"Been there, done that!"
That's how Clotilde Dent Bowen used to describe her life (1923-2011).
This pic is when she was the first African-American woman to graduate medicine from Ohio State University in 1947.
I've just made her a Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clotilde_Dent_Bowen
And she features in my post on African-American pioneers in mental health. But more on her remarkable life before we meet some others...
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...Bowen became a psychiatrist, & the first African-American woman Colonel in the US Army.
In 1970, she did a tour of duty in Vietnam, as chief of psychiatry for the whole Army there. From then on, she was an advocate for treatment & support for substance dependency & PTSD.
She was awarded medals for establishing drug treatment centers in the war zone & reducing racial tensions....
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...Not long before her war posting, Bowen had done an interview with Ebony magazine about her life. Though at that time, same-sex relationships could get you discharged from the military, she was open about sharing her home with another woman.
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=r-EDAAAAMBAJ
A friend of the family said Bowen told her stories of the gay community in Harlem in the 50s.
https://www.reddit.com/r/weirdoldbroads/comments/t9bkpf/admirable_women_clotilde_bowen/
In later life, she had a longterm relationship with another doctor, "Micki" Athans, who survived her
....
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...But it was 1973 before the American Psychiatric Assoc stopped classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder - one of many social harms in STEM history.
Another source of grievous harm starts off my latest post @PLOS - a link to a chronology of psychology's contribution to racist beliefs & racial inequality.
https://absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2024/02/15/black-history-month-early-mental-health-pioneers/
The post features a string of awe-inspiring African-Americans who tackled the sources of this crushing oppression & its effects on their communities...
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...Here's another of them: This is Olivia Hooker (1915-2018), when she was honored by Barack Obama in 2015. She was 100 then.
Hooker was a survivor of the Tulsa race massacre, who served in WW2 & used her GI Bill entitlement to get a master's in psychology. She studied learning disabilities & disadvantage, & was a lifelong civil rights activist...
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Speaking at the Coast Guard graduation in May 2015, President Barack Obama honored 100-year-old retired Fordham University Professor of Psychology Dr. Olivia Hooker, describing her as “as sha…
...This is Martin David Jenkins (1904-1978) & Herman George Canady (1901-1970).
In the mid-1930s, they each published influential studies that challenged beliefs about white intellectual superiority.
Check out the post for links to their work, and the stories and work of other groundbreakers:
https://absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2024/02/15/black-history-month-early-mental-health-pioneers/
There are #Wikipedia notes, too, in case the post inspires you to tackle some fixer-uppers.
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I love reading stuff like this. 😀
☆Ivy★
Hilda Bastian
Ruairidh Milne
𝓓 𝓑 𝓒𝓸𝓸𝓹𝓮𝓻
Thomas
Wigbert B 🎻🏛🎭🎤🗞🎥📚