Hello readers! I’m excited to bring to you the journeys of two remarkable young women. Quick update: I am getting my full salary, and am thankful to God and the director of my school for this. I hope you are all doing well and staying safe! Here are a couple inspiring stories of journeys of women to keep you going.
The two young women I want to introduce to you are separated by a century in time. Bessie Coleman, known as “Queen Bess, Daredevil Aviatrix,” was a young African American aviator in the 1920s whose life was cut short doing what she loved. Phiona Mutesi, better known thanks to a Disney movie as “The Queen of Katwe,” is a champion of chess in her home country of Uganda, and is now a student in a Christian college here in the Pacific Northwest.
Bessie Coleman, public domain photo from Wikipedia
I’m going to let some short videos do most of the talking for me this time, because they are very well-done and speak for themselves. (And because I have a lot of paperwork to do for one of the local school districts, but don’t want to keep putting off this post). You are also welcome to research these two amazing ladies on your own.
All I will say about them is that they both overcame incredible odds (between the two of them- racism, classism, and poverty), and used their talents to change their own lives and the lives of others. I’ll let you find out for yourselves what they did.
This video is an artsy look at Bessie Coleman’s life, found on PBS: https://www.pbs.org/video/aviator-bessie-coleman-ztdgjl/
I also learned about her from a history book I have: “Great African Americans in History” by Carlotta Hacker, Crabtree Publishing Company, 1997.
For Phiona, check out these two videos done by ABC news and a recent radio interview with her on WBUR:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEcxNpd3WQA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGC0MrWuUTk
https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2019/01/11/queen-of-katwe-phiona-mutesi-chess
And of course, check out the Disney movie! It is now my favorite Disney “princess” movie! It actually sticks to the real story pretty well instead of “Disney-fying” it.
I hope these two women inspire you as much as they did me. Since I’ve been stuck with the same 10 mostly educational DVDs I checked out from the library in March (it’s been closed and keeps extending the due date; I think soon I’ll own these DVDs! Anyone need some Bill Nye the Science Guy?), I’ve watched “The Queen of Katwe” twice. It is so good! I hope I can meet the real Phiona Mutesi someday. And I wish I could have been around to watch Bessie Coleman fly. But for now, I will celebrate their lives, and endeavor to develop my own talents and help others.
The Compass Rose Queen 