Black Women in History Description
Drs. Williams, Guthrie, and Greene discuss significant women in history including the first African American female physician in the United States and other industries like sports, law, and business.
Black Women in History Transcription
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Welcome to Take Good Care podcast.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
An endeavor that grew out of our love for obstetrics and gynecology.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Our aim and mission is to serve as a source of vital information for women of all races, ages, and walks in life.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I am Dr. Mironda Williams.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I am Dr. Deanna Guthrie.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And I am Dr. Karen Greene.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Welcome to our show.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Welcome to our show.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Welcome to our show.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Welcome to another episode of Take Good Care podcast. I’m Dr. Mironda Williams.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And I am Dr. Karen Greene.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
On today’s episode of Take Good Care podcast, we wanted to take a look at some prominent or significant women throughout history. Some of these women are African-American, some may not be, but we really feel that representation matters, and for us, for our own insight and for those that we like to try and inspire, we want to present information that can hopefully shine a light and inspire more of us to take on what may be considered as roles not necessarily deemed for women. All roles are for women, and so we wanted to talk about some instances where that is the case. So I’m going to get us started and I’ll talk about women in medicine, in particular one Black woman in medicine. Dr. Greene will talk about some women in sports that she has found inspiring. And then Dr. Guthrie is also going to talk about some women in law and business and those who have just been inspiring and perhaps in the news recently. So we hope that you all enjoyed this as we talk about some women who stood out for us when we looked at the historical record.
A little while ago, there was a celebration for the life of Rebecca Lee Crumpler. Rebecca Lee Crumpler is believed to be the first African-American woman physician in the United States. She was born in Delaware in 1831, grew up in Pennsylvania where her aunt provided care for ill in the community. In 1852, she moved to Charlestown, Massachusetts, and worked as a nurse at that time. In 1860, she took what was a very bold step to apply to medical school, and was actually accepted into the New England Female Medical College based in Boston, and was attached to the New England Hospital for Women and Children.
It was there that she really started to face some of the challenges and barriers in attempting to get her medical degree. Of course, there were many male physicians who really came down on the institution for even allowing her entrance as one of their students. They complained, these other well-meaning men, that women were incapable of mastering a medical curriculum, and that many of the topics that were being taught at that time were inappropriate for their sensitive and delicate natures. So they were looking out for us.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Oh, yes. Always.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Wanting to keep us protected from the hardships of life.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
But wait, which is so funny because women are the primary caregivers. Even if somebody went to a doctor, who was sick, it would be the woman who would take care of them. So how is that too much for her?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Well, they were trying to protect us.
Dr. Karen Greene:
We’re delicate.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And about this delicate nature, Dr. Greene, can you just briefly tell the audience what you were doing when you went into labor with your first child?
Dr. Karen Greene:
What was I doing?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Working.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Well, that is correct. I work All the time. I was working.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
You were working.
Dr. Karen Greene:
I was working, yes.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
You were working.
Dr. Karen Greene:
I was working. I was at the office. I left the office and I said, “Darn, I think I’m in labor.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And yes, she was in labor working in the office and went off to have a baby. And Dr. Guthrie, we call her kettlebell queen. What’s the highest weight you’ve been swinging, when you were really into it? What was the highest that you got to?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I have done a 32 kilogram, which is 60 or 70 pounds.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And you like to ride bikes too. What’s your longest distance?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
67 miles.
Dr. Karen Greene:
But you’re delicate.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
My point is made, that we can do hard things. We can do hard things. But back to Rebecca. So Rebecca became the New England Female College only African-American graduate, because the school itself closed its doors shortly after she graduated and obtained her medical degree. Some of the historians have often wondered if she even knew of her status as being the first, and that it would be decades, and this is what blew my mind, into the 20th century before we had our next African-American female physician, Dr. Rebecca Cole, who received her medical degree from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania later in the 1800s. And then of course, the first historically Black medical school in the United States was founded at Howard University College of Medicine. And that opened in the late 1860s. As late as 1920, there were only 65 African-American female physicians in the United States.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Say that date again?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
- There were only 65. I think we got 65 on staff [inaudible 00:06:41]
Dr. Karen Greene:
Now, we do live in Atlanta.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s true. We’re in chocolate city, but still. There were only 65 African-American female physicians in the whole country. And though we’ve made great strides, and yes, there are many more of us who are representative as medical school enrollees, 150-plus years later, we’re just peaking at 50% of medical school enrollees. So yes, there have been great strides. And we live in an environment, we’re located in Atlanta, Georgia, in a fairly metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia. So we see a lot of us.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
But that’s not the norm.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
But that is not the norm.
Dr. Karen Greene:
No.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And I often remind myself when I travel and go places. When people find out that I’m a physician, they are just in awe because they’ve never seen a Black woman physician. And it just blows my mind that in 2020, ’21, ’23, that you can go somewhere where you are seen as, “Oh my gosh, I never knew that that was possible.”
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
When they hear there’s three in one practice, they’re like …
Dr. Karen Greene:
“Really?”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
“How did that happen?”
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Especially people who are moving to the area. They’re just like, “I never thought I would see this.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
There was a documentary that filmmaker Crystal Emery did called Black Women in Medicine, and she profiled several prominent Black female physicians now, including Dr. Joyce Elders, who was the first Black US Surgeon General. And she often said that you can’t be what you can’t see. So this is why a lot of people ask, “Well, why does representation matter?” This is why representation matters. Because if you’re not in a situation where you can see someone who looks like you, who talks like you, who has hair like you, who came from a similar background as you, then you don’t always know that you can do something as well. So she says, “You can’t be what you can’t see.”
Many women, including this other woman in the documentary, a Dr. Jennifer Ellis, she was at the time of the documentary one of only six Black female cardiothoracic surgeons in the United States. So in this documentary, many women, these women, Dr. Joyce Elders, Dr. Jennifer Ellis, and then the first Black female orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Claudia Thomas, they talked about the unconscious bias when their male colleagues often did not refer to them as doctor, but would call them by their first name, and not give them the honor of surgeon as well as doctor.
And this is recently, this is not back in the 1800s. So we know that gender bias, discrimination, macro, microaggressions, they’re not unique in medicine or to the Black and brown communities. But in this instance, we feel it is important for us to take every opportunity that we can to highlight women like Dr. Joyce Elders, Dr. Jennifer Ellis, and of course Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, who laid the foundation that allowed us to be accepted into the schools that we were accepted in, to matriculate through those schools and to successfully complete a medical school curriculum and go on to residency training.
When I think about it, sometimes it almost does seem unbelievable because of how hard it was for those women. And I think about some of the same kind of struggles we have now, which pale in comparison. I can’t imagine being the only woman in a school, the whole medical school, much less a Black woman, and what she had to face and overcome.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
But Dr. Williams, you are a first.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Well, I wasn’t the first Black.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
You weren’t the first Black, but you were first of Black female in our residency program. So you are the trailblazer.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
But you see, the funny thing is y’all-
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
And that’s in the 1980s, y’all.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I didn’t know that.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
1980s.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I’m not that old. Thank you for that, Dr. Guthrie. I appreciate that, because …
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
We’re not talking about 1800.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
We’re not talking about 1800, people.
I don’t want anybody out there saying, “Y’all, she look good for her age.” I do look good for my age.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
But she does look good for her age.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And the thing about it was, I didn’t know that until probably I got out of residency. I just didn’t know it.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And you know why that is? Because even though you weren’t used to being the only in an entire school, you were used to being the only in a lot of situations.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Very true.
Dr. Karen Greene:
So you adjust, and you do what you need to do.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It didn’t even register.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And you don’t register the microaggressions because they still happened. And then you look back and think, “Okay.” I can only assume that that’s what these women did. This is their goal, this is what they wanted.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
So you just do the work.
Dr. Karen Greene:
So you do the work.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
You just do the work.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
It’s so funny. So the three of us here are in the top first 10 in that residency program.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s very true.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Because we were all within-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
We’re two and two.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
… four years of each other.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s right.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Isn’t that amazing?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It’s amazing.
Dr. Karen Greene:
That is kind of amazing. I didn’t realize that either.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
So there you have it. So this has been a moment in Black women [inaudible 00:12:41]. So just to bring some light to that and to let you guys know how we feel about it, how it’s important to us, and we’ve even made certain strides in our own careers that we’re proud of, and we hope to shine a light for some other young women to come behind us. Dr. Greene?
Dr. Karen Greene:
So when I was looking at just Black women in history, as a point of reference, I have two boys. And because I have two boys and a husband that is all about the sports, I’m involved in a lot of sports. And so my life outside of this is going to different sporting events. And quite frankly, going through school, I’ll be honest, history was never something that I was interested in. I just didn’t want to learn it despite the, “What you don’t know you’re destined to repeat.” mantra. But there is something about medical history and Black history that stimulates the nerd in me. And looking back on “Why?” of sports and women got me looking into history of women in sports. Because as Dr. Williams pointed out, a lot of this stuff in terms of women in medical schools and women in schools and wanting to shield them from certain things because it wasn’t appropriate made me ask, “But why?”
You look at, for instance, when someone goes to the doctor and they go home, who’s taking care of them? It’s usually the woman. You look at people who grow up on a farm and do a lot of the hard work, and they’re herding the cattle and they’re feeding the cows and they’re doing the farm work, and these are women doing this. And if you look even historically, and we’re talking way historically, men would go out to hunt and they’d bring home the kill, the women had to clean whatever they killed. And so they had physical strength that they were required to have. But yet when we think of women in sports, “Oh, they don’t have the countenance to do that. They’re too delicate.”
And back in the 19th century, looking into history, America idolized women’s modesty. They basically frowned on sports to the point that the reason they said that women cannot participate in sports, it was a threat to their fertility. Which goes back to why, if that was the case, those women herding the cattle had five and six children. Clearly it had nothing to do with their fertility, but this is what the science told them. And so women were not allowed to exert themselves. Only certain sports were acceptable for aristocratic ladies. Tennis, croquet, archery, and bathing beauties. Not swimming, but bathing beauties, walking around in bathing suits.
Medical authorities dating back to Aristotle declared that women were basically ruled by their reproductive organs. If they used up too much energy, they could become infertile. 19 century campaigns against higher education for women sounded very much like campaigns to prevent women from taking part in active sports. And so basically there was inconsistencies in terms of, “The women couldn’t take it, they couldn’t take the pain, they couldn’t do these things.” And so if a woman was tough, it was okay, as long as it involved taking care of her family. They couldn’t be tough in sports. They couldn’t play the different sports the same as men. And I’m never going to say that women and men, in terms of their physical abilities are equal. However, I do think that women have the capacity to not only learn the craft, to be active in the sports and want to participate in it. And this-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And to be excellent in it. And I think that’s what we see today with the whole pay discrepancy, men’s sporting versus women, even though women are playing, they’re competing, they’re out there giving their all, they’re getting paid less because they’re women, not because they’re not performing in the sport like soccer or anything else.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And it goes back again that, “Women are delicate.” So for whatever reason, we are conditioned or society is conditioned to think that they’re not deserving of the higher fee. And they use the justification of, “Well, no one’s going to come and watch these sports, so we don’t need to pay them any more.”
And so looking back, who were the first female athletes? The first female athletes were, of course, not African American. They were Caucasian. And usually it was swimming and tennis and the Olympics. And Black women were reserved for either track and basketball, because we had those athletic abilities. They were only allowed to play in sports if they continued to look like women.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Oh, wow. What does that mean?
Dr. Karen Greene:
You remember the movie, A League of Their Own? They all had to play in dresses. And so the funniest part of that movie for me, being a baseball mom and watching how they would be athletic and catch things in their dresses, there’s one where the lead character, she’s sliding to catch a ball and she does a split. Because again, it was all about the show. It wasn’t about their ability yet a lot of them had excellent abilities.
And it really is sad because a year ago, June 23rd, 2022 was actually the 50th anniversary of Title IX. Before Title IX, 90% of coaches for female teams were female. When the money started flooding in and higher pay was on the table, all of a sudden men wanted to coach. But what Title IX is, is just basically saying that women should be paid, women should actually have access, women should be able to participate. And it actually is a rule, but it doesn’t mean actually that things are going to change immediately.
But just looking into the sporting arena, I just wanted to highlight, in the Superbowl in 2023, the assistant coach, Autumn Lockwood, was the first Black woman to coach the Super Bowl. And so when I saw that, that’s what made me start thinking about this. Because when I watched different events and I watched different teams, I’ve noticed that there aren’t a lot of women out there. So the fact that she was the first in 2023 to coach at the Super Bowl really was a big deal to me. And I go to sporting events all the time, and you look at the referees or the umpires, and it’s always going to be men regardless of the team. And typically if I’m going with my husband, he’ll make a comment that, “Well, women can’t referee this because they don’t play the game. They don’t play the game like men do.” And I often think, “Well, have you seen women play basketball?” They can. They actually do play the game. They play the game just as hard.
And I think that it’s a different perspective, but as we’ve always said, if other women don’t see it, then they’re never going to think that they can do this. They’re never going to think that, “Okay, after I play in this particular sport, I can actually coach in this particular sport,” because 9 times out of 10, the men are still the coaches. But they should see that. They should see people that are coaching like Autumn Lockwood. They should also see that there are referees. One of the women that I looked at, her name is Maia Chaka. She is an official referee for the National Football League. So she’s an NFL umpire. A referee, rather.
And women seeing that, little girls seeing that, even if they’re … Because when kids are little, they play sports together. And then suddenly they break them up into male and female sports and they never come back together. But some kids really still enjoy football, male and female. So if a little girl sees she played flag football when she was younger and then had to go to some other sport, maybe she plays basketball or baseball, but still really likes football, if she sees someone that’s actually in that position, then she can achieve that, “Well, maybe I could do that too.”
I have a granddaughter and she plays soccer like her mom. And I think it’s important as she gets older, that if soccer is what she wants to play, so be it. But if she also wants to be a soccer coach, she should have that ability and she should be able to see someone that looks like her and see that, “I can do that.” So I think that’s why I wanted to highlight the fact that yes, if we want to achieve something, we can do it. We may, except for Dr. Guthrie who can lift these wonderful kettlebells, most of us can’t lift that much weight, but we can play to a level that is worthy-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s competitive.
Dr. Karen Greene:
… of the attention, that’s worthy of the competition and worthy of the compensation.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And I was just sitting here thinking not just to see ourselves in all levels in sports, from ownership, management, the coaching refereeing as well as the playing, but the different sports. And again, it’s not that we’ve never competed in these sports. It’s just not seen. So recently, this year, Howard University’s swimming and diving team has been making history, winning all kinds of awards. And because of that, they became the first HBCU all-Black swim team that was featured in Sports Illustrated. So swimming is not foreign to us as African Americans, but a lot of us don’t know because people say, “Black people don’t swim.” Yeah, we do. But it’s just not been something that has been seen in the broader population or something like a cover story in Sports Illustrated where many people are saying, “Hey, if I want to be on the swim team, I could be on the swim team.”
Dr. Karen Greene:
Because there’s a lot of onlys. There’s a lot of ones.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Same thing with gymnastics. That’s what’s opening up now. Now we’re seeing a lot more African American gymnasts who are getting on teams and things like that.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And doing well.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
And doing very well.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And that’s why the attention is drawing on them, because they’re just doing all these phenomenal things, and now people are like, “Oh.” But it is representation and it’s being seen in broader spectrums for populations so that everybody understands. Not just Black and Brown folks, but everybody understands, there are no restrictions to what any of us can do. It doesn’t matter your race and your gender. So, Dr. Guthrie?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
So I looked at women in law and business, and so the first person I’m going to talk about was very much highlighted last year, and it’s Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was our first African American female that was elevated to the Supreme Court. She’s an associate justice. Of course, there was lots of controversy when this was going on. And we’ve had two prior African Americans, but they were both male. There’s Clarence Thomas and Thurgood Marshall. But she was going to be the first Black female.
And it was so interesting when I read about her, that you could see where she’s just been taking the steps towards this, which in some way to me is encouraging, that at least it’s not somebody that they just picked as a token. And that’s the feeling a lot of times, when the first of anybody gets elected to a position or appointed, is that, “Oh, this was because they wanted to do this and she’s just a token, she’s not really qualified,” which is so not the case for her. When they were looking at her qualifications, she has a broader spectrum of the law than a lot of the judges-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That are sitting on the Supreme Court now.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
… on the Supreme Court. So not only has she been on the prosecutorial side of things, but she’s the only Supreme Court justice who was a public defender, and they tried to use that against her.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Yeah. I remember that in her hearings.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
But when is a broader understanding or a broader exposure to things limiting? It shouldn’t be.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It shouldn’t be.
Dr. Karen Greene:
It shouldn’t be.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Both of her parents were HBCU grads, she went to public high school. She was the only one to go to public high school, but she did go to private college. So she did attend Harvard University. Even her surrounding family and environment growing up, she had family members in law enforcement. But then there’s a story that you hear that one of her uncles was actually incarcerated for life for a drug charge. So she’s seen both sides of this. So she can see where law enforcement is … prevailing situation, but she also has somebody on the other side.
So for me, just looking at all of that, like I said, I don’t think there’s a better person to be on the Supreme Court. She was also a corporate lawyer. She’s been in private firms, she’s been on commissions for sentencing. She’s just been well-versed in all aspects of the law.
And so when they tried to use the fact that she was a public defender against her, there was Laura Coates, who’s one of the CNN commentators, they tried to say she was going to be soft on crime and soft on these issues because she had the democratic/liberal/tilt of things. But just being a public defender doesn’t mean that you’re soft on crime. She says, “You’re just hard on injustice.” So I like that quote.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I like that too.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Not soft on crime, but hard on injustice. So that’s Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The second person that I looked at was Ursula Burns. She was the first Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company. And here again is another person who was not a token. This was not somebody they just said, “Okay, it’s time for somebody Black to be in the role and let’s just pick somebody and put her in there.”
She actually almost worked from the ground up in Xerox. She started working there, almost like a college student. She had lower level jobs and things like that, and then became the executive assistant to the CEO. And then from there, then they had the first female CEO just prior to her. And then when that CEO left, she got … So she had experience in the company. Like I said, this is not somebody that was just a token. In addition to that, she’s also been the CEO of VEON, which is a communications firm. She’s been on multiple boards. They did an interview with her and as typical for CEOs or women in charge, that whole thing about her attitude, her management style, the angry …
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Angry Black woman.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Angry Black woman syndrome. And she says for men, when men are strong about their position, when they state what they really mean, it’s seen as strong and firm and confident, but it’s not that way for women.
Dr. Karen Greene:
It’s a delicate countenance.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I know. And so she also had lots of success with dealing with diversity. She feels that it’s all about numbers. And as Dr. Williams is saying, it’s the exposure. When you see people like you in situations … You don’t grow up thinking CEO, but other children who see their parents who are presidents and CEOs or whatever, they just kind of, “Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go to school. I’m getting a business degree. I’m doing all this.” But we don’t see, even if we think we want to do business, where can that take us? We’re just thinking maybe a little shop or working for somebody, but it doesn’t help us to look past that point, to go beyond that glass ceiling.
She also had an experience that she talked about, at her high school, where she went to her guidance counselor. And at the time she was told, “You could be a nun, a teacher or a nurse.”
Dr. Karen Greene:
All female.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
All female-
Dr. Karen Greene:
Occupations.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
… gender-specific roles. And so I just thought that was interesting because we had that last podcast where Michelle Obama’s experience, it just seems to be a common experience for our young women. And so hoping that as we’re seeing more and more of us or the more diverse executives and higher-ups, that it will inspire younger kids to do more.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Well, I think what we’ve been talking about today, as we look back at women in past history, as well as some more contemporary women who have been doing groundbreaking things and breaking ceilings and barriers, is there’s a buzz now about the whole diversity, equity, inclusion, DEI, and what is it and why is it important? Well, this is why it’s important. It’s important because the world is not made up of one group of people. And there was no edict that I’m aware of that came down that said it was only this one group of people, are the ones that can get to the higher and more varied occupational aspirations in business, medicine, sports or whatever the area.
And we have to keep bringing these things up because until it is not an issue, until, as Dr. Greene has said, we stop having “First …” we will continue to shine a light specifically on women for us, because that’s a passion, interest for all of us. Black women who have had to overcome. We have had to overcome different things in our own work environments and other institutions where we may be a part of … as being one or few.
Until we no longer have to do that, discussions about diversity, equity, inclusion, about representation, about shining the spotlight for us women who are doing incredible things, it inspires me at 60-plus now, that I’m not done. I’m not done. There are other things to do. There are other things to conquer, but absolutely one of the things all three of us are passionate about is making sure that women coming behind us will pick up the torch. It’s like their relay race. “Y’all come get this baton, and then I want y’all to run with it.” And one of the things my mother would say all the time is she says, “I have you doing ballet and piano and oboe lessons.” Oboe, who even knew about oboe? “Oboe Lessons, dance lessons, because you have to go further than we went.”
My mother went to nursing school. My aunt, educator. My grandmother was a maid. My grandfather worked in the pencil factory putting lead in pencils. And so from them came a registered nurse, a teacher for the Atlanta public school system who went on to be principal before retiring. And then from them, they have encouraged me as a physician.
All of my friends, my neighbors, they’re all doing wonderful things because the older generation said, “We’ve done this, but you can do more.” And so even though we sit here as owners of our practice, businesswomen, employing women, encouraging women, there’s more people. So I need somebody to come through and to create a whole healthcare system and run it with excellence.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Reimagine it.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And reimagine, because healthcare is changing and has changed because of COVID. So I need some smart, passionate, young, little Black or Brown woman to come on and do this thing, because we are going to hand you the baton. And there is more to do. There is more to achieve. And truly, the sky is the limit. There’s nothing that none of us can do. And no child, I don’t care, the color, should be restricted or feel like they can’t just because of gender or their race. That is an abomination.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Not in this day and time.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Not in this day and time. So we took the time to bring you some women in history, some Black women in history, Black women in medicine, that we’ve been trying to run the baton because we felt the need to represent for women in medicine, Black women in medicine, but also to speak of women in sports, women in law, women in business who are just doing amazing, phenomenal things. We talked about them, but they’re not the only ones. There are many out there. And so it’s time for us to celebrate ourselves and to celebrate these wonderful women. Any other thoughts before we get ready to close this segment?
Dr. Karen Greene:
Like Dr. Williams, I know that Black or Brown girl is out there. I have hope. I definitely have hope because I think that what we’ve gone through and the last couple of years has shown us is that this isn’t working. Medicine and just the social aspect of things that were revealed during COVID, we’ve got to change things. And I do know there are bright minds out there. And when I see people in that younger generation speaking and talking about things that they want to happen, it’s exciting to listen to them because I am encouraged that they will take on the torch. And I am encouraged that they will do great things. And they may do great things outside of the system that we’re used to, but that’s okay.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s okay.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Because it does have to be rethunk and reimagined. And that’s our job, as our generation, to inspire them to say, “Okay, here we are. Take the torch, run with it, and make it better.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Make it better.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
And I hope … The older generation as we are moving away, I’m seeing younger people more willing to work with each other, more diversely.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I agree with you on that. They don’t have those hangups.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
They don’t have those hangups. And that’s encouraging. It’s not perfect because again, depending on your upbringing and how you are secluded by maybe your family in forcing certain beliefs on you, I think the majority of the younger people now, and it’s social media, they’re not just seeing their little neighborhood.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s very true. That they’re being exposed to …
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
They’re being exposed.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
… all kinds of things.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
And just seeing the shows and things that are around that, even little TikTok videos, guys dancing together, it will be a Black and a White guy. They’re just dancing their heart. And those things are encouraging to me. So I think the younger generation, keep going, keep going. Keep doing what you doing.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
You’re right about that. It’s these old fogies that’s got to get over it, because they’re just stuck.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Right. Stuck in their beliefs.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
They’re stuck in their beliefs.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Stuck in their little bubble. And you can’t be in a bubble these days. You can not. You have to see it.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Some of them are holding on.
Dr. Karen Greene:
They’re holding on, they’re holding.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
For dear life.
Dr. Karen Greene:
It’s up to us to say, “Okay, it’s time to go to pasture. You can’t keep holding on. The world is changing.”
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I’m so sad when I see these stories of people who hold these prejudices and racist views who have gotten themselves into issues, and you just want to know that it’s …. and it’s totally exposure. People don’t inherently feel that way. You have to be taught that. There’s another YouTube video where the two little kids are running toward each other. They don’t care, “That’s my friend that I see running down the street.” You have to be taught these things. Like I said, I have hope for the future.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Yeah, I agree. I definitely think … That’s why I keep telling y’all I’m going to be the old sage over there with the Leon people. I’ll say, “Y’all just pry me up in the corner. Just let me sit over here with y’all.”
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
“And watch.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
“And watch.”
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
“Watch how y’all work.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
“Watch how y’all work. Watch how y’all handle it.” Well, thank you all for listening to us and for taking a moment to look at Women in history and some of our contemporary role models that are doing phenomenal things. Please continue to reach out to us at our website, ptcobgyn.com, on all of the places where you can get your podcast. Please continue to share us with your friends and family. And until we get together again, I’m Dr. Mironda Williams.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And I am Dr. Karen Greene. Take good care.