MWIP

February is here and is bringing with it some fantastic celebratory days. Most recognized for Valentine’s Day, February remind all of us how precious love is and allow us time to stop and recognize it.

It’s a much needed time out from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Women are tickled pink with fantastic dinners, beds of roses, chocolates and poetry – ah! The sound of love is a fantastic thing.

February signifies a month of remembrance for me as it is Black History Month. As an African American Entrepreneur, I am humbled by those who came before me and paved the way for an African American woman to live a dream and help others make their dreams come true.

I want to spend some time this month honoring those who had the audacity and tenacity to dream and I encourage everyone to do so. No matter the race, slavery changed America and shaped a nation.

African Americans didn’t do it alone, there are many notable people who helped us and continue to help us break down barriers. As I see it, When you're pushed to the wall you have a choice to make. You can remain where you are and hope the wall doesn't collapse on you. But in just standing, there is no progress and you ultimately will find yourself falling into frustration and despair and giving up. Alternatively, you can choose you use the momentum of being pushed up against the wall to your favor and use it as a spring board to get over the wall.

What’s holding you back? Fear, rejection, voices of those telling you “it won’t work”? Get over it and get over the wall! There are greener pastures waiting for you.

Notable Women – The Fight for Freedom…

In 1656, Elizabeth Key, whose mother was a slave and father was a white planter, sued for her freedom, claiming her father's free status and her baptism as grounds -- and the courts upheld her claim

Lucy Ann Delaney, born Lucy Berry (c. 1830 – after 1891), was an African-American author, former slave, and activist, notable for her 1891 narrative From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom. This is the only first-person account of a "freedom suit" and one of the few post-Emancipation published slave narratives.

Polly Berry, also known as Polly Crockett and Polly Wash (b. ca. 1818 – d. ca. 1870–1880), was an enslaved African American woman who on October 3, 1839 filed a freedom suit in St. Louis, Missouri, which she won in 1843 based on having been held illegally as a slave for an extended period of time in the free state of Illinois. In 1842 Berry sued for the freedom of her daughter Lucy Ann Berry, based on partus (the child is born into the status of the mother), which she won in 1844 in a case argued by Edward Bates, the future US Attorney General under President Abraham Lincoln.