No One Can Make You Feel Inferior Without Your Consent

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

~Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was a powerful voice on behalf of a wide range of social causes including youth employment and civil rights for blacks and women. The wife of a popular U.S. president, Eleanor Roosevelt was born in New York City on October 11, 1884 was a tireless worker for social causes. A niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she was raised by her maternal grandmother after the premature death of her parents. In 1905, she married her cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt; they had six children, one of whom died in infancy. Although extremely shy, she became active in politics after her husband was stricken with polio in 1921.

When Franklin became president in 1933, Eleanor Roosevelt transformed herself into a tireless worker for social causes. She conducted press conferences, had her own radio program, and wrote a daily newspaper column, "My Day," which was nationally syndicated. After her husband's death, she continued in public life. She served (1945-52, 1961-62) as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations and helped draft the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Her books include The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (1961) and This I Remember (1949). She died on November 7, 1962.

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

~Dr. Maya Angelou

Dr. Maya Angelou is one of the most renowned and influential voices of our time. Hailed as a global renaissance woman, Dr. Angelou is a celebrated poet, memoirist, novelist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist.

Born on April 4th, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, Dr. Angelou was raised in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. In Stamps, Dr. Angelou experienced the brutality of racial discrimination, but she also absorbed the unshakable faith and values of traditional African-American family, community, and culture.

As a teenager, Dr. Angelou’s love for the arts won her a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco’s Labor School. At 14, she dropped out to become San Francisco’s first African-American female cable car conductor. She later finished high school, giving birth to her son, Guy, a few weeks after graduation. As a young single mother, she supported her son by working as a waitress and cook, however her passion for music, dance, performance, and poetry would soon take center stage.

In 1954 and 1955, Dr. Angelou toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess. She studied modern dance with Martha Graham, danced with Alvin Ailey on television variety shows and, in 1957, recorded her first album, Calypso Lady. In 1958, she moved to New York, where she joined the Harlem Writers Guild, acted in the historic Off-Broadway production of Jean Genet's The Blacks and wrote and performed Cabaret for Freedom.

In 1960, Dr. Angelou moved to Cairo, Egypt where she served as editor of the English language weekly The Arab Observer. The next year, she moved to Ghana where she taught at the University of Ghana's School of Music and Drama, worked as feature editor for The African Review and wrote for The Ghanaian Times.

During her years abroad, Dr. Angelou read and studied voraciously, mastering French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and the West African language Fanti. While in Ghana, she met with Malcolm X and, in 1964, returned to America to help him build his new Organization of African American Unity.

Dr. Angelou has served on two presidential committees, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000, the Lincoln Medal in 2008, and has received 3 Grammy Awards. President Clinton requested that she compose a poem to read at his inauguration in 1993. Dr. Angelou's reading of her poem "On the Pulse of the Morning" was broadcast live around the world.

Dr. Angelou has received over 30 honorary degrees and is Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University.

Dr. Angelou’s words and actions continue to stir our souls, energize our bodies, liberate our minds, and heal our hearts.

“Support the strong, give courage to the timid, remind the indifferent, and warn the opposed.”

~ Whitney Moore Young, Jr.

1921 – 1971 Whitney Moore Young, Jr. was a pioneering social worker who redefined the role of that profession, and its importance to the civil rights cause. His progressive work as the executive director of the National Urban League, and his efforts to bridge racial boundaries and usher African Americans into the social and economic mainstream had enduring results for Blacks and for the nation.

From the Lincoln Institute, Young attended another historically Black school, Kentucky State Industrial College with the hope of becoming a doctor. His aspirations changed, however, after he had taken a year of premedical courses. He taught at a nearby school for a year, studied engineering for two years at MIT, and decided to join the Army. In 1944, he found himself in World War II Europe in an all-Black regiment with a White captain.

This proved to be a formative experience. Young often found himself mediating between the officer and the troops, bridging racial and cultural gaps and mitigating the tension always present in the situation. In Young’s own words, “It was my Army experience that decided me on getting into the race relations field after the war. Not just because I saw the problems, but because I saw the potentials, too. I grew up with a basic belief in the inherent decency of human beings.”

Until 1954, although Young had been ardently fighting for the civil rights of blacks, there was still a sense of incompletion in his work. In 1954, he became Dean of the Atlanta University School of Social Work, and the stage was set for his direct encounter with the struggle for civil rights in the South. As a member of the Atlanta Unitarian Church, he forced that body to change its practice of holding annual picnics at segregated parks. He fought successfully to desegregate the Atlanta public library system, and co-chaired the Atlanta Council on Human Relations.

This record of achievement led to Young’s receipt of a Rockefeller Grant for one year of study at Harvard University in 1960. The following year, in 1961, a golden opportunity presented itself. He was offered and accepted a job as executive director of the National Urban League.

As the civil rights struggle entered an increasingly militant period in the 1960s, some factions viewed Young as too accommodating of the predominant social structure in his efforts to bring Blacks into mainstream society. He was constantly navigating a fine line to be accepted by Whites and Blacks. He would speak about the problems of ghetto life, and then lobby for support from executives of IBM and RCA.

Young was also a forceful advocate for greater government and private-sector efforts to eradicate poverty. His call for a domestic “Marshall Plan,” a 10-point program designed to close the huge social and economic gap separating Black and White Americans, significantly influenced the discussion of the Johnson Administration’s War on Poverty legislation. For this, President Johnson awarded him the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, in 1968.

Young was the author of two books, To Be Equal and Beyond Racism: Building an Open Society. He died tragically of a heart attack in 1971 while attending a conference for Black leaders in Nigeria.

A television special on Young’s life was produced and aired by NBC in 1973; and the Los Angeles Urban League’s annual Whitney M. Young, Jr. Award Dinner, begun in 1974, continues today to be that city’s premiere annual gala and fundraiser, raising over $1 million each year from celebrities, community leaders, corporate chiefs, and politicians eager to honor this great African American’s legacy of achievement.

“Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”
~Amelia Earhart to George Putnam, 1935

Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas on July 24, 1897. At age 19, taking a course in Red Cross First Aid, Amelia enlisted as a nurse's aide at Spadina Military Hospital in Toronto, Canada, tending to wounded soldiers during World War I. Shortly after 1917, Amelia's parents insisted she move to California where they were living.

While in California, she learned to fly. She then took up aviation as a hobby, taking odd jobs to pay for her flying lessons. In 1922, with the financial help of her sister, Muriel, and her mother, Amy Otis Earhart, she purchased her first airplane, a Kinner Airster.

Amelia became an inspiration to other women and all Americans when she flew around the world. Amelia flew the trimotor plane Friendship . Amelia's daring and courage were acclaimed around the world. Upon the flight's completion, Amelia wrote the book 20 Hours - 40 Minutes .

Amelia also helped to found The Ninety-Nines, Inc. Which is an International Organization of Licensed Women Pilots from 35 countries.

In June 1937, Amelia embarked upon the first around-the-world flight at the equator. On July 2, after completing nearly two-thirds of her historic flight -- over 22,000 miles -- Amelia vanished along with her navigator Frederick Noonan.

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

-Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born as the first child of the Jewish couple Hermann and Pauline Einstein, nee Koch, in Ulm on March 14, 1879. When Albert’s grandmother saw him for the first time she is said to have cried continuously: "Much too thick! Much too thick!" But despite all fear the development of young Albert was a normal one. In November 1881 Albert’s sister Maria – called Maja – was born.

A short time later the Einstein family went to Munich where Albert first attended elementary school and subsequently Luitpold grammar school. He was an "average" pupil but already very early interested in science and mathematics. He did not like lessons in grammar school as they were held with strict discipline and as he was forced to learn. When he turned 15 he left school without any degree and followed his family to Milan. To make up for the missed degree he attended school in Aarau (Switzerland) from 1895 to 1896 when he successfully took his A-levels and began to study in Zurich. His ambition was to obtain the diploma of a subject teacher for mathematics and physics. He successfully finished his studies in July 1900.

He moved to Bern and was given work at the Patent Office. In his leisure time he worked in the area of theoretical physics. In 1905 he published several of his important scientific works. One of them deals with the ground-breaking special theory of relativity. Another work contains the most famous formula of the world "E = m · c2". This formula states that matter can be converted into energy.

Einstein’s famous formula:

In this mathematical equation, E stands for energy, m for mass and c for the speed of the light in a vacuum (ca. 300,000 km/s).

In 1903 he married his college mate Mileva Maric. One year later Einstein’s first son, Hans Albert, was born and his second son Eduard followed in 1910. In 1909 he became professor for theoretical physics at the University of Zurich. After that time he was given a professorship in Prague and then again in Zurich. In 1914 Einstein was called to Berlin to work there scientifically. In the same year World War I broke out.

After Einstein had separated from his wife Mileva he married his cousin Elsa Löwenthal in 1919. From 1909 to 1916 Albert Einstein worked on a generalisation of the special theory of relativity, the general theory of relativity. After this theory was proven right in an experiment in 1919 (deflection of light by the sun’s gravitational field) Einstein became famous over night. He received invitations and honours from all over the world. There was hardly any magazine which did not report about him and praise his work to the skies. For the year 1921 he received the Nobel Prize for Physics.

Through the political situation in Nazi Germany Einstein left the country in December 1932 and never again entered German ground. From 1933 Einstein and his family lived in Princeton, USA. At the "Institute for Advanced Study" he found ideal working conditions. In December 1936 Einstein’s wife Elsa died. In 1939 World War II broke out. Because of his fear that Germany was working on atomic bombs he wrote a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president of the United States of America, to tell him about the possibility of atomic weapons. In 1946 he proposed a world government in which he saw the only way to achieve continuous peace.