by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 9, 2026 | Black History Month
Katherine Johnson was a brilliant mathematician who helped make NASA spaceflights possible. Johnson was one of the “West Area Computers,” Black, female mathematicians who did complicated calculations by hand that were essential for developments in flight and...
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 8, 2026 | Black History Month
Fred Gray is a “lawyer by trade” and a Church of Christ “preacher at heart” who won the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022 at age 91 for his boundary-shattering Civil Rights work. Gray represented Martin Luther King Jr., Claudette Colvin and...
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 7, 2026 | Black History Month
The Snowy Day was the first children’s book featuring an African American character to win the Caldecott Medal, one of the most prestigious awards for children’s literature. This beautiful, simple little book by Ezra Jack Keats follows Peter as he explores...
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 6, 2026 | Black History Month
I frequently travel through the Austin airport and whenever I do, I always try to stop at least briefly at the statue of Barbara Jordan to honor her remarkable life. Jordan was the first African American woman in in the Texas Senate (1966-72) and the first African...
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 5, 2026 | Black History Month
I didn’t know anything about Ida B. Wells until fairly recently, but as a former journalist, her story inspires me so much. Wells was an outspoken, African American, female journalist in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when those things just did not go together....
