I am sorry to say that I had not heard the story

Juliette Hampton Morgan

of Juliette Hampton Morgan, a white librarian from Montgomery, Alabama, who faced down her city's prejudice and bigotry with editorials typed and sent to the newspaper despite everything from being spat at on the sidewalk to calls for her dismissal to having a cross burned on her front lawn, until I read a post on the Facebook Page Buzzing America. Her story is courageous, sad, and inspiring, all at once. It shows that it's important to find your voice despite attempts to quash it, because what matters is what is right, not what others spout. She was a true librarian heroine. I am so sorry she did not live to see what I hope we can call a flawed but somewhat better world, although we have our ups and downs.  We need more like her today, and librarians like her are at the forefront of a cultural war that threatens to overwhelm patrons' ability to read and think for themselves. The main library of the city where the mayor demanded her dismissal for supporting the rights of Blacks riding the buses of Montgomery is now named for her, and that is part of her legacy, but the story is well worth reading, remembering, and retelling.

She is also an example of how courage often comes in strange packages.  A nervous woman, she had major driving anxiety (boy do I understand that--it's taken years of therapy to mostly be able to drive without too much trouble around town, and I still avoid major roads like New Circle and Nicholasville Road when possible, and I've driven on the Interstate four times since 1993, twice in the dead of night with little traffic). She relied on medicine and the bus system. It was because she rode the bus that she witnessed how Black riders were treated by White drivers, such as pulling off after they'd paid for their fare at the front but before they could board in the back. Despite that nervous disposition, and the fact that it obviously did contribute to the toll the hate speech and crimes against her took, along with her decision to take her life in the end, the fact that time after time she returned to her typewriter for so long, despite it all was very brave, and showed a force of will that many would have found surprising in an otherwise meek-seeming librarian, at least in the 1950s, when we were all supposed to be unmarried, wear sensible shoes, and go 'Shhh.'.

I think next time I dress for Halloween, instead of dressing as something spooky or Disney or such, I'd be tempted to dress in a pinstripe dress with a hydrangea pinned at the neck, with hydrangea earrings and if I can manage it, pin curls, because I instantly felt a kinship with this fine lady, and it would be an opportunity to tell her story. I would hope it wouldn't be an affront to her family; I would mean it as an homage. I'm glad the city decided to honour her by naming the library after her. Times do, fortunately, change.

An interesting yet disturbing period of medical history

How Black Slaves Were Routinely Sold As ‘Specimens’ To Ambitious White Doctors

The history of human experimentation is as old as the practice of medicine and in the modern era has always targeted disadvantaged, marginalised, institutionalised, stigmatised and vulnerable populations: prisoners, the condemned, orphans, the mentally ill, students, the poor, women, the disabled, children, peoples of colour, indigenous peoples and the enslaved.

Human subject research is evident wherever physicians, technicians, pharmaceutical companies (and others) are trialling new practices and implementing the latest diagnostic and therapeutic agents and procedures. And the American South in the days of slavery was no different – and for those looking for easy targets, black slave bodies were easy to come by.

Good to see a little right done in my hometown

Kentucky School for the Deaf honors black students once denied diplomas

The Kentucky School for the Deaf became the first state-supported school of its kind in the nation in 1823. But blacks were segregated into the KSD "colored division." They did not have the same expectations or opportunities as their white counterparts, and were not held to the same academic standards.

Students at KSD could stay until graduation or until they were 21 if they had not qualified for graduation, said Carolyn Gulley, whose mother, Margaret Marshall, taught black deaf students. All KSD students at that time graduated with an eighth-grade education, Gulley said in remarks to the assembly.

Integration came gradually at the school. First-year classes were integrated in 1959, and in 1960 it was carried out in all academic classes, Gulley said. Full integration in dormitories and dining halls came in 1963.