art Gilliam, Jr.'s interview
Tape: 1 Story: 2 - Art Gilliam, Jr. lists his favorites
Tape: 1 Story: 3 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes his mother's family background
Tape: 1 Story: 4 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes his mother's education and profession
Tape: 1 Story: 5 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes his father's family background
Tape: 1 Story: 6 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about his father's career
Tape: 1 Story: 7 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes how his parents met
Tape: 1 Story: 8 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes his parents' personalities and who he takes after
Tape: 1 Story: 9 - Art Gilliam, Jr. remembers watching Jackie Robinson play baseball
Tape: 1 Story: 10 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes the sights, sounds and smells of his childhood
Tape: 2 Story: 1 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes the African American community in Memphis, Tennessee
Tape: 2 Story: 2 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about his early education
Tape: 2 Story: 3 - Art Gilliam, Jr. remembers his family vacations
Tape: 2 Story: 4 - Art Gilliam, Jr. recalls his teachers at Hamilton High School in Memphis, Tennessee
Tape: 2 Story: 5 - Art Gilliam, Jr. remembers his early experiences of religion
Tape: 2 Story: 6 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes his parents' decision to send him to the Westminster School in Simsbury, Connecticut
Tape: 2 Story: 7 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes his experiences at Hamilton High School in Memphis, Tennessee
Tape: 2 Story: 8 - Art Gilliam, Jr. recalls his initial impressions of the Westminster School in Simsbury, Connecticut
Tape: 2 Story: 9 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about the development of black radio in Memphis, Tennessee
Tape: 2 Story: 10 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes his experiences at the Westminster School in Simsbury, Connecticut
Tape: 3 Story: 1 - Art Gilliam, Jr. remembers being removed from a segregated bus in Memphis, Tennessee
Tape: 3 Story: 2 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about his aspiration to become an actuary
Tape: 3 Story: 3 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about the impact of his education at Yale University
Tape: 3 Story: 4 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes the African American community at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut
Tape: 3 Story: 5 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about his extracurricular activities at Yale University
Tape: 3 Story: 6 - Art Gilliam, Jr. remembers the African American community in New Haven, Connecticut
Tape: 3 Story: 7 - Art Gilliam, Jr. recalls his graduation from Yale University
Tape: 3 Story: 8 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about the Civil Rights Movement in Memphis, Tennessee
Tape: 3 Story: 9 - Art Gilliam, Jr. recalls hearing Malcolm X speak at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan
Tape: 4 Story: 1 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes his early career at the Universal Life Insurance Company
Tape: 4 Story: 2 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes how he came to write for The Commercial Appeal
Tape: 4 Story: 3 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about the discriminatory practices of The Commercial Appeal
Tape: 4 Story: 4 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes his column in The Commercial Appeal
Tape: 4 Story: 5 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes how he became an anchor at WMC-TV in Memphis, Tennessee
Tape: 4 Story: 6 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes his position as a weekend anchor at WMC-TV in Memphis, Tennessee
Tape: 4 Story: 7 - Art Gilliam, Jr. remembers working for Congressman Harold Ford, Sr.
Tape: 4 Story: 8 - Art Gilliam, Jr. recalls acquiring the WLOK Radio station in Memphis, Tennessee
Tape: 5 Story: 1 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about the history and format of WLOK Radio in Memphis, Tennessee
Tape: 5 Story: 2 - Art Gilliam, Jr. remembers changing the format of WLOK Radio
Tape: 5 Story: 3 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about WLOK Radio in Memphis, Tennessee
Tape: 5 Story: 4 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes WLOK Radio's relationship with the Rainbow PUSH Coalition
Tape: 5 Story: 5 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about the Stone Soul Picnic in Memphis, Tennessee
Tape: 5 Story: 6 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about WLOK Radio's gospel format
Tape: 5 Story: 7 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes his projects at Gilliam Communications, Inc.
Tape: 5 Story: 8 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about WLOK Radio's on air personalities
Tape: 5 Story: 9 - Art Gilliam, Jr. remembers the election of Mayor W.W. Herenton
Tape: 5 Story: 10 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes his hopes and concerns for the African American community
Tape: 5 Story: 11 - Art Gilliam, Jr. reflects upon his career at WLOK Radio in Memphis, Tennessee
Tape: 5 Story: 12 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about the consolidation of the radio industry
Tape: 6 Story: 1 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes his plans for the future
Tape: 6 Story: 2 - Art Gilliam, Jr. reflects upon his life
Tape: 6 Story: 3 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about his civic engagement
Tape: 6 Story: 4 - Art Gilliam, Jr. reflects upon his legacy
Tape: 6 Story: 5 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about the state of the radio industry
Tape: 6 Story: 6 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about his family
Tape: 6 Story: 7 - Art Gilliam, Jr. describes how he would like to be remembered
Tape: 6 Story: 8 - Art Gilliam, Jr. talks about his parents' reaction to his career
Tape: 6 Story: 9 - Art Gilliam, Jr. narrates his photographs
Art Gilliam, Jr. describes WLOK Radio's relationship with the Rainbow PUSH Coalition
Art Gilliam, Jr. remembers watching Jackie Robinson play baseball
We talk about issues that are pertinent to our community. And we've done that, you know, over the years. I even mentioned, you know, we talked a moment ago about Operation PUSH [Rainbow PUSH Coalition, Chicago, Illinois]. Operation PUSH had been on WLOK [WLOK Radio, Memphis, Tennessee] for a few years. The previous owners [Starr Broadcasting Group] had put them off the air, because some of their advertisers had said that, you know, "Yeah, if you put these, keep these people on the air, we're not going to advertise on your station anymore." So, they put PUSH off the air. And so, this is 1977. So, the first thing I did when we came in was we put PUSH back on the air, because we understood what PUSH meant to the black community, and what the aspirations were of the black community. And so, that was the first thing that we did when we first came in, was put PUSH back on the air.$$I guess, I imagine it wouldn't have been hard to sell, you know, ads for that time slot. I mean, you know--$$Hard to sell?$$No, it would not have been hard. I mean, it would be fairly easy in a black community to sell ads for that time period, I guess (simultaneous).$$(Simultaneous) Well, yeah, except most of your ads were coming, most of your revenue was coming from white businesses, not from black businesses.$$Okay.$$But yeah, you're right as far as whether there's empathy for PUSH in the black community, absolutely. But it was really, from an economic standpoint, I would say that we, there was no benefit (laughter) economically in putting PUSH back on the air.$$Then did you take a hit, a financial hit, from--$$Well--$$--doing so?$$Not really. At the time I don't believe we did, actually. I didn't know whether we were going to take a hit or not. Because you know, obviously, some of the advertisers had previously indicated they were going to boycott the station from the standpoint of advertising, if the previous owners had left them on. So, I had no idea, really. It was really more a matter of principle for me as far as putting PUSH on, because I knew what they had to say. It would have, you know, in my mind, you know, what would be the benefit of black ownership if you're going to do the same thing that the previous owners are doing, in terms of those things that express the aspirations of the black community? So, really, I didn't think about it from an economic standpoint. But I think in the end we probably ended up not taking a hit, because a lot of people started listening to WLOK as well. And so, we, our ratings improved. And so, that probably affected us positively.$$Now, is there like a black community chamber of commerce type organization in Memphis [Tennessee] since--$$Well, not really. Not in the same way that you have the chamber [Greater Memphis Chamber]. You do have some organizations that are, you know, that are black oriented. But at that time, you really didn't have that to the same degree, to the extent that it would make a difference economically. Most of your revenue, it was not going to come from black businesses or organizations.$$Okay. What kind, what businesses really supported, I mean, the station in those days?$$Well, it could be a wide range of it. It could be automobile dealerships, it could be, you know, grocery stores--any, pretty much the same things you might see on the television, radio, you know, any--these, these businesses are pretty well traditionally involved with, with mass media.$Do you have an earliest childhood memory?$$Well, I do--I can remember things that happened, playing around in Nashville [Tennessee]. And partly because--the way I remember it is because we moved when I was six. So, as a result of that, I know things that happened before I was six years old. I can identify that because of that, you know, change of living circumstance. And as far as early childhood--just a happy childhood, playing a lot. My dad [Herman Gilliam, Sr.] was pretty fun loving, pretty humorous. And so, those are the kinds of things. We just did a lot of things together. We would take a trip really most every summer, which was something that--I guess I learned a lot about the country and about the--from my point of view, the world (laughter). But, we would take a road trip pretty much every summer. And one that I remember in particular though, was that, you know, here in Memphis [Tennessee] there was a Negro League baseball team called the Memphis Red Sox. And that was part of that same league [Negro American League] that the New York team [New York Cubans], Birmingham [Birmingham Black Barons], Kansas City [Kansas City Monarchs]--a number of teams were in that league. And I remember my dad told me we were going to go up to St. Louis [Missouri] to see a professional baseball game. So, I thought the Red Sox--that was about it--I thought that was the professional team. And he said, "No, we're going to see a fellow, a black fellow, who's playing baseball in the Major Leagues [Major League Baseball]." And so I thought, again, I told my dad, "I thought the Red Sox, I thought that was the Major Leagues." He said, "No, we're going to go to St. Louis." So, we went to St. Louis. It turned out he was taking me up there to see Jackie Robinson. And I'll never forget that, you know, now that I know the significance of Jackie Robinson. But he was taking me to St. Louis, because the Dodgers, then Brooklyn Dodgers [Los Angeles Dodgers], were coming to St. Louis to play the St. Louis Cardinals.$$Okay. So, you would have been what, about seven or eight, or--?$$Probably a little over, a little over seven, but maybe in the range of eight or nine.$$Okay.$$Something like that. Yeah, because the Dodgers--it would have been the late '40s [1940s] or early '50s [1950s], probably the early '50s [1950s].$$What was it--well, you know--$$May I get, let me get a (cough)--$$Sure.$$--quick break here (cough). My voice is--$$Let me ask you, like--what was that, what was that atmosphere like? Now, I've heard stories of when Jackie Robinson would come to town and the black community would turn out en masse, you know. (Unclear) (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) Well, yeah, well, we went to Sportsman's Park, which is of course the St. Louis ballpark. I don't know that there were a lot of black people there in the park. I don't remember it that well. But I just remember that what was important for my dad, I think, was just the significance of Jackie Robinson. And he wanted me to have the experience of seeing Jackie Robinson play baseball. And I don't think I fully appreciated, at the time, what the significance was. I probably was a little bit too young to fully appreciate it. But as I got older, then I appreciated it a lot more.$$Okay. I'm thinking too, that St. Louis would have been the southernmost team in the National League (simultaneous).$$(Simultaneous) I believe that's probably right. And I'm sure that Jackie Robinson and other ballplayers with the Dodgers--and I don't remember now, I don't believe there were other black players with the Dodgers, as I recall it. At the time I saw Jackie Robinson, I don't remember other black players. Later on, we went to New York [New York], and we saw Brooklyn play. And by that time they had Campanella [Roy Campanella] and Newcombe [Don Newcombe] and other black players--even Joe Black, later Sandy Amoros. They had a number of black players over time. But as I recall, when I went to St. Louis, I don't believe there was another black player on the Dodger ball club.$$Can you remember the black community showing up and--?$$Well, again, it's a big park. So, I didn't--the black community--I didn't specifically have a recollection or an awareness of showing up to see him play. But we came up from Memphis, to drive and just to go buy a ticket to go into the ballpark.$$I know, that's why I asked. Because often they made black people sit together in the park.$$You know, and I don't remember that. I, I, you know, you're absolutely right. I don't remember whether we were sitting in a segregated section or not. Being in St. Louis, I expect we were. But it just wasn't a part of my awareness at the time.$$Yeah, I know how you feel, because I've experienced certain things--where we'd go to the movies when I was a kid. We'd be in the balcony, but I never thought about it until I started doing these interviews.$$Well, you know (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) You might have been--$$--as a matter of fact though--now that, I did think about, and I was aware of. Because Memphis was a segregated city when I was growing up. And so, yeah, we went in the balconies. You had the signs--I don't know if they did that in Dayton [Ohio], your home. But you had white and colored drinking fountains, you had a sign on the bus that said, "Colored passengers occupy rear seats first." In fact, I got put off a Memphis bus once because I wouldn't move back, you know, from the--once I sat down, they wanted to make me move back on the bus. So, this was a segregated area, and you definitely had those elements, and I was very aware of them. But when I went to St. Louis to see the Dodgers, I was not aware necessarily of sitting in a black section.
Read more about Art Gilliam, Jr.
Pamela Gunter-Smith
Provost and academic vice president Pamela J. Gunter-Smith earned her B.S. degree in biology from Spelman College in 1973 and her Ph.D. degree in physiology from Emory University in 1978. She conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the University of Texas-Houston Medical School. Gunter-Smith has also participated in notable professional development opportunities, such as the Higher Education Resource Services (HERS) Leadership Development Program and the American Council on Education (ACE) Fellowship at the University of Miami.
In 1981, Gunter-Smith began working as a project manager and research physiologist at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) where she supervised three independent laboratories and oversaw an independent research program to assess and mitigate the effects of radiation on intestinal physiology. From 1982 to 1992, Gunter-Smith held faculty appointments at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and George Washington University. In 1992, Gunter-Smith was appointed as chair of the biology department and associate provost for science and mathematics at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. During her tenure, she directed the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Biomedical Program, improved the curriculum in the natural sciences, facilitated the development of grants for the natural and social sciences, and was instrumental in providing a number of opportunities for the faculty and students. While at Spelman, she played a major role in fund-raising and developing institutional grants from private foundations and federal agencies. In 2006, she joined Drew University as its first provost and academic vice president. As the chief academic officer, she helped to develop and implement a new vision statement to strengthen the natural science departments. Gunter-Smith has been instrumental in developing a successful strategic plan, which resulted in a twenty-five percent increase in undergraduate enrollment.
For her efforts and research at the AFRRI, Gunter-Smith received the Director's Award for Distinguished Service in 1992. In 2001, she received the Spelman Presidential Faculty Award for Scholarly Achievement. She received the Spelman College Alumnae Achievement Award in Health and Science in 2005.
Pamela J. Gunter-Smith was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on March 11, 2013.
SM DA Link
http://marc.thehistorymakers.org/smdigital/A2013.062.htm
Gunter-Smith
William Townsend Porter Foundation
Higher Education Resources Services (HERS)
American Physiological Society
Center for Allaying Health Disparities Through Research & Education
AP Biology Redesign Commission
St. Bernard Academy
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
ScienceMakers:Research
EducationMakers:Administration
GUN01
https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/25880
It is what it is.
Interview Description
A2013_062_Gunter-Smith_Pamela_EAD.pdf
A2013_062_Gunter-Smith_Pamela_EAC.pdf
Physiologist and university president Pamela Gunter-Smith (1951 - ) is provost and academic vice president at Drew University.
Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute
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Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of Pamela Gunter-Smith's interview
Tape: 1 Story: 2 - Pamela Gunter-Smith lists her favorites
Tape: 1 Story: 3 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her mother's family background - part 1
Tape: 1 Story: 5 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her mother's growing up
Tape: 1 Story: 6 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her mother's education
Tape: 1 Story: 7 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her father's family background
Tape: 1 Story: 8 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her father's family business
Tape: 1 Story: 9 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her father's education and career
Tape: 2 Story: 1 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her parents and how they met
Tape: 2 Story: 2 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about growing up as an only child
Tape: 2 Story: 3 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about growing up around a funeral home
Tape: 2 Story: 4 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her childhood neighborhoods
Tape: 2 Story: 5 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her elementary school experience
Tape: 2 Story: 6 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about growing up obscured from the typical racial tensions of the South
Tape: 2 Story: 7 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her favorite musicians growing up, and her high school
Tape: 3 Story: 1 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about accomplished African Americans in Nashville during her childhood
Tape: 3 Story: 2 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her involvement in the church while growing up
Tape: 3 Story: 3 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her decision to become a scientist
Tape: 3 Story: 4 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her extracurricular activities in high school
Tape: 3 Story: 5 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her decision to attend Spelman College
Tape: 3 Story: 6 - Pamela Gunter-Smith recalls the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Tape: 3 Story: 7 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her experience at Spelman College
Tape: 3 Story: 8 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her science instruction at Spelman College
Tape: 4 Story: 1 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her favorite musicians and social activities in college
Tape: 4 Story: 2 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her experience at the Woods Hole Marine Biology Laboratory
Tape: 4 Story: 3 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her decision to attend Emory University
Tape: 4 Story: 4 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her studies at Emory University
Tape: 4 Story: 5 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her Ph.D. dissertation, titled 'The Effect of Theophylline on Amphiuma Small Intestine'
Tape: 4 Story: 6 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her experience at the University of Pittsburgh
Tape: 4 Story: 7 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her experience at the University of Texas
Tape: 4 Story: 8 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her decision to join the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute
Tape: 5 Story: 1 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her career at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute
Tape: 5 Story: 2 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her professional activities and awards
Tape: 5 Story: 3 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her transition into academic administration at Spelman College
Tape: 5 Story: 4 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her work at Spelman College - part 1
Tape: 5 Story: 6 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about funding challenges for historically black colleges in Atlanta, Georgia
Tape: 5 Story: 7 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about balancing her professional activities and research with her personal life
Tape: 5 Story: 8 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her work at the University of Miami
Tape: 6 Story: 1 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her connections to Donna Shalala, Johnnetta Cole and Audrey Manley
Tape: 6 Story: 2 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her role as provost of Drew University
Tape: 6 Story: 3 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her decision to leave Spelman College to join Drew University
Tape: 6 Story: 4 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her professional accomplishments at Drew University
Tape: 6 Story: 5 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about the challenges of being a woman in the work-force and her future career aspirations
Tape: 6 Story: 6 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her goals for Drew University
Tape: 6 Story: 7 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about the history of Drew University
Tape: 6 Story: 8 - Pamela Gunter-Smith reflects upon her legacy
Tape: 6 Story: 9 - Pamela Gunter-Smith shares her hopes and concerns for the African American community
Tape: 6 Story: 10 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her family
Tape: 7 Story: 1 - Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about how she would like to be remembered
Tape: 7 Story: 2 - Pamela Gunter-Smith describes her photographs
Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about growing up around a funeral home
Pamela Gunter-Smith talks about her science instruction at Spelman College
Do you have an earliest childhood memory?$$The earliest childhood memory that I have was a traumatic one was, the funeral--the apartment was up a very steep, long flight of steps, probably I don't know 15 steps and I remember fall--tumbling down to the bottom of them when I was probably about three. That's the earliest memory that I have. It's funny that, I guess it was very traumatic but I have other, lots of memories of you know working around you know deceased and bodies and things like that because I had, that's how I had my anatomy lessons when I was a kid.$$Okay, so this--I would think that this demystified you know the body and death and--$$Um-hmm, absolutely.$$Yeah. I think it would have to. So well, tell us about--since we're on the subject yeah tell us about that, you know what the--$$Growing up around a funeral home or--?$$Yeah, you said you had your first lessons in anatomy.$$So I was always you know there. We, and we always had cases when I was there many evenings. And it was generally in the evenings that they would embalm the bodies. And I re--my dad never had the stomach for it. He was actually the business manager for the place. My uncle who was the photographer was the artist and so if there was a, an accident, he would do all the make-up and the facial restoration. And my other uncle was the gregarious one. He was the one that was out in the public and waving and going around. But one of the memories I have is that we had had a case that was--and I was probably about five, a case that was a, had been opt, opt--I can't--blanking on the word, had an autopsy. It's not right but--and I remember my uncle calling me into the morgue and standing up on a stool and he lifts the top of the skull and then starts to explain to me where the brain stem goes down and all of that. And I was always very fascinated by human anatomy because, I guess because I had those kind of lessons. Little, sounds a little strange now but you know it was just what happened.$$Yeah. And it doesn't--so many people are superstitious and afraid, especially in those days. The further back you get it seems that there's more like fear and spookiness attached to a funeral home and the funeral process and death and that sort of thing.$$But I grew up there. I was there every afternoon, every morning. And the, for the photography business where they actually developed the films, the lab, you had to go through the morgue to get upstairs to where the lab was. So you would have to walk through there. I would have to carry things back and forth and they would be doing whatever they were doing.$$Now did you do any photography as a youth?$$I didn't. I didn't do any of that but I have a son who's a photographer.$$Okay. So he kind of took after your uncle in that regard.$$Um-hmm.$Oh I've forgotten his name but the college physician who was well known in Nashville [Tennessee] used to take me and my two roommates, he was a surgeon, into surgery with him. And so we would go into surgery and work with--you know see what he was doing and he would instruct us. So there were a lot of people that had helped to promote that, to give us those types of experiences. His name was--his name, last name was Clinton, fairly well known in Atlanta [Georgia]. No, Clint Warner, Clint Warner was his name.$$Warner, okay.$$Yeah.$$Okay, so he would let you all go to surgery with him?$$Yes. Yes, and so my two roommates are both physicians and he would take us into surgery with him and while they were going oh, wow this is great, I'm like okay, let's move on this is boring. Let's move on. But yeah he would. He would you know ask the patients, they would say okay and we would go into surgery with him.$$That's something, oh okay. So you're getting a pretty I mean a real first hand--$$I'm a very much--$$--in-depth--?$$--in-depth training. I stayed in Atlanta during the summer working with Bill LeFlore [ph.] who was also a faculty member and Bernard Smith on their research project. We had just gotten funding from the NIH [National Institutes of Health] to promote minority scientists, student scientists. Between my junior and my senior year, I actually went to Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory [private nonprofit marine and biological exploration research facility] which most students didn't do until they were graduate students or post-docs and that door was open for me by Bill LeFlore who himself two years earlier had gotten a fellowship to go do that. So I, you know I have a lot of people who have made the right doors and opportunities open for me. You don't get to where you are by yourself. A lot of experiences count towards that.$$Okay. Now was there a certain part of biology that you focused on in terms of--?$$Well there are a couple. One is that Bill Leflore taught comparative anatomy. It was the hurdle that you had to pass if you were going to graduate as a biology major. By the time we got to his class, we started out with a class of 40 biology majors. We had been whittled down to 12 and by the time we got down with--done with his class there were six of us left. You would do all different types of dissections of different types of preserved specimens and my roommates just wanted to get done, I enjoyed the process. So mine were always perfect and mine were the ones they would use for the exams. There was one time when we weren't quite ready for the exam so we decided that we would steal all of the animals and take them to the dormitory that we had dissected out. So we took the animals out of the labs so that we were going to--you know the security guards would open up the labs for us. We took it to the dorm thinking that we couldn't have the test the next day. Well his figuring out that the animals, the specimens were gone, he had quickly dissected something, they looked awful, they looked like cheese. You couldn't figure out anything. He had put pins in it and he never said a word, he just went on with it. That was you know how that was. So you know I remember that. The other thing that I remember was that the William Townsend Porter Foundation of which I am now on the board of directors, sponsored a class with the Emory University School of Medicine in physiology that was taught at Spelman. It was a senior level course. And there was the only African American female physiologist that I knew at the time. Her name was Eleanor Eisen Franklin, she was a Spelman alum. She was on the physiology faculty at Howard University School of Medicine and she was one of the people that came in to teach the course. And that was a wonderful course because it was essentially what the medical students had, first year medical students had at Emory.
Read more about Pamela Gunter-Smith
Health researcher Mary Styles Harris was born on June 26, 1949 in Nashville, Tennessee. She later moved to Miami. Her father, George Styles, was finishing his studies at Meharry Medical College, and her mother, Margaret, had completed her degree in business administration at Tennessee State University. In 1963 Harris was one of the first African Americans to enter Miami Jackson High School. Four years later, she graduated 12th out a class of 350. Harris graduated from Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) in 1971, and then enrolled at Cornell University where she Ford Foundation Doctoral Fellowship to study molecular genetics. She graduated with her Ph.D. degree in 1975.
In 1977, Harris became the executive director of the Sickle Cell Foundation of Georgia, where she raised money to fight sickle-cell anemia and was in a position to inform the public about this very serious condition. Harris was awarded a Science Residency Award by the National Science Foundation. After a period spent in Washington, D.C. completing her Science Residency, Harris became the state director of Genetic Services for the Georgia Department of Human Resources. From this position, she could also influence health policies nationwide, and her advice was sought by health officials in other states. In addition to work in Genetic Services, Harris was a part-time assistant professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta and at Atlanta University. To make life even busier, the couple's daughter was born during this period. Then, Harris became founder and president of BioTechnical Communications, which actively focuses on health issues by producing audiovisual materials on such health topics as breast cancer, an issue of major concern among minority women.
Harris' interest in preventive health care has led her to get involved in new born screening of Sickle-cell disease and sitting on the Atlanta board of the March of Dimes. Also, she has produced television and radio shows, and she hosts a radio show, "Journey To Wellness," and has developed a documentary, "To My Sisters... A Gift For Life." Harris has received several awards for her research and advocacy, including the National Cancer Research postdoctoral fellowship, the Ford Foundation Doctoral Fellowship, and the Outstanding Working Woman from Glamour magazine.
Mary Styles Harris was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on December 11, 2012.
Health Researcher
National Caucus and Center on Black Aged
International Women\'s Forum
Grady Hospital
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
Miami Jackson Senior High School
:Administration
:Education
HAR37
A2012_208_Harris_Mary_EAD.pdf
A2012_208_Harris_Mary_EAC.pdf
Barbecue (Ribs)
Health researcher Mary Harris (1949 - ) received her Ph.D. degree from Cornell University and is the founder of BioTechnical Communications, Inc.
BioTechnical Communications, Inc.
Georgia Department of Human Services, Division of Public Health
Atlanta University
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Morehouse College School of Medicine
Sickle Cell Foundation of Georgia
WGTV
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Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of Mary Harris' interview
Tape: 1 Story: 2 - Mary Harris lists her favorites
Tape: 1 Story: 3 - Mary Harris describes her mother's family background
Tape: 1 Story: 4 - Mary Harris describes her mother's life in Nashville
Tape: 1 Story: 5 - Mary Harris describes her father's family background
Tape: 1 Story: 6 - Mary Harris talks about her parents
Tape: 1 Story: 7 - Mary Harris describes her parents' personalities and who she takes after
Tape: 1 Story: 8 - Mary Harris talks about her siblings
Tape: 1 Story: 9 - Mary Harris describes her earliest childhood memory
Tape: 2 Story: 1 - Mary Harris talks about her early life in Miami, Florida
Tape: 2 Story: 2 - Mary Harris describes the sights and sounds and smells of growing up
Tape: 2 Story: 3 - Mary Harris describes life in the Brownsville community of Miami in the 1950s
Tape: 2 Story: 4 - Mary Harris describes her childhood in Miami
Tape: 2 Story: 5 - Mary Harris talks about the integration of Jackson High School in Miami
Tape: 2 Story: 6 - Mary Harris talks about the problems with her grade school education
Tape: 2 Story: 7 - Mary Harris talks about television in the 1950s and 1960s
Tape: 2 Story: 8 - Mary Harris describes her childhood interest in science
Tape: 2 Story: 9 - Mary Harris describes her experience in middle school
Tape: 2 Story: 10 - Mary Harris talks about African American political activism in the 1960s
Tape: 3 Story: 1 - Mary Harris talks about her father's death and the family's new business
Tape: 3 Story: 2 - Mary Harris talks about Liberty City, Miami
Tape: 3 Story: 3 - Mary Harris talks about President John F. Kennedy's assassination
Tape: 3 Story: 4 - Mary Harris describes race relations in Miami in the 1950s and 1960s - part one
Tape: 3 Story: 5 - Mary Harris describes the establishment of the Cuban community in Miami
Tape: 3 Story: 6 - Mary Harris describes race relations in Miami in the 1950s and 1960s - part two
Tape: 3 Story: 7 - Mary Harris describes the Bahamian community in Miami
Tape: 3 Story: 8 - Mary Harris discusses Sidney Poitier
Tape: 3 Story: 9 - Mary Harris describes her experience at Jackson High School
Tape: 4 Story: 1 - Mary Harris describes her science education at Jackson High School
Tape: 4 Story: 2 - Mary Harris describes her decision to attend Lincoln University
Tape: 4 Story: 3 - Mary Harris describes her experience at Lincoln University
Tape: 4 Story: 4 - Mary Harris describes the loss of private medical practices
Tape: 4 Story: 5 - Mary Harris describes her decision to pursue a Ph.D. degree instead of a medical degree
Tape: 4 Story: 6 - Mary Harris describes how she earned a Ford Foundation fellowship
Tape: 4 Story: 7 - Mary Harris describes her experience as a doctoral student at Cornell University
Tape: 5 Story: 2 - Mary Harris describes her Ph.D. dissertation research on the molecular mechanism of killer factor in yeast
Tape: 5 Story: 3 - Mary Harris talks about being married in graduate school
Tape: 5 Story: 4 - Mary Harris describes the challenges she experienced during her post-doctoral training at Rutger's Medical College
Tape: 5 Story: 5 - Mary Harris describes her role as an executive director of the Sickle Cell Foundation of Georgia
Tape: 5 Story: 6 - Mary Harris describes her work in STEM-related programming in collaboration with the National Science Foundation
Tape: 5 Story: 7 - Mary Harris talks about Dr. James Bowman
Tape: 5 Story: 8 - Mary Harris talks about receiving the Outstanding Working Woman Award
Tape: 5 Story: 9 - Mary Harris describes her experience at the Georgia Department of Human Services
Tape: 5 Story: 10 - Mary Harris talks about her documentary production, 'To My Sisters, A Gift For Life'
Tape: 6 Story: 1 - Mary Harris describes her work in television and radio broadcasting on science and health
Tape: 6 Story: 2 - Mary Harris talks about the major health concerns in the African American community
Tape: 6 Story: 3 - Mary Harris describes her television production, 'Keeping Up With The Walkers' - part one
Tape: 6 Story: 4 - Mary Harris reflects upon her non-traditional career path in science
Tape: 6 Story: 5 - Mary Harris describes the impact of her work in science communication - part one
Tape: 6 Story: 6 - Mary Harris reflects upon her career
Tape: 7 Story: 1 - Mary Harris reflects upon potential post-retirement pursuits
Tape: 7 Story: 2 - Mary Harris describes her hopes and concerns for the African American community
Tape: 7 Story: 3 - Mary Harris talks about her family
Tape: 7 Story: 4 - Mary Harris reflects upon her legacy
Tape: 7 Story: 5 - Mary Harris reflects upon the people who influenced her life
Tape: 7 Story: 6 - Mary Harris talks about how she would like to be remembered
Mary Harris describes the challenges she experienced during her post-doctoral training at Rutger's Medical College
Mary Harris talks about her documentary production, 'To My Sisters, A Gift For Life'
Okay, okay. So now at Rutgers [University, New Brunswick, New Jersey], now did he, did you, you all moved to New Jersey--$$We moved to New Jersey because he had to go work for Bell Laboratories, which was in Homedel and I got a post-doc at Rutgers Medical School because I had a friend who had gone to Lincoln [University, West Chester, Pennsylvania] with me, who sat next to me at all my classes, we're friends to this day. And in the old days they took roll and they--his last name was Staley [ph.] and my last name was Styles. So we sat next to each other. And when he, he said I don't care what [James] Burney says, I'm going to medical school, which he did. And he was at Rutgers. And when I sent to see him and I said you know I'm having trouble finding a post-doc, he said let me take you to meet the dean. Lo and behold the dean was black, Harold Logan. And Harold Logan said we would love to have you here, I'll arrange the money. It happened just that quickly. And so I had a post-doc. And I went there and was very interested--I was assigned a project that was similar to something I had worked on as a graduate student. And there was a girl who had worked on this problem before me. So what happens is you, when you pick up a project, you go into the project and you replicate the experiments before you and then you move forward. And the replication shouldn't take you long because the work should have been validated, so you kind of replicate the work quickly so that you can make sure that the results are as they are, and then you move forward. Well when I tried to replicate the results, I couldn't get it to work and I was very arrogant. I had been through pure hell at Cornell [University, Ithaca, New York]. I felt I'm really smart. I mean I know a lot. Why can't I get this to work? I did the experiments for three or four months, I couldn't get them to work. Finally somebody said you need to check--I was working with tissue culture. And they said what you need to do is you need to check and see if the cell lines are contaminated. And I did. And the phenomenon that this girl before me had done her dissertation, gotten her Ph.D. on, and they had millions of dollars in grant money riding at the National Institute of Health [NIH] on this. It was an artifact of contaminated cell culture. And before I got there nobody had ever checked. Now this was a problem. It's a problem for a number of reasons. One, I had spent almost now a year has gone by before I really figure out what's, what the problem is here. Two, so I wasted a year. Post-docs are two years. I've wasted a year. Three, I need to tell somebody because it's no good. None of this, none of the papers that got published before I got there are good. None of the research grants, writing and NIH [National Institute of Health] are any good. It's all crap. The department chairman calls me in. He knows I know. He's trying to figure out what I'm going to do. And he says to me look, I know you've wasted a whole year. I, I don't want you to tell anybody about this. What I want you to do is you spend another year, I will write you a recommendation for any job you want anywhere and I will give you a lab assistant. So I was a post-doc. It's like the low, lowest of the low, right. And so you do all that stuff yourself. He says I'll give you a lab assistant, somebody to help you. That way it will take you half the time to do the work that you need to do 'cause you're going to have some help. So I said okay, fine. He said but you know don't, don't tell anybody about this, don't do anything. I'll just do this. I go back, I'm really happy now. I don't care, I don't care, I just want the lab assistant so I can get my work done, get my papers published and go. Well as it turns out, he never had any intention of giving me a lab assistant, never. Several months go by, no lab assistant. I go back to him and I say what about the lab assistant? He says well you know I want to give you the lab assistant, but we don't have any money. I went right downstairs to the dean and I said, I told the dean everything that happened. He was so outraged, he got the money for the lab assistant. I go back upstairs, I see the department chair and I say guess what? You don't have to worry about the money anymore. The dean gave me the money. He was so angry, he told me he said I will not write any letters of recommendation. I couldn't figure out what had happened. I thought I had done a good thing by going and getting the money. He said no, he said I'm not going to write any letters of recommendation for you. This has so angered me. How dare you go over my head? Blah, blah, blah, blah. So I finished up the post-doc, was able to get a job without his letter of recommendation and I thought that's it, I'm through with bench work. It's too much politics involved in this. What I didn't have an appreciation for because I was so young in my career, was that I really did have the upper hand, I just didn't know it. I knew, I mean I could have essentially sat down and said okay, here's what I want. Because they had this stuff going to NIH requesting money for stuff that was really an artifact. It was contaminated with mycoplasma [type of bacteria], the mycoplasma was absorbing the nutrients and that's why they were seeing what they were seeing. It had nothing to do with the cell line whatsoever. But I didn't know, I was young and he knew I was young. And he knew I didn't know how all of that worked, so he essentially took advantage of me. So I--anyway through with lab work, through with bench work and on to my first job, which is in Atlanta [Georgia]. And that's how I wound up in Atlanta.$Okay. Now in 1992, now this is a--so throughout the '80s [1980s], throughout the Reagan Administration and George Bush the first and stuff you were doing, you were working for the state of Georgia. In '92 [1992] you were the founder of, of Biotechnical Communications, Incorporated. Now so just kind of tell us how--$$So in a nutshell, I moved to California with my husband because of his work. And the commute from where we're living into Los Angeles is hellacious. And I say I cannot do this every day. And I start doing technical writing for biotechnology companies. And they tell me while I'm doing this writing, I'm looking at what they're doing and I see this small business innovation research grant. And I think why am I writing this for them? I write this for myself. I go back home and I'm watching TV, I was actually telling Patrice [Coleman, who is observing the interview] this story earlier. And I'm watching a talk show personality talk about breast cancer in black women and she's doing an awful job, it's, it's simply awful. And I say to myself you know, I think I could do a better job. Get on the phone the next morning and I called National Institute of Health [NIH]. I say to the guy you know here's what I want to do. He says let me send you an application. Again, there was no downloading, let me mail you an application. And he kind of walked me through how to fill it out and how to write it. And it got funded on peer review. And I--so I went on to produce this television special 'To My Sisters, A Gift For Life'. It was the first documentary done on black women and breast cancer in this country. And it went on to win some awards. But the television experience so wore me out I thought I cannot go back to this. And then I began to develop my business by writing these grants to NIH, getting the money to do the research around--the research issues around it, but also to do the productions. And so I went from television, to radio, from radio to internet. And so I've just recently finished an animated program based on health around African Americans called 'Keeping Up With The Walkers'. So that's how my business developed.$$Okay, okay. So these--say the, the first one, the breast cancer video 'To My Sisters'. Now where was it broadcast and how--$$BET [Black Entertainment Television] broadcast that.$$Okay.$$And it was interesting because by the time we got to the broadcast after producing the show, by the time we got to the broadcast, they actually did not have an appropriate timeslot. And so what they said was well we'll put it on, but we'll put it on on Sunday morning at eleven o'clock. I said that's when every black woman in America is in church. Why would you do this? But they did. And surprisingly by word of mouth, of course there's some people who were home will see, it was so popular that they had to rerun it. And then we took it after the rerun and we turned it into a video. And I think we wound up distributing about 8,000 of those things across the country because there had been nothing like it before. And it was just a--it was just wonderful to see it.$$Now did you consult with doctors around?$$Yeah.$$Okay.$$I did.$$Who were some of the--$$Tony Disher; he's a radiation oncologist. We--I worked very closely with the American Cancer Society and with the National Cancer Institute. So Oscar Streeter [ph.], Tony Disher, Otis Brawley [ph.]. Those are some of the people that we worked with.$$Okay, and there's several points bulleted here that the, that the video was to accomplish and can you maybe talk about what you intended to do with it?$$Well the goal was to get black women engaged in this dialogue about breast cancer and to get it out of the closet and into the public dialogue. We wanted to--wanted them to understand that even though we have a lower incidence, we have a higher death rate from the disease. We wanted to emphasize that mammography was key and to demonstrate why and how it works and why it works. So, so people will say well I had a mammogram five years ago, why do I need another one? Well we were able to actually demonstrate why an annual mammogram is so important of course because you see early changes in the breast tissue, you see those changes early. So you, you can find the change here as opposed to waiting to five years later when it's a full grown lump. Because by the time you feel a lump, it's been growing for about seven years. So you really are--it, it's great to be able to visualize it way, way when it's microscopic as opposed to waiting until you can feel--although it's nothing wrong with finding a lump that you can feel. The other thing is that treatment is important. It's not only important to get the mammogram, but to get the treatment. And where we tend to fall down now because the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia] has a very aggressive breast and cervical cancer screening program, is the treatment. So black women will say I don't want to, I don't want to do this because I can't afford the treatment. The treatment is going to make me sick, I need to work. I don't need to be home sick. I, I, I don't have anybody to keep my kids and I say to them who will keep your kids when you're dead? It's, it's a simple choice. Who will keep your kids when you're dead versus who will keep your kids now? So you need to see about doing this now. So the, so the problems that arise for black women are not so much money for mammograms, but money for treatment. That's where the biggest--I see the biggest challenge for black women.
Read more about Mary Harris
Joseph Gordon, II
Research chemist and research manager Joseph Grover Gordon, II, was born on December 25, 1945 in Nashville, Tennessee to Joseph Grover, Sr. Juanita Elizabeth (Tarlton) Gordon. He is one of four children, including Eric Rodney, Craig Stephen, and Rhea Juanita. After briefly attending Atkins High School in North Carolina, Gordon went on to graduate from the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy in 1963. Gordon earned his A.B. degree in chemistry and physics from Harvard College in 1966. He received his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970.
After finishing his graduate education, Gordon worked at the California Institute of Technology as an assistant professor in the Chemistry Department. In 1975, he began working as a research staff member at Almaden Research Center (IBM Research) and was promoted to interfacial electrochemistry manager in IBM's Applied Materials Division in 1990. There, Gordon managed a research staff team and contributed greatly to the fields of materials science and electrochemistry. Between 1975 and 1994, Gordon established a program in fundamental electrochemistry that developed solid: liquid interface. From 2004 to 2009 Gordon Developed an exploratory battery materials research program and evaluated new battery technology for ThinkPad strategic planning in Raleigh, North Carolina and development in Yamato, Japan. In 2009, Gordon was hired as the senior director for the advanced technology group in at Applied Materials, Inc. Throughout his career, Gordon has published numerous research papers in leading scientific journals, such as Physical Review Letters and Sensors and Actuators A: Physical.
Gordon is a member of several professional organizations, including the American Chemical Society, Society for Analytical Chemistry, Electrochemical Society, and the National Research Council. Throughout his career, Gordon has shown a continued commitment to scientific research and has credited with twelve United States Patents. Gordon has been recognized many times for his work. In 1993, he was awarded the Black Engineer for Outstanding technical Achievement, and in 1993 the National Organization of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers awarded Gordon the Percy L. Julian Award. Gordon and his wife, Ruth M., reside in San Jose, California.
Joseph G. Gordon, II was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on November 7, 2012.
Joseph Gordon passed away on September 13, 2013.
UC Merced School of Engineering
ACS Corporation
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Corporation
Society for Electroanalytical Chemistry
St. Vincent de Moor
Fort Bragg Elementary School
St. Benedict The Moor
Exeter Community Day School
Atkins Academic and Technology High School
Anywhere With Friends
A2012_242_Gordon_Joseph_EAD.pdf
A2012_242_Gordon_Joseph_EAC.pdf
Bay Area/San Jose
Chemist Joseph Gordon, II (1945 - 2013 ) is credited with twelve United States patents for developing solid liquid interface technologies and the battery materials research programs for IBM ThinkPad computers.
Almaden Research Center (IBM Research)
Applied Materials (Firm)
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Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of Joseph Gordon's interview
Tape: 1 Story: 2 - Joseph Gordon lists his favorites
Tape: 1 Story: 3 - Joseph Gordon describes his mother's family background
Tape: 1 Story: 4 - Joseph Gordon talks about his mother's growing up in Sumter, South Carolina
Tape: 1 Story: 5 - Joseph Gordon describes his father's family background
Tape: 1 Story: 6 - Joseph Gordon talks about his father's growing up
Tape: 1 Story: 7 - Joseph Gordon talks about his early childhood
Tape: 1 Story: 8 - Joseph Gordon describes his parents' personalities and who he takes after
Tape: 1 Story: 9 - Joseph Gordon describes his earliest childhood memory
Tape: 1 Story: 10 - Joseph Gordon describes the sights, sounds and smells of growing up
Tape: 2 Story: 1 - Joseph Gordon talks about growing up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Tape: 2 Story: 2 - Joseph Gordon talks about the integration of the medical societies
Tape: 2 Story: 3 - Joseph Gordon talks about his early education
Tape: 2 Story: 4 - Joseph Gordon talks about his early interest in science
Tape: 2 Story: 5 - Joseph Gordon talks about his elementary school teachers
Tape: 2 Story: 6 - Joseph Gordon talks about his memories of the Civil Rights Era
Tape: 2 Story: 7 - Joseph Gordon talks about his grade school and his family's religious background
Tape: 2 Story: 8 - Joseph Gordon talks about his experience at Phillips Exeter Academy
Tape: 3 Story: 1 - Joseph Gordon talks about his peers at Phillips Exeter Academy
Tape: 3 Story: 2 - Joseph Gordon talks about his social life at Phillips Exeter Academy
Tape: 3 Story: 3 - Joseph Gordon talks about his decision to attend Harvard University
Tape: 3 Story: 4 - Joseph Gordon discusses his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement
Tape: 3 Story: 5 - Joseph Gordon talks about his advisors at Harvard University
Tape: 3 Story: 6 - Joseph Gordon talks about his decision to pursue a career in chemistry
Tape: 3 Story: 7 - Joseph Gordon summarizes his experience at Harvard University
Tape: 3 Story: 8 - Joseph Gordon talks about living in France
Tape: 3 Story: 9 - Joseph Gordon talks about his professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tape: 3 Story: 10 - Joseph Gordon describes his dissertation
Tape: 3 Story: 11 - Joseph Gordon talks about his pre-doctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation
Tape: 3 Story: 12 - Joseph Gordon talks about his post-doctoral employment opportunities
Tape: 4 Story: 1 - Joseph Gordon talks about notable people at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tape: 4 Story: 2 - Joseph Gordon compares his experiences at the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tape: 4 Story: 3 - Joseph Gordon talks about his experience at the California Institute of Technology
Tape: 4 Story: 4 - Joseph Gordon talks about electrochemistry and his work at IBM
Tape: 4 Story: 5 - Joseph Gordon talks about his professional awards
Tape: 4 Story: 6 - Joseph Gordon talks about his professional activities and awards
Tape: 4 Story: 7 - Joseph Gordon talks about the significance of NOBCChE
Tape: 4 Story: 8 - Joseph Gordon talks about his racial ambiguity
Tape: 4 Story: 9 - Joseph Gordon talks about his professional activities
Tape: 5 Story: 1 - Joseph Gordon talks about his career transition into more managerial roles
Tape: 5 Story: 2 - Joseph Gordon describes his technological contributions at IBM
Tape: 5 Story: 3 - Joseph Gordon talks about his career at Applied Materials Incorporated
Tape: 5 Story: 4 - Joseph Gordon reflects on his career
Tape: 5 Story: 5 - Joseph Gordon talks about his hopes and concerns for the African American community
Tape: 5 Story: 6 - Joseph Gordon reflects upon his legacy
Tape: 5 Story: 7 - Joseph Gordon talks about his family
Tape: 5 Story: 8 - Joseph Gordon talks about how he would like to be remembered
Tape: 5 Story: 9 - Joseph Gordon describes his photos
Joseph Gordon talks about growing up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Joseph Gordon describes his technological contributions at IBM
Okay, we were talking about sights and sounds and smells. Now, Winston-Salem [North Carolina] has a pretty active black community there. Did you live in, I mean what was, how was Winston-Salem situated? I mean what--$$Okay, yeah, actually, it was a characteristic smell there every year. It was cured tobacco. And we actually used to put the stalks on the lawn for fertilizer. So the whole place smelled of, actually, it's a quite nice smell, I think, of, curing and cured tobacco. Winston-Salem at the time was about, slightly less than 50 percent black. It was, it was, quite physically divided. We lived in East Winston, which was the black part of town. We built a house on a, you know, in a circle [sic, cul-de-sac] at the end of 14th, 14th Avenue. The neighborhood was quite mixed. So in our circle, we had, the guy up the street from us was a, was a barber, next door was a physician, next door to him was a, were two college professors who taught at Winston-Salem, but TC at the time, now Winston-Salem State. There was a high school teacher, another high school teacher, a high school football and tennis coach, the high school music teacher and the elementary school music teacher. And then up the street further, you know, there were people who were, you know, there were a couple of policemen, you know, other--I'm not quite sure exactly what jobs, but they had nonprofessional jobs, the head of the [National] Urban League lived on the street, and it was, it was actually a fairly, fairly mixed sort of, sort of neighborhood, which was characteristic I think of black neighborhoods at the time. You couldn't, there wasn't enough space to have isolated, actually, you know, only professional people in one, in one area. And so we were able to walk to the school. We went to a Catholic school, and I was able to walk to high school. There was one black high school in town, one city high school and there was a county, black county high school.$Okay, okay, now, some place within your career at IBM, didn't you do something, didn't you develop a new battery or something for--$$Okay, yes, during this, about the same time, in early 2000, well, since 1990 I had been working on, with the "Think Pad" division on lithium ion batteries. And in the early, mid-'90's [1990s]--I'd have to go back and figure out the dates now, I had a small group that I actually was trying to develop a new lithium ion battery for, for portable electronics. After a while though, it became obvious, when I put together several business plans, that IBM wasn't interested in making batteries. So we, we stopped that effort also. But it turned out that the "Think Pad" people still needed technical assistance in setting standards for, for safety, the qualification standards, and there're a whole stream of new technologies coming on, and they needed somebody to help them evaluate the new technologies. So I stayed involved in that for a while. And then in the, around 2002, '03' [2003], there were a series of laptop fires that were quite publicized. And so all of the laptop companies then put together groups to investigate the cause. So every single incident was investigated. And I was the technical person for the IBM incident team who worked with the engineers in development and with outside consultants to do a failure analysis on each incident so we actually knew what was going on and could feed back to the battery manufacturer that they needed to correct some part of the manufacturing process. So that was a pretty intense operation for about, for two or two and a half years. Yeah, one year I remember I spent more than a 180 days in hotels, traveling to various places to perform the analyses.$$Now, that's between 2003 and 2005?$$I think, I think that was the time. I'd have to go back and look and--$$I remember the incidents, yeah, an Apple computer battery caught fire--$$Yeah, it caught fire at some conference--$$Yeah, and blew, yeah.$$--yeah, right, okay. And every time there was even a report of something at an IBM thing, we'd go and investigate it, whether it got into the news or not. And I also, at that stage helped with the, what series is it? I think it's the T-40 series. We put in a number of improvements in that battery pack to help reduce the severity of a failure of an individual cell, okay. And several people at research were involved in, in helping with that and to getting these things and doing simulations, doing calculations, doing experiments.$$So if it did get hot enough, it wouldn't actually flame up or something?$$Right, yes, so it wouldn't catch fire, and it wouldn't set off an adjacent cell. If you have a single-cell failure, that's usually not real serious. The big incidents happen when you have one cell set off another cell, sets off another cell. And you get all six or all nine go off.$$Okay, all right, now, but, okay, so--$$Yeah, so that actually took a lot of time. I was actually, at that time I was also the second-line manager. So that was a pretty, that was a pretty, how do I say it--fully occupied my time for a while.$$Hectic time, I guess.$$Very hectic, that's the word I'm looking for (laughter).
Read more about Joseph Gordon, II
Reginald Stuart
Newspaper correspondent and corporate recruiter Reginald Stuart was born on November 26, 1948 in Nashville Tennessee. He was raised by his parents with his older siblings, William H. Stuart, Jr., and Cassandra Stuart Woods. While attending Pearl High School, in Nashville, he worked as a disc jockey and had his own radio show. In 1965, he graduated from Pearl High and, three years later, earned his B.S. degree in sociology from Tennessee State University. After working a short time for The Nashville Tennessean as a general assignment reporter and for WSIX-TV-AM-FM, the local ABC affiliate, Stuart received his M.S. degree in journalism from Columbia University in the City of New York in 1971.
In 1974, Stuart became a business and finance reporter for The New York Times. During his 13 years there, he also worked as national correspondent bureau chief in Detroit, Michigan, Atlanta, Georgia, and Miami, Florida. He covered the 1979 federal government bailout of the Chrysler Corporation. Stuart released a book based on the stories, Bailout: The Story Behind America's Billion Dollar Gamble on the "New" Chrysler Corporation. In Atlanta, Stuart reported on police investigations of a series of unsolved cases of missing and murdered children. He continued to write articles on the federal government's deregulation of major industries throughout the 1980s.
In 1987, Stuart left the Times and joined Knight Ridder Newspapers, Inc., as the Washington-based national affairs correspondent for the Philadelphia Daily News. There, he covered the 1988 presidential election and 1990 Census. Stuart's 1994 Emerge Magazine article about Kemba Smith, a young woman sent to prison for 24.5 years based on new federal mandatory sentencing laws regarding illegal drugs, was credited with generating the popular and political support that persuaded then President Bill Clinton to commute her prison sentence to time served. Afterward, he moved to the Knight Ridder Washington News Bureau news desk as an assistant editor, a post he held through 1996. In 1997, he was hired as Knight Ridder's corporate recruiter, finding individuals for newsroom and business positions, and coordinating Knight Ridder's early career talent development programs, including the Knight Ridder Scholars Program and Native American Internship Program.
Stuart was elected national president of the Society of Professional Journalists in 1994. He received the Ida B. Wells Award for promoting diversity in journalism, the Leadership in Diversity Award from the Asian American Journalists Association and the Wells Memorial Key from the Society of Professional Journalists. Stuart is married to Daryl Thomas Stuart with whom he has three children, Reginald II, Nicholas and Andrea.
Reginald Stuart was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on 08/29/2012.
Corporate Recruiter
Sigma Delta Chi Foundation of Washington, D.C. (SDXDC)
Student Press Legal Center
Ford Green Elementary School
Washington Junior High School
MediaMakers:Print
He Was A Pretty Good Fella, But He Could Have Been Better.
Cobbler (Peach), Greens (Turnip), Macaroni, Cheese, Bread (Rolls), Barbecue Pork
Newspaper correspondent and corporate recruiter Reginald Stuart (1948 - ) , earned his M.S. degree in journalism from Columbia University in New York City, and wrote Bailout: The Story Behind America's Billion Dollar Gamble on the "New" Chrysler Corporation, a book about the government's 1979 financial bailout of the Chrysler Corporation.
Nashville Tennessean
WSIX TV
Knight Ridder Newspapers
0,0:6029,178:17808,282:20154,312:27700,412:39313,726:59580,948:70633,1087:80040,1154:87866,1291:93410,1411:93830,1417:98010,1454:107835,1587:113867,1656:114971,1683:116952,1704:126003,1828:127390,1853:133605,1923:133961,1988:134940,2002:135385,2007:138233,2051:142810,2091:143811,2119:145890,2221:163656,2449:169850,2546:182750,2740:188030,2862:188670,2872:189790,2889:205138,3043:219258,3257:219954,3267:225473,3299:225677,3304:232830,3440:241738,3548:242206,3555:242752,3563:255748,3786:258434,3836:266410,3915$0,0:2486,36:24573,287:24968,293:36273,454:61010,814:71404,950:71660,962:127310,1732:145570,1909
Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of Reginald Stuart's interview
Tape: 1 Story: 2 - Reginald Stuart lists his favorites
Tape: 1 Story: 3 - Reginald Stuart describes his maternal family background, pt. 1
Tape: 1 Story: 5 - Reginald Stuart talks about his mother, Maxie Allen
Tape: 1 Story: 6 - Reginald Stuart describes his paternal family background
Tape: 1 Story: 7 - Reginald Stuart talks about his parents and St. Luke CME church
Tape: 1 Story: 8 - Reginald Stuart describes his parents' personalities and who he takes after
Tape: 1 Story: 9 - Reginald Stuart talks about his siblings and the proximity of his extended family
Tape: 1 Story: 10 - Reginald Stuart describes his earliest childhood memory
Tape: 1 Story: 11 - Reginald Stuart describes his childhood home
Tape: 1 Story: 12 - Reginald Stuart describes the sounds of growing up in Nashville, Tennessee
Tape: 2 Story: 1 - Reginald Stuart talks about his father's Scrabble talent
Tape: 2 Story: 2 - Reginald Stuart remembers listening to music at Club Baron in Nashville, Tennessee, pt. 1
Tape: 2 Story: 4 - Reginald Stuart describes the sights and smells of growing up in Nashville, Tennessee
Tape: 2 Story: 5 - Reginald Stuart recalls creating a neighborhood newspaper as a child
Tape: 2 Story: 6 - Reginald Stuart describes his elementary school memories
Tape: 2 Story: 7 - Reginald Stuart describes his neighborhood newspaper, pt. 1
Tape: 3 Story: 1 - Reginald Stuart talks about his epilepsy
Tape: 3 Story: 2 - Reginald Stuart describes attending Washington Junior High School and Pearl High School in Nashville, Tennessee
Tape: 3 Story: 3 - Reginald Stuart recalls Civil Rights activism in Nashville, Tennessee during the early 1960s
Tape: 3 Story: 4 - Reginald Stuart remembers the integration of Nashville, Tennessee in 1965
Tape: 3 Story: 5 - Reginald Stuart describes his activities at Pearl High School in Nashville, Tennessee
Tape: 3 Story: 6 - Reginald Stuart talks about attending Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee
Tape: 3 Story: 7 - Reginald Stuart describes managing The Fabulous Nu-Tones during college
Tape: 3 Story: 8 - Reginald Stuart talks about being a disc jockey during college
Tape: 4 Story: 1 - Reginald Stuart remembers WAC radio
Tape: 4 Story: 2 - Reginald Stuart talks about regional differences in musical tastes
Tape: 4 Story: 3 - Reginald Stuart talks about majoring in sociology at Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee
Tape: 4 Story: 4 - Reginald Stuart describes his professors at Tennessee State University in Nashaville, Tennessee
Tape: 4 Story: 5 - Reginald Stuart talks about being hired at the Nashville Tennessean in 1968
Tape: 4 Story: 6 - Reginald Stuart talks about John Seigenthaler
Tape: 4 Story: 7 - Reginald Stuart talks about his job search after graduating from Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee
Tape: 4 Story: 8 - Reginald Stuart describes working at the Nashville Tennessean
Tape: 4 Story: 9 - Reginald Stuart talks about how the journalism profession has changed since he started
Tape: 5 Story: 1 - Reginald Stuart talks about working for WSIX, the ABC news affiliate in Nashville, Tennessee
Tape: 5 Story: 2 - Reginald Stuart describes the stories he covered for ABC TV
Tape: 5 Story: 3 - Reginald Stuart talks about the signal problem with WSIX TV
Tape: 5 Story: 4 - Reginald Stuart describes his decision to attend Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Tape: 5 Story: 5 - Reginald Stuart describes covering the 1970 election while at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Tape: 5 Story: 6 - Reginald Stuart recalls turning down a job offer from Walter Cronkite
Tape: 5 Story: 7 - Reginald Stuart talks about the stories he covered in Nashville, Tennessee in the early 1970s
Tape: 5 Story: 8 - Reginald Stuart recalls being hired by The New York Times in 1974, pt. 1
Tape: 6 Story: 2 - Reginald Stuart talks about becoming the business writer at The New York Times
Tape: 6 Story: 3 - Reginald Stuart talks about covering the 1970s energy crisis
Tape: 6 Story: 4 - Reginald Stuart talks about being the New York Times Bureau Chief in Detroit, Michigan
Tape: 6 Story: 5 - Reginald Stuart talks about covering Chrysler's Lee Iacocca as the New York Times Bureau Chief in Detroit
Tape: 6 Story: 6 - Reginald Stuart talks about covering the Haitian immigrant crisis as the New York Times Miami Bureau Chief
Tape: 6 Story: 7 - Reginald Stuart talks about covering Wayne Williams, an alleged serial killer of children in Atlanta, Georgia, pt. 1
Tape: 7 Story: 1 - Reginald Stuart describes leaving The New York Times in 1987
Tape: 7 Story: 2 - Reginald Stuart describes covering the 1988 Presidential campaign for the Philadelphia Daily News
Tape: 7 Story: 3 - Reginald Stuart describes the 1988 Democratic Presidential debate
Tape: 7 Story: 4 - Reginald Stuart talks about working for Knight Ridder Newspapers
Tape: 7 Story: 5 - Reginald Stuart describes the Knight Ridders Scholars and other programs
Tape: 7 Story: 6 - Reginald Stuart describes writing about Kemba Smith for Emerge magazine
Tape: 7 Story: 7 - Reginald Stuart talks about mandatory sentencing drug laws
Tape: 7 Story: 8 - Reginald Stuart describes Kemba Smith's story
Tape: 8 Story: 1 - Reginald Stuart talks about the public's reaction to his story "Kemba's Nightmare"
Tape: 8 Story: 2 - Reginald Stuart talks about following up on his story "Kemba's Nightmare"
Tape: 8 Story: 3 - Reginald Stuart talks about the social impact of his story "Kemba's Nightmare"
Tape: 8 Story: 4 - Reginald Stuart talks about his awards
Tape: 8 Story: 5 - Reginald Stuart talks about being a corporate recruiter for McClatchy
Tape: 8 Story: 6 - Reginald Stuart describes the guests at the National Press Club luncheon, pt. 1
Tape: 8 Story: 8 - Reginald Stuart talks about his involvement with the Society for Professional Journalists
Tape: 8 Story: 9 - Reginald Stuart talks about The National Association of Black Journalists
Tape: 8 Story: 10 - Reginald Stuart reflects upon his legacy
Tape: 9 Story: 1 - Reginald Stuart describes his hopes and concerns for the African American community
Tape: 9 Story: 2 - Reginald Stuart talks about his family
Tape: 9 Story: 3 - Reginald Stuart reflects upon his career
Tape: 9 Story: 4 - Reginald Stuart describes how he would like to be remembered
Tape: 9 Story: 5 - Reginald Stuart narrates his photographs
Reginald Stuart describes working at the Nashville Tennessean
Reginald Stuart talks about covering the 1970s energy crisis
I had a wonderful time with that newspaper [Nashville Tennessean]. I knew nothing about what I was doing. It was so obvious that I hadn't worked on the college paper, I hadn't worked on anything that even resembled a newspaper. And they took me in and they kept me because I had spark and energy and I wasn't afraid of anything. I was too dumb to be afraid of anything. And they said okay if he's got those ingredients, we can teach him how to be a journalist. And so the first couple of weeks I was writing--I had little stories they'd give me and I'd go out and write 'em and bring 'em in. And one day my city editor, a guy named Herman Eskew [ph.], called me up to his desk and he said I have a question for you. I said yeah. I'm, you know. He says do you read this newspaper? I said I read it every morning, I love it. He said well how do the stories you write differ from the ones you see in the paper? So it's a learning moment, right, I said there's a trick question going in here somewhere. So I picked the paper up and I started reading it and I said well, I said first of all, I said your sentences are shorter than mine. I said your paragraphs are shorter than mine. He said yeah, anything else? I said yeah, you have quotes in the, in the paper. He said do you think you can do the same thing for your stories that you see in the paper? I'd been writing news columns position for three weeks and they'd had it. I had like three sentences in a paragraph, right. Like 50 words per sentence, no quotes. It was driving them crazy. But I had stories, I had stories. I had stories come out of the wazzoo, cause I was just out there really trying to get stuff. That was the first problem. The second problem was I did not know what beats were. And on newspapers, all assignments are like beats. Like in schools you have first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, right, that was your beat, you teach this grade. In the news business, you have courts, cops, city council, mayor's office, Health Department, school board, and so on. I didn't know that. I came to work every morning and would just start calling people trying to find out what's going on. And so the best idea that came out of those phone calls, I'd go to the editor and say I got a story idea. Well this went on for about eight months and finally they called me in again and said listen, do you know everybody in this newsroom want you fired? I said no, why? He says because you're going across everybody's god damn beats. I said beats, what's a beat? So, so he, he didn't call me dumb as a box of rocks at that point, but he, he had a serious conversation. He says you have to understand how newsrooms work. Every--what does so-and-so do? I said well they go to the courthouse every day. What does so-and-so do? He goes to the [unclear]. These are called beats and you're trampling over their beats. You gotta find your own beat, all right, or they gone run you out of here. So what did I do? I found my own beat in Nashville, transportation and aviation. We had maybe 30 flights a day, a small airport. We don't have any big transportation problems, just traffic jams that everybody has, small town traffic jams. But I turned that beat into a very productive beat and they were impressed. Fortunately, American Alliance had a strike. So I was at the airport covering the strike, no air service at National, right. Good story. Fortunately, I talked to the Traffic Parking Commission members and they were about to change parking rates. And about to introduce one-way streets, heaven forbid. So I got to write all these stories and lo and behold, I'm in the paper you know two or three times a week. I'm not on anybody's beat. I'm writing stories. They have short paragraphs, they have quotes, I'm getting there. And that was my, my ride at Tennessean and it was a great ride.$And I'll tell you the, the funniest story. A whole lot of stories, but it was a funny story, is a--it was a crook story. In the early '70s [1970s], we had this--the convoluted energy crisis, and, and they were keeping gasoline and oil offshore, and that allowed the fuel shortages for power plants to run amok. And so coal prices went up because coal mines was still using coal. There were a lot of, there were a lot of get rich quick coal companies that came up overnight. And what they would do is they were just getting into work on strip mining and, and, and traditional mining, deep mining, you wanna mine on the ground [unclear]. Strip mining is gone on the side of the mountain, rake of the vegetation forestation over time and you get the surface coal. It's, it's a lower BTU [British thermal unit] content, it's cheaper. And so a couple of guys down in my old home state of Tennessee, right, got slick. And so what they would do is they would, would do something called layer loading. Layer loading is where you go out and dig up some dirt, right, put it in the bottom of the railcar and then top it off with some of this coal we just strip mined. Now the way you inspect coal in those days, right, you'd bring the railcar up to a utility yard, right. And they put a probe in the top of the car in different spots. The probe went down about, you know, eight, nine inches. And so it would always show coal, right. You accept the railcar and it's your, you just paid a thousand dollars for it, right. Then when you take the car to the next stop and you dump the car, you got a railcar full of dirt. And so these guys were, were getting away with about--ripping off about fifteen, twenty utilities around the country, sending layer loaded coal, rail coal cars. And so I wrote about that and, and that became one of the most hilarious stories, crook stories you could find of that time.
Read more about Reginald Stuart
Jesse Russell, Sr.
Inventor, electrical engineer, and business executive Jesse E. Russell, Sr. was born on April 26, 1948 in Nolensville, Tennessee to Mary Louise Russell and Charles Albert Russell. He was raised in inner-city Nashville along with his ten siblings. In 1972, Russell received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Tennessee State University. As a top honor student, Russell became the first African American to be hired directly from a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) by AT&T Bell Laboratories. The following year, he earned his M. S. degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University.
After the completion of his education, Russell continued to work at Bell Laboratories as a pioneer in the field of cellular and wireless communications. In 1988, Russell led the first team from Bell Laboratories to introduce digital cellular technology in the United States. He was a leader in communication technology in cellular devices and some of his patents include the "Base Station for Mobile Radio Telecommunications Systems," (1992), the "Mobile Data Telephone," (1993), and the "Wireless Communication Base Station" (1998). Russell held numerous posts while employed at AT&T, including director of the AT&T Cellular Telecommunication Laboratory and chief technical officer for the Network Wireless Systems Business Unit. From 1996 to 2000, Russell served as vice president of Advanced Communications Technologies for AT&T and Chief Wireless Architect for the AT&T Company. In 2000, Russell became the president and CEO of incNETWORKS®, Inc., a company devoted to developing fourth-generation broadband wireless communications devices and wireless voice, video and data communications equipment.
For his innovation and leadership, Russell has won a number of prestigious awards and he was invited to participate in numerous professional conferences and organizations. In 1980, he received the Outstanding Young Electrical and Computer Engineer Award from Eta Kappa Nuand. In 1992 he was named the U.S. Black Engineer of the Year for the best technical contributions in digital cellular and microcellular technology. Amongst other memberships, he is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. and a member of Eta Kappa Nu. In 1995, Russell was inducted in to the National Academy of Engineering. Russell is married to Amanda O. Russell, and they have raised four children: Tina, Jesse, Jr., William, and Catalina.
Jesse E. Russell, Sr. was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on May 16, 2012.
Eta Kappa Nu (ΗΚΝ)
Never let anyone else define success for you.
A2012_111_Russell_Jesse_EAD.pdf
A2012_111_Russell_Jesse_EAC.pdf
Greens (Turnip)
Inventor and electrical engineer Jesse Russell, Sr. (1948 - ) is a pioneer in the field of cellular and wireless communications, holding over 100 patents.
incNETWORKS,Inc.
0,0:7068,158:13054,246:13382,251:15760,287:16744,301:19942,348:20762,359:31121,421:32513,441:34079,470:34601,477:36167,497:37124,506:40710,516:41470,526:43370,551:52214,635:56127,703:56673,710:57037,715:58402,732:60313,758:66387,797:66801,804:67284,812:67974,827:71122,855:71702,869:74136,896:74432,901:77762,962:79316,989:80574,1027:81536,1047:89576,1087:90196,1102:91710,1109:96530,1119:99654,1228:100648,1246:101145,1255:103914,1297:105476,1321:111542,1378:114740,1436:117200,1473:123924,1570:128182,1581:130074,1613:130418,1618:131278,1630:131622,1635:132396,1645:132740,1650:133428,1660:134030,1668:136868,1710:137384,1717:140136,1752:150540,1797$0,0:950,4:16753,258:17818,281:18102,286:22078,385:22362,404:27119,511:30820,517:31044,522:40824,606:41445,616:41859,623:52106,779:53114,797:55346,838:55634,843:71930,1066:72320,1073:72710,1080:73035,1086:73425,1093:74075,1105:75635,1132:75895,1137:80965,1259:81225,1264:84150,1336:84410,1341:84735,1347:85775,1371:86750,1392:92874,1416:93240,1423:93545,1429:103664,1569:104140,1578:106656,1633:110692,1744:126796,2008:135888,2081:136316,2108:140302,2146:142002,2217:159100,2487:167749,2553:172350,2585:172630,2590:173400,2603:174310,2621:174870,2631:175220,2641:175850,2652:177390,2679:178300,2700:178580,2705:179000,2712:179490,2727:182640,2808:188470,2853:193602,2948:194214,2959:194826,2970:195098,2975:195846,2989:196390,2999:196934,3009:197410,3017:197818,3024:199246,3053:199518,3058:199858,3064:200334,3072:213226,3260:213916,3271:214813,3289:216469,3335:216952,3344:217366,3351:218953,3376:222196,3471:223990,3519:224542,3528:226612,3588:227095,3597:227440,3603:227716,3608:234538,3647:235462,3667:235924,3675:237244,3711:237838,3724:239488,3759:249703,3885:250652,3903:251601,3919:252258,3944:258695,4011:261374,4036:272060,4156:272960,4170:273710,4182:277230,4216:277575,4223:277851,4228:278541,4244:279162,4255:280473,4286:281646,4300:281922,4313:282612,4329:283302,4344:283785,4353:291970,4478:299638,4596:299993,4602:300561,4611:300845,4616:301342,4624:301910,4633:306441,4671:307031,4683:308329,4727:308919,4740:309332,4749:309627,4755:310512,4784:311102,4797:311987,4826:312636,4840:312931,4846:313226,4852:313639,4861:314701,4874:316943,4928:317533,4943:318123,4956:318536,4965:318890,4972:319185,4978:319598,4987:320011,4995:320483,5004:325333,5020:325837,5033:326404,5044:326656,5049:331330,5086
Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of Jesse Russell's interview
Tape: 1 Story: 2 - Jesse Russell lists his favorites
Tape: 1 Story: 3 - Jesse Russell describes his mother's family background
Tape: 1 Story: 4 - Jesse Russell talks about his mother's childhood in Tennessee
Tape: 1 Story: 5 - Jesse Russell describes his father's family background
Tape: 1 Story: 6 - Jesse Russell talks about being raised by his mother
Tape: 1 Story: 7 - Jesse Russell talks about his mother's involvement with the Primitive Baptist Church
Tape: 1 Story: 8 - Jesse Russell talks about his parents and his siblings
Tape: 1 Story: 9 - Jesse Russell talks about his childhood household and his mother's employment
Tape: 1 Story: 10 - Jesse Russell talks about being raised with a close connection to the church
Tape: 2 Story: 1 - Jesse Russell describes the sights, sounds and smells of growing up in Nashville, Tennessee
Tape: 2 Story: 2 - Jesse Russell talks about his family's dire financial situation following his mother's accident
Tape: 2 Story: 3 - Jesse Russell talks about the influence of his chemistry teacher in high school
Tape: 2 Story: 4 - Jesse Russell talks about his close relationship with his mother
Tape: 2 Story: 5 - Jesse Russell talks about his mother's accident at work, and the sacrifices made by his siblings to support the family
Tape: 2 Story: 6 - Jesse Russell talks about the schools that he attended in Nashville, Tennessee
Tape: 2 Story: 7 - Jesse Russell describes his experience in high school in Nashville, Tennessee
Tape: 2 Story: 8 - Jesse Russell describes his childhood interest in math and electronics
Tape: 3 Story: 1 - Jesse Russell talks about repairing his family's television set
Tape: 3 Story: 2 - Jesse Russell talks about his ability to repair electronics and toys, and his talent for mathematics
Tape: 3 Story: 3 - Jesse Russell talks about his childhood dream of becoming a professional football player
Tape: 3 Story: 4 - Jesse Russell talks about getting into a fight in school
Tape: 3 Story: 5 - Jesse Russell talks about NFL player, Joe Gilliam, and about Jefferson Street in Nashville, Tennessee
Tape: 3 Story: 6 - Jesse Russell talks about his interest in math and science, and his experience in high school
Tape: 3 Story: 7 - Jesse Russell talks about attending a summer program at Fisk University, and his first exposure to the conflict between science and religion
Tape: 3 Story: 8 - Jesse Russell talks about the poor college prep at his high school, his experience at Fisk University, and his motivation to attend college - part one
Tape: 3 Story: 9 - Jesse Russell talks about the poor college prep at his high school, his experience at Fisk University, and his motivation to attend college - part two
Tape: 3 Story: 10 - Jesse Russell talks about attending the School of Engineering at Tennessee State University
Tape: 4 Story: 1 - Jesse Russell talks about his experience graduating from high school
Tape: 4 Story: 2 - Jesse Russell talks about his part-time job at a manufacturing company
Tape: 4 Story: 3 - Jesse Russell describes his experience in the engineering school at Tennessee State University
Tape: 4 Story: 4 - Jesse Russell describes his experience at Tennessee State University
Tape: 4 Story: 5 - Jesse Russell talks about excelling in engineering school at Tennessee State University, and his desire to work at Bell Laboratories
Tape: 4 Story: 6 - Jesse Russell describes being recruited to work at Bell Laboratories, and the opportunity to pursue his master's degree at Stanford University
Tape: 4 Story: 7 - Jesse Russell talks about earning his master's degree at Stanford University, getting married to his high school sweetheart and returning to Bell Labs
Tape: 5 Story: 1 - Jesse Russell describes his work using microprocessors in the design of telecommunications systems at Bell Laboratories
Tape: 5 Story: 2 - Jesse Russell talks about his ability to solve challenging problems
Tape: 5 Story: 3 - Jesse Russell talks about his first project at Bell Labs integrating microprocessors on old electromechanical switching systems
Tape: 5 Story: 4 - Jesse Russell talks about his summer research experience where he invented an automatic soldering machine for superconductivity experiments
Tape: 5 Story: 5 - Jesse Russell describes how he began to work on mobile telephones at Bell Labs
Tape: 5 Story: 6 - Jesse Russell describes his pioneering work at Bell Labs that led to the introduction of digital cellular technology
Tape: 5 Story: 7 - Jesse Russell describes the process that made it possible to reduce the size of cell phones
Tape: 6 Story: 1 - Jesse Russell talks about his role as the director of AT&T's Cellular Telecommunications Laboratory and the digitalization of telecommunications
Tape: 6 Story: 2 - Jesse Russell explains how he conceived the idea of starting his company, incNETWORKS, Inc. - part one
Tape: 6 Story: 3 - Jesse Russell explains how he conceived the idea of starting his company, incNETWORKS, Inc. - part two
Tape: 6 Story: 4 - Jesse Russell talks about the concept of 4G in telecommunications
Tape: 6 Story: 5 - Jesse Russell talks about the future of cellular telecommunications
Tape: 6 Story: 6 - Jesse Russell reflects upon the trends in the investment in innovation and intellectual bandwidth in the United States
Tape: 7 Story: 1 - Jesse Russell talks about personalized cellular networks
Tape: 7 Story: 2 - Jesse Russell describes his hopes and concerns for the African American community today - part one
Tape: 7 Story: 3 - Jesse Russell describes his hopes and concerns for the African American community today - part two
Tape: 7 Story: 4 - Jesse Russell reflects upon his life's choices and his mother's role in his life
Tape: 7 Story: 5 - Jesse Russell reflects upon his legacy
Tape: 7 Story: 6 - Jesse Russell talks about his family - part one
Tape: 7 Story: 7 - Jesse Russell talks about his family - part two
Tape: 7 Story: 8 - Jesse Russell talks about how he would like to be remembered
Jesse Russell talks about his family's dire financial situation following his mother's accident
Jesse Russell describes his pioneering work at Bell Labs that led to the introduction of digital cellular technology
But my mother [Mary Louise Glenn Russell] got involved in an accident at the cleaning, at the dry cleaners, that's what we used to call it, called it the dry cleaners, I don't know what they call it today, but we called it the dry cleaners. And what happened was the press that she was pressing with accidentally fell and fell on her arm and, and completely disabled her. And, and burned her arm and disabled her. And that we all thought that that was the end of our family because without her working, there was almost no food and, and we went to welfare and we tried to get food and she, she--they gave us some food to eat during that timeframe. And that it had gotten so desperate for us that my mother said well look we, we have to eat. And she had given us a cup for us to go to, to the street corners where we could actually hold the cup where people would, would give us money to, to come back where we could buy food. And the, the thing I remember from, from that experience which is why it is so vivid to me, is that I concluded at that point in time that I refused to do what my mother said. That I, I wouldn't go do it and she, she was saying that we needed to do that to eat and that I refused to do it. And that was the time that was probably most vivid to me of saying that, that I deserve a better life than this. And I just refused to do it. And I had never refused to do anything that my mother told me to do before, but I wouldn't do that. And from that point on was probably the changing point in my life because what happened was I got so focused on getting out of that environment that nothing was more important than trying to educate myself and trying to find a way to have a better life. And it, it became a passion with me to get out of that environment.$$Okay$And that it was an all--my group [mobile technology, Bell Laboratories, New jersey] was all white and I was young. And I was the, I was the manager because I, I was the supervisor. So I went back there and, and I was asking these guys what's the problem? What is the--why is it that this is, is not great? It sounds like a great idea to me, you know what I mean. So, so why is it that we can't make money? And then they were explaining to me why we couldn't make money. And the, the thing that struck me about what they were doing was they were following the vision of Vidovale [ph.] which was--and Alexander Graham Bell. You'd think in nine, in the '80s [1980s] or early '80s [1980's], you know we would have moved beyond that. But the, the, the vision of Vidovale was putting phones in places. So if you go back and study the Bell System, you will note that once the Alexander Graham Bell invented the, the telephone, that Vidovale really drove the growth of the Bell System and what he was doing was we should put phones in, in businesses, in homes, in public places where people congregate, right. And the only place that they had not put a phone was in the car. And my boss, you know a team of guys starting in the '60s [1960's], had come up with this mobile phone and put it in the car. Well when I went back to meet with these guys, when they told me what the problem was about you--you were not making money because the phones, the calls went to no answer. My reaction was that oh, I know what the problem, I know what the problem is, right. You guys are focused on putting, still focused on putting phones in places and we ought to be focused on putting phones on the people, right. Because if we put the phones on the people, the minute the phone rings, it would be a natural inclination for them to answer it. And every time they answer, we could make a dollar, right because the minutes were very expensive, right. And I said we could turn the business around. We could make a whole lot of money. And, and that people were looking at me as if I was nuts because I didn't know that the phones were these huge boxes that went in the trunk of cars, and they had these big clunky handsets that went in the front part of the car, right.$$Was that the brick basically?$$It was prior to the brick, right, prior to the brick, right. Actually I have one sitting on the, the headset is sitting on one of the desks over here. But when, when--because I didn't know that, they, they didn't want to tell me that I was sounding dumb, right you know. But the--what, what happened was when I raised the question, then they started to explain to me, oh well the problem is there are more people than there are cars and this was designed for cars. We don't have enough spectrum and we can't really, you know, the technology is not at a place where you can actually miniaturize things the way I was thinking about them. And then I started to explain to them because I had become an expert in digital signal processing. So I started to talk about digital techniques and interacting with some of the other guys, saying, look if we digitize the speech substantially--at that time we had never done anything below 32 kilobytes ADPCM, and you had this young black guy talking about we're going to do eight kilobytes. Now which is almost like a factor four below what anything that had ever been done before, right. And I said no we're going to do it. And that we're going to go over and get some of the research guys, and I started going. And then all these guys got all fired up about this idea, right, this kid--cause they were older, this kid had come up with, right. Say no we're going to digitize the speech and then I described how we were going to use different-digital modulation schemes and, and all of a sudden guys that didn't want me there started to say this is not a bad idea. You know that this kid is talking about, right. And so I went from the black guy that took over the white group, to all of a sudden the white guys liked me, you know. And, and it was--I always tell the story it was a real awakening for me that innovation is colorblind, right. It, it, it--if you really have a good idea and you're willing to work hard and pursue it and be persistent in that, have a passion for it, people see the passion, right. And they, they sort of don't see the color, right. And all of a sudden--and these guys were really smart. The guys that had built this original mobile phone system were really smart, right. But they started to see the passion in me about creating this digital cellular technology. And next thing you know, they got on board and we started--it took us about four years and we made the first digital cellular call to any place in the world, in Chicago [Illinois] which was the first place that the first mobile system call was made. So we took it back to the same place and, and that was the birth of what's known today as digital cellular communications, which is the reason you walk around with cell phones on you today.
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