were the times when I was alone where it was quiet and I didn’t have to sing, dance, and be part of a crowd. I loved to sit in my father’s study and avidly read Corneille and Racine plays, Tintin comic books, and the adventures of Fantômette, the French teenage crime fighter. I loved the smell of books: Musty, inky—earthy, perhaps. It wasn’t just the smell of paper. That smell was mixed with page-turning sweat, the spilled ingredients hastily swabbed off the pages of my mother’s Haitian recipe book. The smell of eagerness and my hunger for words. The smell of my world.
So, I became a writer. At school, my teachers loved my stories so much they shared them with the class. Sister Anne-Marie (I went to an all-girls Catholic school) put me in charge of the morning prayer, and I wrote poems to God that made students weep and occasionally rose the hairs on the back of my own neck.
I was good at this.
What makes you happy? Take a sheet of paper and, without thinking too much about it, write down tasks and activities that bring you joy and satisfaction. (If you’re in school, avoid focusing solely on academic life. Think about everything else that excites you: your passions or your hobbies.) Then, ask yourself, what aspects of each task or activity you particularly like. For example, if you’re currently a team leader for an extracurricular activity, what excites you the most? Is it taking the lead on some projects? Or, is it paying attention to your classmates—making sure everyone has a part in the project and can bring their special talents to the group?
It’s about identifying what captivates you the most. To do this, focus on what you’d like to do right now, not in ten or twenty years. Imagine the weekend is coming and you have several hours to indulge in your favorite activity. No school deadlines. No social engagements. You can spend hours doing what you want all by yourself. You can forget the world and allow yourself to be (pleasantly) absorbed in one task you find both challenging and fulfilling. If you can find an activity that makes time fly and brings you joy, you’re in the zone.
There: You’re on your way to finding your talents. If you are in the zone, it is likely that you use one or more of your strengths. The next step is to identify the other skills required by this type of task and sharpen them.
Too many Black girls had/have to survive a childhood in neighborhoods where death, drugs, and violence surround us. The most dangerous cities in America (Oakland, Cleveland, Baltimore, and Detroit) have large Black populations in some of the most crime-dense parts of the country.
How can community organizations like nonprofits, churches, charities, youth groups, after-school programs, fraternal organizations, and others focused on furthering education, help reduce crime and find alternatives to violence? How can you get involved?
Google It!
AFFIRMATION: I choose happiness. I choose greatness. I know there’s nothing standing in my way that I can’t handle. I can do this. The sunrise fills me with energy, and every breath I take fills my soul with ease. However big the mountain, I can climb it. Wonderful things are coming my way. Today, I choose to be confident.
“Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.”
—Audre Lorde, American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist
10 Badass Trailblazers in Politics and Law (1930–1979)
1872 Charlotte E. Ray (1850–1911), was the first Black female lawyer in the United States. She was also the first Black woman admitted to the bar of the District Columbia in April 1872 and the first Black lawyer of any gender to be admitted to practice and argue before the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia.
A stamp printed in the USA shows Mary McLeod Bethune, Educator, Black Heritage, circa 1985
1936 Mary McLeod Bethune became the first Black woman appointed to a government post, when, on June 24, 1936, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt named her Director of Negro Affairs at the National Youth Administration. One of the youngest of seventeen children, born to former slaves, Bethune also opened a boarding school for Black girls, which eventually merged with another school to become Bethune-Cookman College. She served as Vice President of the NAACP from 1940 until her death in 1955.
1939 The first Black woman judge in the United States was Jane Matilda Bolin. Bolin was also the first Black woman to earn her degree at Yale Law School, the first to join the New York Bar City Association, and, after becoming the first Black woman in the New York City Law Department, became the only (and first) Black female judge in the United States when she was appointed justice in Domestic Relations Court of New York City on July 22, 1939. She remained the only Black female judge in the United States for twenty years.
1947 Alice Dunnigan was the first Black female reporter to receive White House press credentials. She was the first Black correspondent to travel with a sitting president when she joined President Harry S. Truman on his campaign tour. In 1947, Dunnigan made history when she became the first Black woman to serve as a White House correspondent.
A stamp printed in the United States, shows Patricia Roberts Harris, circa 2000
1965 Patricia Roberts Harris was the first Black American woman to hold two cabinet positions. She was Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare during the Carter administration. Harris was also the first Black woman to hold an ambassadorship. She was ambassador to Luxembourg during the Johnson Administration.
1966 Constance Baker Motley was the first Black woman to hold a federal judicial post. She was appointed a US District Court judge on August 30, 1966. She also became the first Black woman to argue a case before the US Supreme court when she successfully argued Meredith v Fair in 1962, which won James Meredith the right to attend the segregated University of Mississippi.
A stamp printed in the USA shows Shirley Chisholm, Black Heritage, circa 2014
1968 Shirley Chisholm was the first Black woman to serve in the US House of Representatives. She ran under the campaign slogan “Unbought and Unbossed” and represented her district in Brooklyn for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. She was also the first Black woman to run for US President, and the first Black woman to take the stage in the Presidential debates in 1972.
A stamp printed in the USA shows Barbara Jordan, Black Heritage, circa 2011
1976 Barbara Jordan was the first woman of any color to deliver a keynote address at a Democratic National Convention. She was also the first Black of any gender to be elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction and the first Southern Black of either gender to be elected to the US House of Representatives.
1977 Azie Taylor Morton was the first Black woman to sign US currency. She was the thirty-sixth Treasurer of the United States and remains the only Black woman to have held that post.
1979 Amalya Lyle Kearse was the first woman
