This was first published in March 2015. Southern trees bear strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees Before Billie Holiday sang the lyrics above at Cafe Society, the first integrated nightclub in New York, another icon of […]
She pauses, the doorbell’s eerie reverberations beat a note of panic through her veins. She wipes her hands on the linen apron wrapped around her and hurries to tell them to hide themselves in the basement or attic. She breathes deeply, realizes this is the moment she and her husband have talked about, […]
Juliette Gordon Low founded the girl scouts because she had been hanging out with the Boy Scouts founder and thought, well, why the heck weren’t girls encouraged to go hike in the woods, build a fire, swim? She liked all of that stuff. When people think about women who have made a major impact on […]
“The city is strangely silent—after all the bombing and shelling. Three dangers are past—that of looting [Chinese] soldiers, bombing from aeroplanes and shelling from big guns, but the fourth is still before us—our fate at the hands of a victorious army. People are very anxious tonight and do not know what to expect . . […]
Their nightstand and bookshelves tell you all you’d need to know. Anne of Green Gables, Ramona, Laura Ingalls Wilder. We have Girls Think of Everything, Rosie Revere Engineer, Not One Damsel in Distress. Harriet Tubman. Helen Keller. Sojourner Truth. Marie Curie. These are their heroes. We go through our Bible with care and find all […]
This post was written by Velynn Brown for our Women’s History Month theme on March 25, 2015. Southern trees bear strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees Before Billie Holiday sang the lyrics above at Cafe Society, […]
A hairstylist I used to frequent once referred to Mother’s Day as “Complicated Day.” She did not have a particularly good relationship with her very controlling mother. “Complicated Day” really resonated with me, but I would go one step further: I hate Mother’s Day. My mother died of cancer when I was a teenager. Every […]
I am not the biggest sports fan. But any Michigander worth their weight should be a Detroit fan. (Well, ok. I’m mostly a fair-weather Lions fan, but come on. It’s agony otherwise.) But a few years ago, I surprisingly turned into a fairly serious football fan. It started when I joined a fantasy football league, […]
Their nightstand and bookshelves tell you all you’d need to know. Anne of Green Gables, Ramona, Laura Ingalls Wilder. We have Girls Think of Everything, Rosie Revere Engineer, Not One Damsel in Distress. Harriet Tubman. Helen Keller. Sojourner Truth. Marie Curie. These are their heroes. We go through our Bible with care and find all […]
Southern trees bear strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees Before Billie Holiday sang the lyrics above at Cafe Society, the first integrated nightclub in New York, another icon of history, sat nightly, frantically documenting every lynching […]
I’m in a class right called Restoration History, and before the semester began it was the course I was looking forward to the least. An entire semester of learning about old, dead white men who were racist, sexist, and worst of all: privileged and unaware? No thank you. Needless to say it was an experience […]
When I was married, I gifted with great ceremony white lilies to three older women that I loved. My blood mother. My stepmother. My mother-in-law. I carried the long and elegant stems across the pebbles toward their wooden folding chairs. All three of them died young. Cancer, cancer, and a freakish surprise sort of thing […]
She pauses, the doorbell’s eerie reverberations beat a note of panic through her veins. She wipes her hands on the linen apron wrapped around her and hurries to tell them to hide themselves in the basement or attic. She breathes deeply, realizes this is the moment she and her husband have talked about, and […]
“A great deal of living must go to a very little writing.” – Frances Ridley Havergal You probably don’t recognise her name. But if she had been born today, you would. She was the equivalent of a famous Christian singer-songwriter. You would have gone to one of her gigs, sung her songs, heard her testimony. […]
“The city is strangely silent—after all the bombing and shelling. Three dangers are past—that of looting [Chinese] soldiers, bombing from aeroplanes and shelling from big guns, but the fourth is still before us—our fate at the hands of a victorious army. People are very anxious tonight and do not know what to expect . . […]
Jill Lepore wrote a book about a woman we know hardly anything about. A thick book, a love letter, a weighty tome about a woman of whom the slimmest of evidence exists—letters, a single hand-stitched notebook, ghostly things that others said of her. She was a poor woman from Boston right before and after the […]
She loved. Not with an everyday lovey-dovey sort of love, but with agape. A love that keeps no record of wrong. A love that hopes. A love that never fails. I’m still trying to figure out that sort of love. My own love is imperfect. People aren’t always trustworthy. Those I love don’t always follow […]
Juliette Gordon Low founded the girl scouts because she had been hanging out with the Boy Scouts founder and thought, well, why the heck weren’t girls encouraged to go hike in the woods, build a fire, swim? She liked all of that stuff. When people think about women who have made a major impact […]