DID YOU KNOW:
People have had their parental rights terminated, been denied housing and have even been arrested for behavior related to their epilepsy.
Visit the Jeanne A. Carpenter Legal Defense Fund.
Also check out:
» Speak Up, Speak Out – Advocacy Network
»Americans with Disabilities Act
WE ALL KNOW FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH, BUT CHECK THIS OUT!
February is Black History Month, a time to commemorate African-Americans who have changed the world. One of the most famous and revered women in history was Harriet Tubman, an African-American abolitionist.
Tubman was born into slavery in 1820 in Dorchester County, Maryland. She also suffered from epilepsy brought on when an angry slave owner struck her on the head as she tried to defend a fellow slave. The injury caused disabling seizures, which occurred throughout the rest of her life.
Her epilepsy did not prevent her from dedicating her life to freedom and civil rights. In 1849, Tubman escaped captivity and fled to Philadelphia, where she worked as a maid and joined a local abolitionist group. Over a ten-year period she made 19 trips into the South, rescuing more than three hundred slaves through the Underground Railroad, an organized network of antislavery activists and safe houses.
During the Civil War, Tubman served as a nurse, cook and scout for the Union army, mainly in South Carolina. She took part in a military campaign resulting in the rescue of nearly 800 slaves. Tubman later advocated for women’s rights during the women’s suffrage movement.
Harriet Tubman’s courage was recognized widely by prominent leaders in the abolitionist movement. Frederick Douglass said, "Excepting John Brown … I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than Harriet Tubman." John Brown, who conferred with Tubman about his plans to raid Harper’s Ferry, once referred to Tubman as “one of the bravest persons on this continent." She died in 1913, around the age of 93.
