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Dr Lillian Herald South   Born:  January 31, 1879 Died:  September 13, 1966  A native of Warren County, KY, Lillian South exerted a powerful influence on Kentucky’s public health. She was born the daughter of a doctor, JF South and his wife Martha (nee Moore).  Lillian went to public school in Bowling Green and graduated with a BA degree from Potter College (at the present location of WKU) when she was only 18 years old.  She then traveled to Patterson, NJ, where she studied for two years for her RN degree in nursing. Having “aced” every course in nursing school, she decided to pursue a doctoral degree in medicine. After 5 years, she earned her MD degree  from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (1904). She returned to practice in Bowling Green, joining the successful practice of Dr J N McCormack and Dr A T McCormack. Two years later the three doctors established St Joseph Hospital in the South family home on (what is now) 12th Avenue. The home was re-built to accommodate 42 beds.  Just a few years later, in 1910, Dr South was appointed as state bacteriologist at the State Board of Health in Louisville, a position that she held for 40 years. In this capacity, she gained national recognition for her many years of research on hookworms, rabies, and leprosy in Kentucky. She is credited for virtually eradicating the once widely prevalent hookworm from the state, through public health campaigns to exterminate houseflies which are the vector. She also led the movement to ban the use of the public drinking cup.  Dr South was also very active in state and national organizations, and was the first woman to be elected vice president of the AMA (1914). She was an active member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Kentucky Medical Association, the Jefferson County Medical Society, and the Tri-County Medical Society.     [Note: the Warren County Medical Society was formerly called the Tri-County Medical Society].  She was president of the Association of Southern Medical Women, and councilor of the American Association of Medical Women.  Dr South traveled extensively to learn as much as she could about the science of medicine. She studied at Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, the Pasteur Lab in Paris, as well as the Madame Curie Radium Institute. She was a delegate to the International Hygiene Congress in Dresden, Germany, and to the Public Health Division of the League of Nations in Geneva, Switz.

From its start as the WAAC in 1942 until the end of World War II in 1946, only two black women from Kentucky would join the Women's Army Corps and go on to become officers, Anna Clarke and Mary A. Bordeaux (from Louisville), who was a member of the first Officer Candidate Class at Fort Des Moines and eventually was assigned to WAC recruiting duty in Chicago, Illinois.

Anna Mac Clarke was a pioneer, part of a unique group of women who came together for one purpose, to help their country win a world war. She and her sister WAACs would also fight another war at home; that of racism, and they, as one unified force, began to break down the barriers of her race and gender which would eventually lead to the civil rights movement of the late 1940s, up through the 1960s. Anna Mac would never know the full impact her efforts to right injustice would have on things that we take for granted today, not only in the military, but in the civilian world as well.

The Women's Armed Services Integration Act gave women permanent military status in the regular army or reserves.

During the African-American Civil Rights Movement, it was the black churches that held the leadership role. Black churches were the main points of operations in regards to the Civil Rights Movement.

In fact, black women have long been regarded as the backbone of the black church. But their extensive and significant contributions are made as lay leaders, not as religious heads of churches.

These are the papers of high school principal William Henry Fouse and his wife, Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beatrice Cooke Fouse. The papers reflect the Fouses efforts on behalf of black education in Lexington during the first half of the 20th century. Family letters, notebooks, printed materials, pamphlets, financial records, broadsides, receipts and mementos comprise a large portion of the collection. Correspondence relating to Dunbar High School and Dr. Fouse's other educational concerns are included, as is Mrs. Fouse's correspondence which reflects her involvement with educational, social, religious and temperance organizations. A journal contains records of various activities at Dunbar High School, including sports events. A ledger (dated 1910-1918) includes addresses and expense account records. There is also information on the Henry Hughes Educational Fund and a radio script by Dr. Fouse for a broadcast on WLAP radio (April 30, 1939) on the history of blacks in Lexington. There is a notebook containing clippings on a variety of topics, especially black education. A few photographs are among the papers.

The Fouses of Lexington, Ky. were actively involved in the education of blacks in the area.

une was a pioneering American educator and civil rights leader. Born Mary Jane McLeod on July 10, 1875, in Mayesville, South Carolina, the daughter of former slaves, Bethune won scholarships to attend Scotia Seminary in Concord, North Carolina (now Barber-Scotia College), and the Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago (now the Moody Bible Institute). In 1904, she moved to Daytona Beach, Florida, to found her own school. Her one-room school house became the Daytona Normal and Industrial School for Negro Girls before merging with Cookman Institute for Boys in 1923. The merged school later affiliated with the United Methodist Church and became the historically-black college named in her honor, Bethune-Cookman College (now Bethune-Cookman University). In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Bethune the director of the National Youth Administration's Division of Negro Affairs, making her the first black woman to head a federal agency. She also founded the National Council of Negro Women and was an active member of the National Association of Colored Women until her death in May 1955. Date Created Around 1905 Place North America > United States of America > Florida > Daytona Beach Time 1900 AD - 1949 AD Topic Social sciences > Political science > Civil & political rights Social sciences > Education > Schools & their activities; special education Additional Subjects African American girls ; African Americans--Segregation ; Bethune, Mary McLeod, 1875-1955 ; Women ; Women's history Type of Item Prints, Photographs Physical Description 1 negative: black and white; 4 x 5 inches Institution State Library and Archives of Florida External Resource http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.wdl/ftasa.4013

Mary McLeod Bethune was a pioneering American educator and civil rights leader.

In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Bethune the director of the National Youth Administration's Division of Negro Affairs, making her the first black woman to head a federal agency.

Helen

May 17, 1954 -- The U.S. Supreme Court rules that school segregation is unconstitutional. A few days later, Helen Cary Caise , a black student, enrolls at Lafayette High School.

A prominent form of voluntary organization in the United States from the nineteenth century through the mid–twentieth century, fraternal associations are self-selecting brotherhoods and sisterhoods that provide mutual aid to members, enact group rituals, and engage in community service.

Synthesizing primary and secondary evidence, this article documents that African Americans historically organized large numbers of translocal fraternal voluntary federations. Some black fraternal associations paralleled white groups, while others were distinctive to African Americans.

In regions where blacks lived in significant numbers, African Americans often created more fraternal lodges per capita than whites; and women played a much more prominent role in African American fraternalism than they did in white fraternalism.

Carnegie and Bertram never insisted on desegregated libraries or that communities accept and maintain separate branches for blacks, but they did attempt to make communities clearly set their own policies, so they could act accordingly"(Carnegie 36).  "Carnegie and Betram tried to compute grant amounts according to the number of people permitted to use them"(Carnegie 32).  This created a complication in southern communities where libraries were segregated.  If the number of likely library users included blacks in the community, Carnegie wanted the assurance that blacks would be allowed to use the library.

At the ALA midwinter meeting of 1961 an amendment was made to the library bill of rights.  "The right of an individual to the use of a library should not be denied or abridged because of his race, religion national origins, or political views."  Although the ALA officially supported integration, many felt the ALA was too complicit in library segregation. 

Public libraries were sometimes battleground sites in the civil rights movement.

two major camps. There were those who sought to modernize and professionalize established ideologies of racial advancement, solidarity, and uplift through a New Negro progressivism.... Others.. questioned, if not the very idea of racial solidarity itself, then at least the obligation of racial allegiance and respectability, and instead touted a radical individualism and independence from all but the most personal allegiances to 'art' or 'self' or some other self-generated ideal."

transition between the politics of respectability and New Negro Modernism

Dr. Jamye Coleman William’s teaching career spans almost fifty years, the last fourteen of which she served as the head of the Department of Communication at Tennessee State University. In 1984, she assumed the editorship of the AME Church Review, the oldest black journal in America, becoming the first woman to be elected as a major officer in the 197-year history of the AME Church.

Williams’ co-edited the 1970 publication, The Negro Speaks: The Rhetoric of Contemporary Black Leaders.

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