Posts Tagged obituaries

By Jos Truitt • 9 years ago

Guest post: From obits to statues to traffic circles, whither the women?

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Soraya Chemaly. Soraya is a media critic and activist whose work focuses on women’s rights, free speech and the role of gender in politics, religion and popular culture.

Last week, irked after counting up The New York Time’s last 66 obits and finding that only seven were of women, poet Lynn Melnick tweeted the count, pointing out the imbalance to @NYTimesObituary. @NYTimesObituary, a parody account, responded with deadpan explanations, such as “After careful consideration, we believe that women have a tendency of dying less often.”  Their conversation continued the next morning, which is when I joined them, totally taken in, to ask how “notable,” and “significant” were defined. Despite repeating some ...

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Soraya Chemaly. Soraya is a media critic and activist whose work focuses on women’s rights, free speech and the role of gender in politics, religion and popular culture.

Last week, irked ...
By Chloe Angyal • 12 years ago

Vale Una Mulzac, radical bibliophile

The weekend Times published an obituary of Una Mulzac, founder of Liberation Bookstore, the Harlem bookstore that became a well-known and well-loved for selling books about African American identity and racial justice.

Mulzac opened the store in 1967 after returning from Guyana, where she participated in that country’s struggle for independence from Great Britain. It became a landmark, and closed in 2007, when Ms. Mulzac’s health deteriorated and she could no longer run it. Via the Times:

Her bookstore, born at a time when Harlem was ravaged by crime and heroin, became a neighborhood landmark like the Apollo or Sylvia’s restaurant and endured into the era of Starbucks and Old Navy. People came from all over Harlem and beyond to buy ...

The weekend Times published an obituary of Una Mulzac, founder of Liberation Bookstore, the Harlem bookstore that became a well-known and well-loved for selling books about African American identity and racial justice.

Mulzac opened the store in ...
By Katie Halper • 12 years ago

The Death of Martina Davis-Correia: Mourn AND organize

Earlier today I wrote about the Philadelphia DA’s decision not to seek the death penalty for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Preceding this good news was the tragic news of the death of another death penalty abolition organizer, the utterly amazing Martina Davis-Correia, who fought tirelessly and with grace and dignity against for not only her brother Troy Davis, but for all victims of the prison-industrial complex. In a heartbreaking miscarriage of justice, Davis was executed in September by the state of Georgia, despite undeniable evidence of not just police and judicial misconduct, but his innocence. The evidence was so compelling and Troy’s death sentence was so abominable, that his international campaign enlisted ...

Earlier today I wrote about the Philadelphia DA’s decision not to seek the death penalty for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Preceding this good news was the tragic news of the death of another death penalty abolition ...
By Jos Truitt • 12 years ago

The inventor, the activist, and the activist-scholar

Three brilliant men who shaped the world died yesterday.

Steve Jobs is the name everyone knows. It’s hard to overstate the impact on our lives of this man most of us have never met. I’ve barely spent a waking moment away from an Apple product since I learned of his death yesterday. Listening to my Ipod, working on my computer – even when I was in the kitchen my housemate was at the table on her Mac laptop. Jobs’ work enabled new forms of communication like, oh, this blog.

Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth may be less well known to white America. He was a life long civil rights activist, leading many actions that played a vital role in ending Jim Crow. And ...

Three brilliant men who shaped the world died yesterday.

Steve Jobs is the name everyone knows. It’s hard to overstate the impact on our lives of this man most of us have never met. I’ve barely spent a ...
By Chloe Angyal • 12 years ago

Dr. Bernadine P. Healy, women’s health advocate and first woman to head NIH, dies

A few days ago, the New York Times ran an extended obituary of Dr. Bernadine P. Healy, the first woman to helm the National Institutes of Health. Healy died of brain cancer last week, at the age of 67.

Among her most notable achievements, the obit noted, one was often overlooked, and that was her role in redefining how Americans think about heart disease. The Times described Healy’s “relentless attack” on the idea that heart attacks were solely “men’s problems”:

Heart disease was by far the leading killer of American women, who accounted for nearly 40 percent of its victims. Women’s groups had long sought a greater focus on women’s coronary health, cancers and the role of hormonal changes and therapy.

Dr. ...

A few days ago, the New York Times ran an extended obituary of Dr. Bernadine P. Healy, the first woman to helm the National Institutes of Health. Healy died of brain cancer last week, at the ...