Tag Page WomensHistory

In 1944, Harriet Ida Pickens and Frances Elizabeth Wills made history as the first Black women commissioned as officers in the United States Navy. Their achievement came through the WAVES program, which stood for Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. The program had been created during World War II to allow women to serve in the Navy, but Black women were initially excluded. For years, the Navy resisted allowing them into the program. That changed in October 1944 when the Navy finally opened the WAVES program to Black women after pressure from civil rights advocates and the growing demand for personnel during the war. Harriet Pickens and Frances Wills were among the first selected for officer training. Both women attended the U.S. Naval Reserve Midshipmen’s School at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. In December 1944, they completed their training and were officially commissioned as officers in the United States Navy. Harriet Ida Pickens came from a family known for leadership and public service. She was the daughter of William Pickens, a prominent civil rights leader connected to the NAACP. Frances Wills was a trained social worker who later documented her experience in her memoir Navy Blue and Other Colors. Their commissioning did not immediately end discrimination inside the military. Opportunities for Black service members remained limited and segregation still existed across much of the armed forces. Even so, their presence in uniform marked an important turning point. Harriet Ida Pickens and Frances Wills showed that Black women could serve as leaders in roles the Navy had long denied them. Their achievement in 1944 remains an important milestone in the history of military service and expanding opportunity. #OurHistory #HarrietIdaPickens #FrancesWills #MilitaryHistory #WomensHistory #LataraSpeaksTruth

She buried twenty-four babies of her own, one small grave at a time, in the rocky soil of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Born around 1844 in North Carolina, Orlean Hawks Puckett married at sixteen and built a hard, isolated life near Groundhog Mountain, Virginia. In 1862 she gave birth to her first child, Julia Ann, and for seven months she knew joy—until diphtheria took her baby. Then it happened again. And again. Some babies lived hours. Some days. Some never breathed at all. None survived long enough to call her Mama. In an era with no answers, no medicine, and no mercy, Orlean carried a grief most people would not survive. Today we believe Rh disease caused the losses, but she could only bury her children and keep going. And then, around age fifty, when a neighbor went into labor and no one else could help, Orlean stepped forward. In that moment, she turned unimaginable loss into purpose. For the next fifty years, she walked miles through mountains and storms, never charging a penny, delivering babies in dirt-floor cabins with only her hands, her knowledge, and fierce determination. She delivered more than one thousand babies. She never lost a single mother. She never lost a single child. The woman who lost everything made sure no other mother had to. That is not just survival. That is transformation. That is choosing love after devastation, again and again, for a lifetime. #WomensHistory #fyp #courageous #didyouknow #AppalachianWomen #MidwifeLegacy