Negro Girl Research Articles

Searching for Sarah: Black Girlhood, Education, and the Archive

Roberts v. City of Boston is a well-known legal case in the history of US education. In 1847, the Boston School Committee denied Sarah C. Roberts, a five-year-old African American girl, admission to the public primary school closest to her home. She was instead ordered to attend the all-black Abiel Smith School, about a half-mile walk from her home. In March 1848, Sarah's father, Benjamin, sued the city of Boston for denying Sarah the right to attend the public school closest to her home. The case wound its way through the courts, eventually reaching the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. In 1850, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw ruled in favor of the city of Boston, affirming that the Boston School Committee had “not violated any principle of equality, inasmuch as they have provided a school with competent instructors for the colored children, where they enjoy equal advantages of instruction with those enjoyed by the white children.” And thus, the doctrine of separate but equal was born in Massachusetts.

“To Help Enlighten Our People”: ‘Theater Folk’ and Stage Advice Columns in the 1920s Chicago Defender

“To Help Enlighten Our People”: ‘Theater Folk’ and Stage Advice Columns in the 1920s Chicago Defender Michelle R. Scott (bio) “Attention audience! Especially those of you that are commonly called stage struck,” noted the advice column on the Chicago Defender’s Stage Page of November 7, 1925. African American former chorus girl Vivienne Russell, who used the byline “Vivienne,” declared that she had “received a number of letters from girls and boys desirous of going upon the stage. I have answered them personally, however but not in detail. Hence this article ‘Stage Struck.’”1 Vivienne argued that overall “show business is a good business” for those with “plenty of grit,” but that only the “folks that are endowed with talent” should consider the entertainment industry. After measuring one’s vocal or dance ability against other “Race shows or acts,” Vivienne maintained, select amateur entertainers should “fight for their place” on the stage amid a racially segregated entertainment system.2 “Stage Struck” was one of the dozens of such pieces Vivienne addressed to young Black Defender readers who sought practical advice on how to successfully enter the vibrant and challenging world of the 1920s professional Black stage. Between October 1925 and May 1926, vaudevillian Vivienne Gordon Russell wrote the theatrical advice column, “Theater Folks and Theatergoers,” in the Chicago Defender, aimed at both entertainment professionals and audience members. When vivid reports of tragedy and turmoil, including chronicles of increased racial violence, new segregation policies, escalating poverty, or criminal exploits, flooded 1920s Black newspaper headlines, entertainment and leisure news could offer readers momentary escape and solace.3 Black newspapers including the Baltimore Afro-American, Pittsburgh Courier, New York Amsterdam [End Page 55] News, and Chicago Defender, often dedicated at least two pages (out of twenty) to national and local Black entertainment occurrences, from discussions of how blues singer Sarah Martin was a “hit in Baltimore” to laments of the separation of the “Crosby and Jackson” comedy team in San Diego.4 Click for larger view View full resolution Figures 1 and 2. Vivienne, “Theater Folks and Theatergoers: Chorus Girls Over the Top,” Chicago Defender, 25 October 1925 The importance of the Black press and the Chicago Defender specifically in transmitting the narratives of African American lives has been explored in historical, American Studies, and musicology texts over the past two decades.5 Likewise, the lives of Black female journalists in the twentieth century have also been chronicled by historians and media studies scholars.6 Yet Vivienne’s columns reveal a moment in the Defender’s 1920s history where a Black woman entertainer also commanded a space as a Black theater industry journalist. This social history article details Vivienne’s professional background and illuminates the broader historical context of the Defender’s “Theater Folks” column. It utilizes Vivienne’s industry experiences to explain her columns’ messages on the mechanics of Black show business, the challenges of respectability politics, her disdain for blackface minstrelsy, and the value of Black entertainment in early-twentieth-century America.7 In the absence of biographies, memoirs, or personal correspondence, Vivienne’s professional life was gleaned from census information, city directories, playbills, advertisements, oral histories of Black theater professionals, and, most importantly, the “Theater Folks” articles themselves. [End Page 56] As a Black woman theatrical journalist, amid many male theater columnists published in the Defender, Vivienne publicly championed Black entertainment as a method of “racial uplift”—the attempt to challenge racial hostility and negative images of African Americans through Black political, educational, and socio-cultural success.8 Black entertainers in the 1920s contended with the same heightened racial tensions and negative depictions of blackness that plagued African Americans more generally, and they often faced critique and ridicule from Black and white conservative communities who viewed the entertainment profession as one that was not suitable for proper ladies and gentlemen. Revealing that many in the Black entertainment world were quite self-conscious about the images of morality they exhibited on stage and off, Vivienne took it as her charge “to help enlighten” her people by redefining notions of stage respectability and demonstrating how the theatrical profession was a worthy and “honest occupation” for African Americans.9 In a decade plagued...

Monoclonal Gammopathy with Secondary Atypical Hemolytic-Uremic Syndrome

Monoclonal gammopathy is a clonal plasma cell disorder associated with an increased risk of progression to lymphoproliferative malignancy. In children, monoclonal and oligoclonal gammopathies are rare, and their clinical relevance unrecognized. Atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS) is a rare endotheliopathy associated with dysregulated activation of complement, microangiopathic hemolytic anemia, thrombocytopenia, and acute renal failure. We present a case of aHUS that we hypothesize was triggered by monoclonal gammopathy in a child several years after cardiac transplantation. An 11 year old African-American girl with sickle trait was transferred to our cardiac center with a two week history of epigastic pain, emesis, microcytic anemia, hypergammaglobulinemia, and development of renal failure requiring dialysis. She had undergone cardiac transplantation at 7 months of age for dilated cardiomyopathy of unknown etiology and had recovered from acute cardiac rejection requiring ECMO at age 5 years. She had previously experienced at least two episodes of acute kidney injury requiring dialysis with full recovery of function reported. Renal biopsy revealed a severe collapsing glomerulopathy and a thrombotic microangiopathy. Upon transfer to our institution, her labs were notable for microcytic anemia, normal platelet count, haptoglobin, and LDH. A week later, she developed aHUS diagnosed by hemoglobin 9.5 gm/dL, haptoglobin < 30 mg/dL, LDH 314 U/L, platelets 100,000, and a predominance of schistocytes on peripheral blood smear in the setting of acute renal failure. Serum protein electrophoresis (SPEP) revealed a monoclonal spike (1g/dL), identified as IgG kappa by immunoabsorption. A second, smaller monoclonal spike was identified as IgA lambda. aHUS evaluation revealed low C3, normal C4, and 50% CD46 expression by flow cytometry. Bone marrow biopsy with flow cytometry excluded lymphoproliferative disorders. EBV did not amplify with quantitative PCR of peripheral blood, and computed tomography imaging of the body did not detect abnormal mass or lymph nodes. A trial of plasmapheresis did not improve biochemical and hematologic features of aHUS. A trial of eculizumab resulted led to normalization of platelet count and C3, increased haptoglobin, reduced need for red cell transfusion, and less frequent dialysis. Monoclonal gammopathy of unknown significance (MGUS) is rare in children, but may be more common in transplant recipients, especially after cardiac transplants in infants when thymectomy is performed. MGUS associated with secondary aHUS has been rarely reported in adults. The mechanism for aHUS was demonstrated in one case to result from affinity of the paraprotein to a binding site on complement factor H, with subsequent loss of factor H cofactor activity to inhibit alternative complement activation. We hypothesize that immune dysregulation from fluctuating levels of paraproteins during inflammation in our patient with monoclonal gammopathy resulted in recurrent, intermittent episodes of aHUS. We speculate that this was responsible for the patient's collapsing glomerulopathy and dialysis-dependent chronic renal failure. This case highlights the importance of considering monoclonal gammopathy in pediatric patients who develop recurrent kidney failure or atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome in the setting of immune dysregulation. The merit of treating the monoclonal gammopathy with Bortezumib and Rituximab is currently under consideration. Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

Reducing Insignificant High/Low Heart Rate Alarms Using the Cross-Limit Area Based Algorithm

Significant ST-segment changes raise concern for myocardial ischemia, cardiomyopathy or myocardial inflammation and therefore, warrant an extensive and often invasive cardiovascular evaluation. We report a 12 year-old asymptomatic African-American girl with marked ST-segment elevation in leads I and aVL and ST-segment depression in inferior leads II, III and aVF. Extensive cardiovascular evaluation did not reveal any abnormality suggesting that these findings, which have previously not been reported, are likely benign, at least in this young girl.

SUN-LB049 Unusual Presentation of Large Parathyroid Adenoma with Acute Cerebellar Ataxia in a Pediatric Patient

Background: Severe hypercalcemia is the initial manifestation of primary hyperparathyroidism, typically manifesting with irritability, constipation, and relative muscle weakness. Central nervous system symptoms are however unusual in children, although they have been reported in adults. Clinical case: A 6 year 4-month-old previously healthy African-American girl presents with progressive difficulty walking. Hip X-rays were negative. She continued to attend school despite limping. She also developed constipation, polyuria and enuresis. She had trouble keeping up with schoolwork and was diagnosed with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, amphetamine/dextroampethamine was started. Laboratories obtained showed serum calcium of 17mg/dl (8.5 -10.1). No family history of parathyroid or other tumors. She was then referred to Peds Endo. On exam, she was not acutely ill, she had normal deep tendon reflexes, but sustained tetany of the quadriceps noted when reflexes were elicited; gait was wide-based and stiff-legged, favoring the left side. Laboratories: Calcium: 16.5mg/dl Phosphorus: 3.1 mg/dl (3.1-5.9) PTH: 2417 pg/ml (12-72) Vit D 25 OH: 19 ng/ml (≥30) Urine Ca/Cr: 0.93 Neck and parathyroid ultrasound: a 1.9 x 1.7 x 1.5 cm solid mass was noted at left inferior thyroid lobe suggestive of a parathyroid adenoma. Sestamibi (99mTc) scan: intense focus of radiotracer uptake inferior to the left lobe of thyroid gland. Hospital Course: Patient admitted to ICU and treated with IV fluids, calcitonin and zoledronic acid. Calcium decreased to 9.7 mg/dl. She had intermittent hypertension, but plasma metanephrines were normal. Once patient was stable, the mass was surgically removed, measuring 2.0 x 1.7 x 1.5 cm and weighing 4gm. Pathology was compatible with benign parathyroid adenoma. PTH within 1hr post op was 171 pg/ml, 24 hrs later was 22pg/ml. As expected, child had considerable post-op hypocalcemia (7.2mg/dl), treated with calcium IV and PO, calcitriol and cholecalciferol. Despite normalization of her chemistries, her ataxia however worsened, she was unable to walk without assistance, requiring a walker for stability. Exam showed wide-based gait, truncal ataxia, negative Romberg sign; muscle strength normal in all extremities. Brain MRI was normal. She was discharged with physical rehabilitation and a walker. On follow up, ataxia had completely resolved by the fourth week post-op. Conclusions: This case illustrates a rare neurological presentation of hypercalcemia in a child. The diversity and subtle development of symptoms contributed to the delay in diagnosis. Although mechanisms of this association are unknown, hyperparathyroidism mimics motor neuron disease and skeletal muscle is a target organ for PTH, decreasing energy production and transport. Hyperparathyroidism should be in the differential diagnosis of acute ataxia in children. Unless otherwise noted, all abstracts presented at ENDO are embargoed until the date and time of presentation. For oral presentations, the abstracts are embargoed until the session begins. s presented at a news conference are embargoed until the date and time of the news conference. The Endocrine Society reserves the right to lift the embargo on specific abstracts that are selected for promotion prior to or during ENDO.

Seduction's Offspring: Resisting Sentimental Violence from Wilson to Wells

Seduction's Offspring:Resisting Sentimental Violence from Wilson to Wells Sarah Sillin (bio) The story of American sentimentalism is one of literary bequest, wherein eighteenth-century seduction novels passed an aesthetic legacy down to nineteenth-century domestic fiction. Both pervasive genres relate stories about the need for American girls to restrain their passions and feel for others, punctuated by thick descriptions of characters' affect. Given this shared emphasis on how feeling shapes local and national communities, critics often interrogate sentimentalism's politics. Ann Douglas and Jane Tompkins famously debated whether the mode's valorization of suffering and sympathy proves conservative or progressive.1 Further, critics have explored the political stakes of sentimentalism's turn from seduction novels to domestic fiction and what that turn suggests about American culture. Does the shift from seduction novels' unruly desire to domestic fiction's well-regulated sympathy signal that women were gaining power to foster national cohesion (Baym)? Or did antebellum fiction perpetuate demands that women subordinate their own desires to serve the community (Barnes)? Meanwhile, Laura Romero argued that sentimental texts often integrate "radical" views (for instance, on gender or class) with "reactionary" stances (say, on race); thus, we would do well to consider how sentimentalism's turn affected various groups, such as white and black women, in disparate ways (4). In response to these uneven effects, a number of nineteenth-century writers entwine conventions of both genres to offer divergent views on sentimentalism's legacy.2 This essay argues that tensions in sentimentalism proved generative for nineteenth-century African American women writers who rethink familiar portraits of the shift from the seduction plot to domestic fiction. Prior scholarship elucidates how African American writers blend genres to create space for black voices. Slave narratives often play on sentimental conventions to claim authority for and direct readers' sympathy to enslaved peoples (F. Foster; Carby). Likewise, midcentury African American novels interweave autobiography and fiction to question whose discourse readers recognize as authentic (Andrews 24). We can see this engagement with slave narratives and sentimentalism in one of the first novels by an African American woman: Harriet Wilson's Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (1859). Scholars demonstrate that Wilson draws on sentimental conventions as rewritten in slave narratives (Carby 45) to fictionalize elements of her own life via a protagonist who resembles sentimental heroines and enslaved women (Peterson). Wilson found that the "sugar-coated, wealth-bestrewn happy endings" of "white sentimental novels," "did not match [her] … constant struggle" (Gates and Wilson lix). In other words, she participates in what Lauren Berlant calls postsentimentalism: work that rethinks the mode's conventions by refusing to sublimate "subaltern struggles into conventions of narrative satisfaction and redemptive fantasy" (655). Sentimentalism often conflates all forms of pain and then redirects sympathy toward the privileged (Berlant 641). In contrast, Wilson questions whether powerful white women merit sympathy, given that claims of white moral sensibility mask antiblack violence. Beyond suggesting that the critiques that would define postsentimentalism emerged alongside sentimentalism, Wilson demonstrates that comedy can play a [End Page 277] vital role in such affective resistance. By entwining sentimental conventions with humor, she unsettles this mode's fantasy that benevolence superseded intemperate feeling. Nina Baym argues that antebellum writers of "woman's fiction" rejected sentimentalism that expressed "private, excessive, undisciplined, self-centered emotionality" (as in the seduction novel), while celebrating sentimentalism that reflected "Enlightenment advocacy of philanthropy and benevolence" (xxix, xxx). Wilson, however, satirizes these forms for their shared narratives of white feminine virtue that obscure African Americans' pleasure and pain.3 The white fallen woman's desires foster violence, rendering her undeserving of sympathy; Wilson invites readers to identify instead with her irreverently funny African American protagonist.4 Although antebellum culture valorized well-regulated sympathy, the illicit desires of the seduction plot did not dwindle away; instead, they became a nest egg, accruing interest in the domestic sphere.5 Wilson suggests that the white fallen woman and republican mother spend their unruly feelings in violent displays of power as they project their sins onto an African American girl. This rewriting elucidates a criticism that African American writers would level at sentimentalism across the nineteenth century: the...

Is Propranolol as Safe as Reported in Managing All Pediatric Hemangiomas

Introduction: Hemangiomas are the most common benign vascular tumors of infancy. Infantile (IHs) and congenital (CHs) hemangiomas are similar in appearance, but differ in their presentation and behavior. Definitive diagnosis of IHs reflects presence of the GLUT1 marker; CHs have different markers. Despite the hypoglycemia seen in beta-blocker overdose, propranolol has a long-standing record of safety in various pediatric indications. With this history, and its effectiveness in IHs, it has become the drug of choice in IHs, and initial therapy in CHs. Case Report: A 4-year-old previously healthy African-American girl …

Towards Critical Justice: Exploring Intersectionality in Community-based STEM-rich Making with Youth from Non-dominant Communities

ABSTRACTWe investigated how community ethnography as a pedagogy approach to STEM-rich making supported youth makers from two low-income urban communities engaged in sustained STEM-rich making towards making a difference in their communities. Data is drawn from two-year long ethnographic data across two community-based, youth making programs. We highlight two cases. Case # 1 focuses on one African American girl's making endeavors across one school year. Case # 2 looks at how two youth engaged in critical sense-making with regards to the currently available how-to making resources they could locate online. We discuss how these pedagogical moves supported the youth in making towards a more just future in ways that addressed intersecting scales of injustice.

Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston by Jared Ross Hardesty

Reviewed by: Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston by Jared Ross Hardesty Antonio T. Bly Jared Ross Hardesty. Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston. New York: New York UP, 2016. 272 pp. $40.00. May 25, 1743, Captain John Bulkey of Boston paid Samuel Kneeland “twelve pence to five shillings” to print in the Boston Gazette an advertisement for the return of his fugitive slave. Over one week would pass before he would turn to the printer for help. The absconded “Negro Girl named Billah,” however, would wait no longer. Freedom beckoned. Judging from her name that reflected the presence of Islam in West Africa, it is likely that Billah might have been a captive African forcibly transported to the Americas. In Arabic, Billah means “with or by Allah’s permission.” In Islamic traditions, the name given to girls signified good things. In the New World, her refusal to answer to another signified agency. Either way, in Unfreedom, Jared Ross Hardesty explores how New England slaves like Billah realized autonomy. Hardesty’s excursion through wills, probate, court records, newspapers, etc., is a provocative study of slavery and dependence in eighteenth-century Boston. Rather than examine black life in early America from the point of view of slavery or freedom, Hardesty advances an alternative paradigm, one that suggests that a better way to understand the institution would perhaps be to examine it as part of the larger Atlantic world where other systems of labor (i.e., Amerindian slavery, indentured servitude, and pauper apprenticeship) existed alongside racial slavery in a continuum of unfreedom or dependency (43–103). Within this broader context, he challenges traditional dichotomies about slave resistance and agency. As opposed to freedom, enslaved Bostonians focused on ways to ameliorate their situation without necessarily threatening the authority of their owners. In a world where black freedom seemed hopeless, Hardesty argues that slaves’ pragmatism created an autonomy that trumped freedom (6–8, 105–08, 155–56). Through this rationale, Billah’s flight would represent a concerted effort to actively renegotiate the terms of her enslavement—somewhat like a disgruntled worker in a factory. While freedom was not her intent, agency had been her ultimate goal. However, in its view of slavery and servitude as essentially the same, Unfreedom overreaches. While thought-provoking, it appears to dismiss the persistent matter of race, which mattered despite the fact that New Englanders used the terms servants and slaves interchangeably (51). Aside from Hardesty’s awareness of the complexities of race and slavery in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Boston, his larger argument about unfreedom and dependence blurs the divides between Native and African American slaves, indentured servants, and apprentices in a way appears to strip race of its significance. This seems ironic, given that race is the motivating force behind most, if not all, of the instances of slave agency and autonomy he recounts (104–35). His argument also dismisses slaves’ endeavors to own themselves as “at best far-off dreams and, more likely, mere abstractions that would not have made sense in slaves’ unfree, hierarchical world.” Consequently, not until the advent [End Page 61] of the American Revolution do these pragmatic African Americans dare venture to believe that their freedom is truly obtainable (135, 164–65, and 170). Boston’s poet laureate, Phillis Wheatley, would undoubtedly disagree with Hardesty’s assessment. People are not always rational. Despite being more privileged than most slaves in her day, she too protested slavery. She artfully expressed the idea that autonomy meant little without freedom. In an epistle to Samson Occom, a Mohegan minister who preached to Native Americans in Connecticut, she addressed the subject explicitly. “God,” Wheatley wrote in 1774, “has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance; and by the Leave of our modern Egyptians I will assert, that the same Principle lives in us. . . . I desire not for [vengeance],” she continued, “but to convince them of the strange Absurdity of their Conduct whose Words and Actions are so diametrically opposite. How well the Cry for Liberty, and the reverse Disposition for the Exercise of oppressive Power over others agree.” Billah would...

Writing in solidarity: the lived experience of African American adolescent girls writing poetry

ABSTRACTThis article offers an expansion of the poetry writing and research featured in “Culturally Responsive Poetry” published in the Journal of Poetry Therapy in 2011. In this article, a follow up to the coeducational poetry pilot is provided through the experiences of African American adolescent girl poets. “Writing in Solidarity: The Lived Experience of African American Adolescent Girls Writing Poetry” is the outcome of an in-depth phenomenological research study exploring the lived experience of eight African American female high school students participating in an after school poetry group. The process of writing in solidarity is one of call and response that evokes a sense of understanding and concern for one’s self, poetry group members and community. Through this writing process, a sense of sisterhood is forged for the adolescent girls and the power of individual and collective naming (to call forth one’s own identity or identities) uncovered.

“African American Girl” by Stephanie Grimes

“African American Girl” by Stephanie Grimes

73.3 Survival: How Culture, Family, and Environment Interface and Impact the Development of an African American Girl

73.3 Survival: How Culture, Family, and Environment Interface and Impact the Development of an African American Girl

Racializing Disability, Disabling Race: Policing Race and Mental Status

This article focuses on police practices in arresting and detaining criminal suspects who have mental illnesses. It identifies three modalities police may adopt when detaining a mentally ill suspect: medical modality (and its subset the family mode), the criminal modality, and the disciplinary modality. This article examines archetypal cases in which harsher treatment of a suspect may be meted out by the police against mentally ill persons of color.To illustrate the different modalities, this article examines the case study of Donald Winters. Mr. Winters was a Caucasian male who was diagnosed with Delusional Disorder. He had threatened to kill the police officers when they attempted to apprehend him. Police understood they were dealing with a mentally ill suspect, and they restrained themselves from using violence in order to subdue him. In Coghlan v. Phillips, Mr. Coghlan, a white male known to have a criminal record and a history of mental illness, fired four to ten shots at police officers when they initially attempted to arrest him. The police officers did not return fire, but returned with a bullhorn and told Mr. Coghlan they wished to take him to a doctor. These cases are illustrative of the medical and criminal modalities and represent more appropriate police responses to mentally ill suspects. However, police seemingly demonstrate far less tolerance for suspects whose Suspect Identity Construction (“SIC”) is both a minority and mentally ill.In Banks ex rel. Banks v. Modesto City Schools District, Rosie Banks was a thirteen year old, autistic, African American girl attending a junior high school. Rosie entered a new school and at first behaved in an aggressive manner. She was taken to the principal’s office where an officer confronted Rosie as she became more aggressive and pepper sprayed her in the face. In Reynolds v. City of Little Rock, John Willie Reeves, an African American man known by police to be mentally ill, was shot to death by several officers after waving a pocket knife. In Ali v. City of Louisville, Mr. Marlby was a homeless African American man who was known by several officers to be mentally ill. He was shot to death after an encounter with police. In each of these cases, police officers often chose the disciplinary modality, and often without prior utilization of a lesser modalities. In these and other cases, the police do not utilize lesser modalities despite their knowledge that the suspect is mentally ill. This article explores the intersection of race and mental status as one that attracts heightened police scrutiny and which disparately leads to excessive use of force. It appears from the case law that the selection of the modality often depends on the racialization of the alleged offender.

Dandy-Walker Malformation: A Case Study of an Infant With an Increasing Head Circumference and Delayed Developmental Milestones

A 9-month-old African American girl presented for a pediatric well-child visit after having missed the 2-month and 6-month visits. The child's developmental progress, therefore, had not been followed from a primary care standpoint. Marlena Leigh Sherman, Master of Science in Nursing Student, Emory University Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Atlanta, GA. Sharron Close, Assistant Professor, Office of Academic Advancement, Emory University Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Atlanta, GA. Brad Weselman, Pediatrician, private practice, Decatur, GA.

The Historian behind the History: Conversations with Southern Historians ed. by Megan L. Bever, Scott A. Suarez

The Historian behind the History: Conversations with Southern Historians. Edited by Megan L. Bever and Scott A. Suarez. Introduction by George C. Rable. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014. Pp. xiv, 202. $49.95, ISBN 978-0-8173-1851-2.) The suggestion that might lurk somewhere behind the history they write seems a little jarring in an era when members of the younger set advertise their presence within it, littering conference papers with my and argue. Odd title aside, this valuable volume draws together ten interviews that appeared between 2005 and 2014 in Southern Historian, a journal written and edited by graduate students. The subjects--William W. Freehling, Laura F. Edwards, James M. McPherson, Gary W. Gallagher, Richard J. M. Blackett, J. Mills Thornton III, Dan T. Carter, Theodore Rosengarten, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, and Pete Daniel--are southern historians in the sense of being scholars of the American South. But they are evenly divided between those born or brought up in the South and those elsewhere. Nativity seems not really to matter in most respects though. Every one of them has changed our minds about the South's struggles and the struggles of southerners. None appears inclined by their origins either to be more gentle or more fierce in approaching their subjects. But, not surprisingly, the native southerners seem to have had a more visceral introduction to their subjects. For example, Thornton grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, during the bus boycott, learning early that local events participated in a broader history, one he became determined to track. It was very clear to me that the world was being changed by folks I passed on the sidewalk every day, he said (p. 121). Gilmore, who said she was raised as a white supremacist, saw the sit-in movement erupt in her hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina, and thought, Everything that I thought was true and forever was under siege (p. 166). Carter had his epiphany at age twelve, seeing a young African American girl bawled out by a white bus driver for sitting up front. The nonsoutherners, by contrast, seem to have arrived at their lives' work by more roundabout routes. The interviewers ask questions about subject matter and craft that any of us might pose. How did Freehling light upon the subject of nullification? How did Rosengarten get along with the family of Ned Cobb, the protagonist of his epic book All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (New York, 1974)? …

Coinheritance of Alpha-3.7 Deletion and Hb Questembert [131alpha-2 Tct > CCT](Ser131>Pro)] in an African American Patient Results in an Alpha Thalassemia Phenotype

Patients with Hemoglobin Questembert carry a Ser131Pro mutation in one of their alpha globin chains encoded by a TCT-CCT mutation of one of their alpha 2 globin gene. This mutation usually results in an unstable hemoglobin variant with mild anemia that is rarely symptomatic. Rarely these patients may show increased extravascular hemolysis during stress, due to oxidative membrane damage. Our patient is a 7 year old African American girl that came to medical attention due to severe anemia, reticulocytosis, absent haptoglobin levels, persistent jaundice and hyperbilirubinemia. Over a period of several years the patient progressed to develop marked splenomegaly with progressive anemia. Isoelectric focusing in this patient revealed Hb A, A2 and a variant "S" band which was less than 1% and thus not detectable by HPLC. We speculate that in the presence of limited alpha globin synthesis, due to a deletion of one α-2 gene and in the presence of a highly unstable alpha-2 variant, synthesis of wild-type alpha globin from the remaining alpa-1 gene is not sufficient to allow for normal alpha-globin/ beta-globin assembly. Furthermore the assembly of the alpha-globin Questembert into the hemoglobin tetramer is favored resulting in an extravascular hemolytic disorder. DisclosuresNo relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

Teaching With Tupac: Building a Solid Grounding in Theory Across the Social Work Education Continuum

This article describes a collaborative and emergent approach utilizing Tupac Shakur’s “Brenda’s Got a Baby” to leverage theory education. This song/video uses a fictionalized account of a pregnant 12-year-old African American girl to chronicle the ecological realities of life in the inner city (e.g., teen pregnancy, drug addiction and trafficking, incest, poverty, dysfunctional families, lack of opportunity, ineffective educational and welfare systems, runaway youth, commercial sexual exploitation, violence, and a racially insensitive law enforcement response). Because of the complexity and convergence of multiple issues and social problems in Brenda’s life, and their impact across the micro–macro spectrum, this song/video is an effective anchor for a semester-long emphasis on a critically conscious approach to theory. This article (a) reviews hip-hop as a vehicle for pedagogy; (b) explores Tupac’s early history and approach to information dissemination; and (c) discusses underlying assumptions and application in BSW-, MSW-, and PhD-level theory courses.

Implication of Auto-Anti-U Antibody in a Pediatric Patient

The anti-U antibody is a rare antibody belonging to the MNS blood group system and has been implicated in cases of hemolytic transfusion reaction and hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn (HDFN). We report a case of auto-anti-U antibody in a pediatric patient. A 14-year-old African American girl, G0, with a 4-week history of bloody diarrhea, was admitted to Le Bonheur Children’s …

The making of a science evangelist.

I have wanted to be a scientist ever since I was a little girl. I got the idea from a television program called 3-2-1 Contact , where I watched a young African-American girl solve problems. I saw my reflection in her and was transfixed. As time passed and my science career progressed, I saw that reflection less often. Now, years later, after a stint in industry and a negative tenure decision, I'm putting myself out there so that others can see their reflection in me. It's a precarious path, exposed and vulnerable, but so far the fruits of my journey have exceeded my fears. Great teachers nurtured my interest in science. There was Kathleen Donahue in fifth grade, who stoked my passion. There was Jean Howard, the unflappable high school physics teacher who urged me to apply to top colleges. ![Figure][1] “I saw my reflection in her and was transfixed.” ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER At Brown University, there were Edelgard Morse, the chemistry professor who rescued me when my grades fell, and also Anne Fausto-Sterling—my learned mentor, professor, and North Star. With a strong sense of purpose, a hungry mind, and a willingness to work hard, I assumed my success was assured. It wasn't; I could easily have been one of the many nameless casualties science routinely sheds. Weary and battle worn, I made it through. I continued on to Stanford University to seek a Ph.D. As the only black student in the materials science department, I felt lonely and lost. But two good things happened there: I was awarded a AAAS Mass Media Fellowship and spent a summer writing for Time . (AAAS is the publisher of Science .) And I taught an introductory materials science class at a local community college. I was smitten with science communication. My students were smitten with science. I learned that I loved teaching science and that I have a talent for reaching apprehensive students. There was a third good thing: I finished my degree. I took a research position at Bell Labs. There, I was in constant contact with other minority scientists. I saw my reflection again. My creativity flourished. I was awarded a spot on MIT Technology Review 's Innovators Under 35 list. I wanted to stay forever, but the telecom bubble burst, and my job ended. So I landed in a tenure-track faculty position at Yale University. I established a well-funded lab, earned top teaching scores, and maintained a respected research program. I hosted a fun lecture series for kids called Science Saturdays . Children loved it and I did, too. In fact, I loved it more than I loved my research. Faculty life was not ideal—I could not see my reflection in my colleagues—but it was workable and I hoped to stay. Fate, and the tenure committee, had other plans. The denial of tenure thrusts you into a caste of the unclean. You're expected to pick up your book bag, your lumbar pillow, and your shredded dignity and sneak meekly out the back door. By the time I left, I was happy to go. My gut told me it could take no more, that academic science wasn't my path. I was ill, fatigued, and uninterested in climbing that ladder again. I used the tenure decision as an opportunity to explore afresh what I should do with my “one wild and precious life,” as Mary Oliver called it in her poem, The Summer Day . It was time for me to discover my true vocation, which Aristotle supposedly said could be found at the intersection of the world's needs and my passions. By now, I knew my passions well enough: science, teaching, sharing my love for science. So I looked at the world's needs and figured out my vocation. In the time I had left at Yale, I produced some science videos and posted them on YouTube. It felt good. Things opened up. TED invited me to give a talk. Dignitaries invited me to meetings. Random House published my book. I'm now happier and healthier. I'm following a path worn by Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye: lecturing, writing, and publicizing science. My new vocation offers less security than the old one did, but that seems fitting somehow. It's wilder and more precious. [1]: pending:yes

Phd to Ph.D.: How Education Saved My Life by Elaine B. Richardson (review)

Reviewed by: Phd to Ph.D.: How Education Saved My Life by Elaine B. Richardson Cynthia Delaney Phd to Ph.D.: How Education Saved My Life Elaine B. Richardson Philadelphia: Parlor P, 2013. 264pp. In PHD (Po Ho on Dope) to Ph.D.: How Education Saved My Life, Elaine Richardson successfully establishes a deeply personal narrative that has the potential to reach and inspire a variety of audiences both inside and outside of the academy and serves as a model of the public scholarship in the spirit of other widely influential literacy narratives, such as those by Mike Rose and Victor Villanueva. Through discussion of her own journey, Richardson’s memoir is an unflinching presentation of her early life on the streets, and an unabashed celebration of literacy and education as her redemption. While literacy researchers may be hesitant of Richardson’s treatment of education as a panacea (or what Harvey Graff might call the “literacy myth”), Richardson stresses the importance of “end[ing] the lie that Black people have no intellectually worthy language and literacy traditions, that English and literacy are the same across different people and cultures, and that upper class biased Whites in power and their followers (not all White people) get to define language and literacy for everyone else” (235). Richardson’s argument has important implications for readers in and out of the academy by encouraging the development of a stronger examination of “teachings and mindsets that are not to our advantage” (235) and the realization, particularly for members of disadvantaged communities, that it is possible to make contributions to “culture and to the world of ideas” through challenging the paradigms and finding power in language (236). In short, the book details Richardson’s journey as a young African American female who transcends “cultural performance” and socially enforced expectations that she perform the identity of a “regla” African American girl: that is, someone who was supposed to be sexually available and readily accepting of physical abuse. Enacting this prescribed identity in her youth, Richardson’s experiences with prostitution and drug addiction capture the destructive feelings of guilt and shame tied up in this identity. [End Page 96] As a testament to the fluidity of identity, however, Richardson also illustrates that, by means of education and the support systems (such as her mother’s strength and support) on reserve for her, Richardson rewrote her sense of self within the academy, conducting research that would not only assist in her finding her voice but love for herself and self-confidence. Beginning with her family history, Richardson establishes her roots as a good student in search of self-acceptance in the wrong places. As a preteen and teenager, she has periods of consistency in school but she lives a “double life” (periodically lending more importance to one life over the other) by simultaneously attending college and working as a prostitute, up until she is academically dismissed from Cleveland State and becomes completely immersed in “the life of street people” (110). Richardson spends a fair portion of the book discussing her history as a prostitute and details the characteristics of the men who serve as her pimps and abusers in the years before she goes back to college. Although Richardson’s life falls into despair and she loses her sense of self, she realizes, after some years, having two children, and narrowly missing death several times, that she “needed to love and feel good about [herself] again” (190). When she is accepted again into Cleveland State University to finish her undergraduate degree, she “put[s her] all into school” (194) and nothing deters her from her mission to succeed as a student. In describing her years as a student and then graduate student, she places emphasis on finding her niche as a scholar and how finding her educational passion and support system drives her to continue on and receive her Ph.D. In addition to its candor about Richardson’s conflicted history, the book is notable for the lengths to which Richardson goes “to be true to the languages of her communities” (vii–viii). Richardson carefully represents the diverse voices of the people (be they pimps, boyfriends, often a combination...