"WAY UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AIR"

 “WAY UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AIR”

When I recently asked Caroline whom I should write about in Women’s History Month, her first suggestion was Mae Jemison.  I was surprised by that – I had heard of Jemison, but I didn’t know much about her.  After researching her a bit, I see why Caroline suggested her – she is a powerful woman!  She was born in 1956 in Decatur, Alabama, born to a roofer and an elementary school teacher in the town infamous for its KKK activity during that time.  Her birth year was at the start of the civil rights era taking off – Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, Montgomery bus boycott in 1955-56, Emmett Till lynched in 1955.  Her family would become one of the parts of the Great Migration wave – in 1959, they moved to Chicago to get away from the overt, deadly racism of neo-slavery days.

In Chicago, Mae Jemison bloomed out as an outstanding student.  Her uncle got her interested in science, especially astronomy and space.  She always dreamed as a girl of going into space, not to the moon, which happened when she was 10, but to Mars. Her main concern was whether or not the white, male astronaut world would accept a Black woman.  She was intrigued and inspired by “Star Trek,” and, in particular, African-American actress Nichelle Nichols’ portrayal of Lieutenant Uhura helped her to believe that it was possible.   She thought that it was essential that NASA did accept others because if those white males  in space encountered ETS, she would want the ETS to know that there were other humans besides white males.  

She loved all kinds of science and got a scholarship to attend Stanford University at age 16, where she had a double major of chemical engineering and African-American studies.  While she was at Stanford, she was the president of the Black Studies Union.  She actually wanted to study what we now call bio-medical engineering, but such a major did not exist at that time.  One of her professors urged her to go to medical school so that she could learn more about the human body and serve people in  many different ways.  She was accepted to Cornell University’s medical school and graduated from there in 1981.   She worked as a general practitioner for a bit, then signed up for the Peace Corps and worked as medical director for the Corps in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

    When her duty was over, she applied to NASA to its astronaut training program, but it was the same year of the tragic Challenger explosion, and all applications were halted.  She re-applied, and in 1987 was one of 15 applicants out of 2,000 to be accepted into the NASA astronaut program, the first African-American female.  She became a science mission specialist and in 1992 boarded the Endeavor spacecraft to become the first African-American woman in space.  While in space, she performed experiments in space in material science, life science, and the effect of weightlessness on human beings.

    After leaving NASA, she taught at Dartmouth and Cornell and is still on the faculty at Cornell.  She currently lives in Houston, and is  at the helm of the 100 Year Starship, a groundbreaking effort seeking to pioneer transforming breakthrough science and technology to enhance the quality of life on Earth.  For all her talents and skills and interests, she still remembers what is central in life, as noted in this quote from her:  

“When people talk about the space program, they ask me, "Was it the toughest job I ever had; was it the most difficult," and it wasn't. Probably being a Peace Corps doctor was the most difficult job, because I was on call seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and I was responsible for people's lives and their health. I was the person that was there. Period. And it required a very wide range of skills, and learning how to keep my own health together, as well as paying attention to other folks.”  

    Not all of us are Mae Jemison, but we can all live by one of her most famous quotes:  “Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imaginations; never limit others because of your own limited imagination.”