During World War II, José Arturo Castellanos Contreras worked at the Embassy of El Salvador in Switzerland. He drew up official-looking papers to give Jewish families in Occupied Europe the rights of Salvadoran citizens so they could avoid the death camps. Castellanos was born in 1893. His family was military, and he reached the rank […]
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Dear Mills College, I’m sad to see you close after 170 years. Attending classes on your campus with a diverse group of women from all over the world my first year of college was important in how I see the world and how I see myself. I’ve written four drafts of a farewell to you, […]
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What does the color and content of currency say about a country? What are the symbols we hold most dear? Who are our heroes? If we look at the banknotes of the United States, we see former presidents; Washington and Jefferson and founders like Franklin and Hamilton. All male, all Caucasian, all long gone. By […]
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Can you remember when the last Black Governor of California served? I couldn’t and looked it up. It was over 150 years ago. In 1845-1846, the last Mexican governor of southern Alta California was Pío Pico. He was born in 1801 at the San Gabriel Mission in California. He was and is a famous Californio, […]
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Harriet Tubman did wonderful work in the Underground Railroad, but this is not a story about her. This is an earlier account of an Underground Railroad, that went from South Carolina to Florida in the late 1600s and into the 1700s. At that point, the Spanish still owned Florida. They wanted to increase their population […]
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In the war for independence from the Spanish, Simon Bolívar recruited a solider of African descent for his bravery and skill with the lance, Pedro Camejo. Camejo was born in San Juan de Payara, Venezuela, in 1790. He fought with the rebels beginning in 1818 and reached the rank of lieutenant. He met his untimely […]
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