For the frequent flyers of the Amplify column, you’ll know that I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, so I was incredibly pleased to come across Mary Dee Dudley, a trailblazer in radio who happens to be from the Pittsburgh area. She was a staple in the black community in the 1940’s & 50’s, airing her radio show from a storefront in a historically black neighborhood for most of her tenure in Pittsburgh.

This will likely be one of the shortest editions of Amplify. So short, in fact, that I don’t even have a timeline following this article because the life of Esther Jones was not well documented. In fact, the best source available (for free) online is Wikipedia. In most cases I wouldn’t use Wikipedia as a source, let alone my only source, but the citations for this particular Wikipedia article about the child who inspired the woman who inspired Betty Boop are books, newspaper articles, and scholarly articles so big thanks to the angel that put that page together.

Traces of former US Representative Patsy Takemoto Mink are woven throughout our current political and social climate. From the Kavanaugh hearings, to human beings in cages on the US/Mexico border, to the US Women’s National Team winning the world cup, Mink’s policies and experiences are continually relevant.

Luisa Moreno was born Blanca Rosa Lopez Rodriguez on August 30, 1907, in Guatemala City, Guatemala, to a prominent and well-to-do family (2). Details on the specifics of Moreno’s life are hard to come by, but we do know that during her school-age years, she attended boarding school in Oakland, California.

Jane Bolin was born on April 11, 1908 in Poughkeepsie, New York to Gaius Bolin and Matilda Emery. Her father, Gaius, was the first black person to graduate from Williams College and he had his own law practice. Because of his success, Bolin had a comfortable childhood and was inspired to be an attorney after being exposed to the beauty of his leather-bound books and the horror of the court cases they contained. 

Happy February, HerStry Readers! This month, we’re taking a look at the life of Madam C.J. Walker, America’s first (reported) self-made black woman millionaire. Sure, there are a lot of qualifiers there, but Madam Walker reached this accomplishment in the early 1900’s.

Happy January, HerStry readers! I apologize for the lack of Amplify in December. One of my low-key resolutions is to not miss a single month of Amplify in 2019. There are so many stories to tell and no one wants an unreliable columnist.