From Harriet To Hidden Figures: Women Who Built The World

Start with a question: who is the woman who changed your life? We set out to honor Women’s History Month by pulling together the names you know, the names history buried, and the names you carry at your kitchen table. From Harriet Tubman’s precision under fire to Ida B. Wells’s fearless reporting, we trace the blueprint of courage that built movements and made room for the rest of us.

We widen the frame with Claudette Colvin’s first stand, Rosa Parks’s trained resolve, and Dorothy Height’s decades of steady leadership. Then we leave the marches for the math labs: Mae Jemison’s path to space, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson calculating trajectories in segregated rooms that still put people safely into orbit. Henrietta Lacks anchors a hard truth—modern medicine owes a debt to a Black woman whose cells changed the world without her consent—pushing us to pair innovation with ethics and equity.

Culture and politics echo this arc. Toni Morrison wrote the books the canon refused to make, Shirley Chisholm ran unbought and unbossed, and Kamala Harris took an oath that carried three firsts at once. Through it all, we keep returning home. The spirit that moved history also lives in mothers, grandmothers, teachers, and friends who worked two jobs, gave the warning that later saved you, and prayed when control was gone. We end with a simple challenge: don’t just post—call her, text her, tell her she’s seen. If this conversation moved you, subscribe, share it with someone who needs the reminder, and leave a review to help more listeners find these stories.

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Transcript

Solo Host And Purpose

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Welcome back to another episode of Pops and Son Conversations. I'm Javen, also known as Check Three Times, and Pops is not here today. Shout out to Pops. He's on set right now. You know, he's back in his acting bag. He's actually filming two movies at the same time. So, you know, the uh Pops is working. He's doing his thing, but don't fret. Um, I'll take care of this episode. And, you know, it's gonna be a good one. It's gonna be a good one. So uh it's March. It's March, happy March, and it's also Women's History Month. And of course, we couldn't, we couldn't let another episode go by without stopping to really honor what this month means. Um, I and I'm talking about actually sitting down, doing the work and talking about the women who literally built the world we live in right now. You know, um I I say this all the time. I'm 31, you know, as a 31-year-old black man, too. Um, you know, I was raised by women, I was shaped by women, I was corrected, protected, and pushed forward by women. So um today's episode is deeply personal to me. Not just historical, but I do want to get into some history. Um, so we'll go through some history and then I'll bring it right back home at the end, and um, I'll make everything connect. So please, please make sure you listen to this one all the way through. You may learn something new. I'm sure you're gonna connect with it in some type of way. You're gonna want to share it with um, you know, the women in your life, fellas, ladies alike. So uh yeah, I mean, let's get into it. Uh, I want to talk movements, right? So I'm gonna go through, I'm gonna go through some history now, but I want to talk movements, but before we talk about uh the movements, I want to lay the foundation, right? Because nothing is built in a vacuum. So let me take you back. Some of these names are gonna be familiar, some of them are not gonna be familiar, but you know, uh we'll leave no stone unturned, okay? So let's start with Harriet Tubman, right? Born into slavery around 1822, and as you all know, she did not just escape, but she went back 13 times, freed over 70 people through the Underground Railroad. And she said, this is a quote, she said, Um, I never ran my train off the track, and I left I never lost a passenger. Right? So uh those are her words, and that's not um that's that's really true leadership when you think about it. That type of precision under that type of pressure, uh, I can only imagine. But I can only imagine. But here's what a lot of people don't know about Harry is she was also a Union spy during the Civil War, right? She led an armed raid at the I'm sorry, I get I get uh choked up on this uh on this river right here, Kambahi River in 1863 that liberated more than 700 enslaved people in a single night, one single night, right? So she was a military strategist. This woman was extraordinary in ways that history has constantly underplayed. You know, at this point, I you know, when we mention Harriet Tubman, it's always like, oh, you know, Harriet Tubman, but you gotta do your research and really um and really delve a little bit deeper. You know, she's just not one of those names or those figures for black history or women's history. It's a lot, a lot more underneath the surface. Uh so we'll move on to Ida B. Wells, born in 1862. Just before emancipation, she became one of the most fearless investigative journalists this country has ever produced. She documented Lynching at a time when just talking about it could get you killed, right? She co-founded the NAACP. She marched in suffrage parades, but she also pushed back when white suffragists told her to march in the back. Okay, she said no, she marched in the front. You know, just just keeping that type of uh um, you know, steadfast militant ideology and not really taking no for an answer. Um, you know, that's kind of and I know I'm I'm getting into a lot of black history right now. It feels like it's like a black history uh extension. But I mean the truth about it is a lot of, you know, a lot of the women's history in America is also black women's history. So I wanted to highlight that as well. Um so I want to shout out someone else uh people may not have heard of, and this is Mary Church Terrell, born in 1863, daughter of formerly enslaved parents who became wealthy, and she used every ounce of that privilege as a weapon for justice. She earned her college degree in 1884, one of the first black women to do so in America, all right, Mary Church. She became a founding member of the NAACP and the first president of the National Association of Colored Women. And at 86 years old, 86, she led a three-year campaign to desegregate Washington, D.C. restaurants. And she won that campaign. Okay, let's get it. Let's keep we we still moving. We still moving. I got a lot. I got a lot for y'all. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It's a twofer. All right. And that's because Women's History Month is bigger than one story. These two white women, all right, two white women, like I said, it sounded like a black history extension, but you know, I'm being inclusive. Um, these two white women organized the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, which was the first major women's rights convention in U.S. history. They were powerful. Okay, that was groundbreaking. And I mentioned them in the same breath as Ida and Mary because I think it's important to hold that type of complexity, right? This is Women's History Month. These movements also existed simultaneously, right? So the NAACP and also the uh the Falls Convention for the Um, you know, the Women's Rights Convention. Um it's all at the same time. So sometimes, you know, there was some tension, but sometimes there was some collaboration, right? That full picture, I think, matters when we think about the history. So um, you know, the foundation of this country's progress, I think, has always been uh or women have always had a hand in that. And they didn't always get the credit, and they often did it without safety, but there's there was always purpose behind it. Okay, so that is, you know, what I consider to be, you know, just like a little brief overlay of the the foundation. Okay. So let's get to the movement. Let's fast forward to the 20th century, right? Civil rights era. Here is where I need to correct something that bothers me. Okay. Um, some of you may feel the same way, some of you may not, but you know, oftentimes when we talk about civil rights, we talk about civil rights. Um it we tend to lead with men, okay? Dr. King, Malcolm X, John Lewis, and I love and honor all of those names, but if you pull back the curtain just a little bit, you know, if you really study this era, you see that women were the engine, okay? Women were the catalyst in a lot of these movements, and uh and it was prevalent throughout this era. So uh before and I know there's one that instantly comes to mind, especially with the civil rights movement. But before I talk about her, Rosa Parks, I need to talk about somebody who came first. And you may and may not have heard of this name. Um, this is one of those stories that history buried, but I think that as so many uh stories that are buried, I think it's so important to bring them back uh to light now more than ever. You know, now that we have all these different advances in technology and things getting covered up and AI, rewriting history, and all this different stuff's going on. So uh Claudette. Uh uh Claudette Colvin, okay, March 2nd, 1955, Montgomery, Alabama. Nine months before Rosa Parks, a 15-year-old girl, black woman, black girl, refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery City bus. She was arrested, handcuffed, and dragged off that same bus. And she quoted the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence to the officers as they took her away at 15 years old. Um, so this story is not told often because um basically what happened was, you know, civil rights leaders, including the NAACP, um is, you know, they made a deliberate decision not to build the bus boycott around her because for one, she was young, for two, she was pregnant. And, you know, I can't, you know, it's a double-edged sword. You think about it, um, and and and it sounds like they were trying to do what was best for the greater good, uh, but they felt that the movement needed someone uh the public would sympathize with without question. Okay, so young, pregnant, while brilliant, you know, they they didn't they didn't choose to to build the uh the boycott around her. They waited for Rosa Parks, essentially, and she sat down and she became the moment that the world remembers. So I want to be clear that this is, I'm not, you know, taking anything away from Rosa Parks. She was extraordinary in her own right, which I'll talk about in a few minutes here. But uh Claudette was first and she deserves to uh to be known for that. So uh she actually went on to be one of the four plaintiffs in the Browder v. Gale, the federal case that ultimately ruled bus segregation unconstitutional in 1956. She won in court. She just didn't get the parade. She's still alive today, by the way. So that's just food for thought, something to think about. Uh so yeah, we'll talk about Rosa Parks so briefly. Uh, December 1st, 1955, Montgomery, Alabama. She sat down, so movement could stand up, and we all know the story there. Um, but some more things about Rosa Parks, she uh she said um, I want to correct the record on her too, though, because the tired uh seamstress who spontaneously refused uh that story is a disservice. You know, Rosa Parks was a trained civil rights activist, right? She just wasn't anybody. Um she attended the Highlander Folk School. Uh she was the secretary of the Montgomery NAACP, and her act was courageous and calculated. She was ready. Um, the difference between her and Claudette um wasn't courage, it was circumstance and strategy. Um, both of them were brave, and both of them deserve their flowers. Um, so next we'll talk about uh Dorothy Height. Here, um sometimes she's called the godmother of the civil rights movement. She led the National Council of Negro Women for four decades. She was present at every major civil rights event, um, the march on Washington, meetings with the president. Um she worked primarily on issues specific to black women, which were often sidelined even within the movement itself. Okay, so she stood on stage in 1963, um, and she was one of the few women there. And um, yeah, she kept showing up anyway. Okay. So yeah, these are just a few names from the movement, uh, from the civil rights movement. Um, you know, it wasn't just one voice, it was many voices, a course, if you will. And among men were women, you know, and a lot of times we forget to highlight that a few uh other names, Gloria, Steinem. Um, so yeah, so that's that's a civil rights. So I didn't I did want to also include another portion, um, not just talk about civil rights. You know, we're coming from Black History Month, and I saw cool, fine, and dandy, but you know, women's history is is so much more than that, right? It it encompasses much more, and I don't want to, you know, put that in a box. So next, uh, we'll talk about um, you know, just different fields, right? Uh, you know, and how, you know, all the different fields that women were in, you know, sometimes they were they were boxed out of, or that it was, it was made a lot harder for them to succeed in those fields. Um, some people will call it patriarchy, some people will, you know, is it's it's different uh names for for why they weren't able to succeed in various ways. But we have uh uh um a few names here that are very, very uh important uh to women's history that I want to go over. So, first we'll start with uh May May C. Jemison, uh 1992. She became the first black woman in space, all right? First black woman in space, but before that, she was a chemical engineer and she served in the Peace Corps as a medical officer in West Africa. And she had her medal degree from Cornell. Um so, you know, she didn't she didn't float on top of that that shuttle by accident, right? She was very smart. She fought her way there with her mind, her discipline, and her excellence. And you gotta think about, you know, that this this time, even in 1992, um, there was still a lot of obstacles and um, you know, some drawbacks for women to to kind of achieve the things that they wanted, that they felt they were um should be able to achieve. All right, so then we talk about uh next uh a few hidden figures, which that that may sound familiar to you because of the 2016 film Hidden Figures. You should definitely go and watch that. Um but I want to talk about the real women, uh Katherine Johnson, uh Dorothy Vaughn, and um Mary Jackson. Uh these black women, mathematicians at NASA literally calculated the trajectories that sent American astronauts into orbit and brought them home safely. John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, specifically requested that Catherine Johnson check the computer calculations before his launch. Right? He trusted her math over the machine, uh, which is interesting uh considering today and our relationship with machines and where it's going. But um, for decades, you know, this country didn't even tell that story, right? They they didn't know about uh Catherine Johnson. So um, you know, that's that's something to think about. Um also the film does a beautiful job honoring her. Um, but I think the real story is even bigger, right? These women were working in a segregated facility, right? They had to use separate bathrooms, coffee pots, like separate everything, and they still showed up and did work that was literally out of this world, like literally. Um, so that's the kind of excellence we're talking about when we think about um women's history. So uh next, I want to bring a name that doesn't get nearly enough recognition outside of science purpose. And um I don't want to gloss over this, but I do uh kind of want to dial in and mention it. Um Henrietta Lax, um black woman from Baltimore, Maryland. So in 1951, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer and treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital. So during her treatment, doctors took samples of her cancer cells without her knowledge and without her consent. Um, Henrietta passed away that same year at just 31 years old. But this is what happened next. Those cells, which scientists would later call HELA cells, um they turned out to be remarkable. Unlike most human cells, they didn't die in the lab, they kept reproducing, and they became one of the most important tools in the history of modern medicine. These cells helped develop polio vaccine. Uh they've been used in cancer research, still, AIDS research, gene mapping, and even early COVID research. It's crazy, right? Um, they've been sent to space. Trillions of these cells have been used in labs across the world for over 70 years. And Henrietta's family didn't even find out for over 20 years. Her husband didn't know, her children didn't know. Um, of course, when they did find out, they received nothing, no compensation, no credit. Just the knowledge that their mother's body had been taken and profited from without permission, which is mind-blowing and crazy to think about. Um, there's a book called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lax by Rebecca Sklut that tells the story in full, right? And um also in 2017, Oprah produced and starred in an HBO film adaptation of it. Uh, it's pretty good. Um, you know, but here's uh the the this this full circle moment, right? Oprah, who we celebrate for building her empire, also used her power to make sure Henrietta's story got told, right? And you know, people feel how they want to feel about Oprah, but that is, you know, what legacy looks like. I think that's true legacy. Um, you know, so she deserved to be known by name, Henrietta Lacks, um, you know, as a woman, as a mother, and someone who whose contribution to science was immeasurable, right? Immeasurable. And, you know, her humanity was ignored for far too long. Um so I do want to wrap up here soon, uh, but I I have a few more names and um, you know, just moments in time, moments in history. The writer in me, the the the the uh um you know, the poet in me uh wants to mention uh Tony Morrison. Uh born in 1931 in Lorraine, Ohio, she became the first black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, highly sought after. That was in 1993. Her novel, Beloved, if you haven't read it, of course, you need to put that on on the list. But it's one of the most profound explorations of trauma, memory, and um black womanhood. Like seriously. Um she once said that she wrote books she wanted to read. So she filled the gap that the literary world refused to fill. So a lot of people know about uh Tona Morrison. A lot of people like her books, and her as a writer um definitely had to put her on the list. Um, Shirley Chisholm, 72. She ran for president of the United States. Okay. A black woman ran for the president of the United States in 1972. Right? She was the first black major party candidate and the first woman to seek the Democratic presidential nomination. Um, she called herself unbought and unbossed. Right. Okay. That don't sound like, you know, some uh black woman right there. Um, of course, she didn't win, but she cracked the door uh that the whole world eventually walked through. Okay. Of course, that door is Kamala Harris. And how can we not mention her uh during you know Women's History Month? January 20, 2021. We all remember she was sworn in as the vice president of the United States, the first woman, the first black American, the first South Asian American, three firsts in one moment, you know, whatever your prop politics are, um, that's history. Um, that's history. So um I do have uh I do want to end with this. And um, you know, as I've talked about all of these great, great women, all these great moments in history, I hope that you picked up some info. I hope that you were inspired at some point, or maybe you want to look more. Into some of these stories that perhaps you hadn't heard about. But, you know, like I said in the beginning, I want to take a step back and really um do some personal, personal reflection here. Um, I think the most powerful thing we can do with women's history is connect the global to personal, right? So like I said earlier, I'm 31. And when I think about the women who shaped me, uh, my mother, my grandmothers, the women in my family and my and my community, right? You know, I see Harriet, I see Katherine Johnson, I see Harrietta Lex, okay, and I'm not saying those names just to be cliche or because they're famous, but it's because they carry the same spirit. You know, um, you know, there are women who worked double shifts and still made sure dinner was on the table. They are the women who gave advice that didn't make sense when I was 16 and saved my life when I was 25. Um, they are the women who prayed when they couldn't control anything else. Right? You know, the same women that uh were overlooked at work, underestimated in relationships, and still chose to show up with grace. Right. Um, and here's what gets me about Henrietta Lacks specifically. She was 31 years old when she died, right? The same age I am right now, and her contribution to the world outlived her by over 70 years and counting. Right? So the women in our lives, the everyday women, their impact is the same kind of thing. We may not always see it in a moment, but it lasts, right? So we talk representation and inspiration, but sometimes the most important representation is in your own living room, right? So um I want to end this with a challenge for y'all. You know, um, I asked this of you right now, wherever you're listening, you know, who's your woman? Who is the woman in your life? Grandmother, mother, aunt, teacher, mentor, friend, right? Who changed the trajectory of your story? I want you to hold that person in your mind right now. And I want you to tell her, you know, not in a post, not with a reshare, but actually tell her, like call her, text her, show up at the door. Tell her that her life mattered and that her sacrifices were not invisible and that you see her. Right? That's Women's History Month to me, is connecting the greats to the ones who raised us. You know, I'll I talk about this a lot in private too. You know, there's a microcosm and a macrocosm. And a lot of times, what happens on a micro level is a direct reflection of what's going on in the macro. Okay, so we don't always have to, you know, idolize and admire these great figures in history and time that we see when the same spirit of those women lives, you know, in the same women that you know and see on a day-to-day basis that are in your life. Like I said, mother, you know, sister, daughter, all these different types of things. So, you know, that's that's my uh that's the episode today, the solo episode. You know, hopefully we I I feel like we covered a lot. I feel like we covered a lot, but you know, uh, I just want to leave y'all with saying that um, you know, history is not uh always what's in the textbooks. You know, it's not always what's in the what's what's in the textbooks. Before we even had textbooks, the way we kept up with our history was completely oral, right? And memory. You had to know your ancestors, sometimes back 10, 20 generations, because it was nothing written. So you just had to know. You know what I mean? And and knowing is the people in your present, right? And the people in the past. So um, yeah. Y'all do that. You know what I'm saying? Shout out to all the brilliant women um, you know, that that's that's um, you know, making it happen today. I want y'all to know that you're seen, you're valued, and you are loved. All right. Smart, shout out to Women's History Month. And uh that's the episode for today, y'all. So, as always, you know where you can get all the updates and information. Go ahead and go to Pops and Son Conversations on Instagram. We got a new logo. We got a new logo. Y'all may have may have noticed that. Shout out to Miss Nikki for that. Um, but uh of course all updates are gonna be on the website as well, Popsand Son Conversations.com. And with that being said, yo, I'm out. Son is out, right? I I I gotta get like Pops. He may have to do the next solo episode. I might be on set or something. But uh, y'all have a good day, and we'll see you next time. Peace.