It's Wednesday, which means it's True Stories day on OZY. I'm a sucker for powerful first-person and historical accounts of people, times and events, often overlooked or underappreciated. Today, we go from a heart-rending account of losing a loved one in a house fire, to Harriet Tubman's little-known other legacy — opening what some historians believe was the first nursing home for aging African Americans.
| Black families have taken care of their aging relatives alone for generations. But when tragedy strikes? They've had to deal with that too. My phone rang at about 6:30 in the morning. It was my uncle. I was at the Omni Hotel in Atlanta, getting ready for the biggest weekend of my year: the Celebration Bowl. He told me there was a house fire, and that my mom had passed away. He didn't have a lot of details and explained that my dad was alive — but that he’d been burned. Someone had pulled him out. He told me that my mom had gotten out, but had gone back in and had been trapped inside. | READ NOW |
| |
| | After her Underground Railroad days, Tubman never stopped trying to help others. In 1911, Harriet Tubman moved into a home she had never imagined she would need herself: the Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Negroes. The famed abolitionist had created the haven to lift up the poor and aging in her community. She hadn’t necessarily planned to spend her own final years there. But after a lifetime of seizures, headaches and narcoleptic attacks as a result of a childhood head trauma, she’d become increasingly frail at nearly 90 years of age. Tubman, who was born into slavery, is famous for guiding hundreds of slaves to safer ground through the Underground Railroad in the 1800s following her own escape from bondage. But many of her numerous post-Civil War accomplishments to fight for the poor and vulnerable remain obscured. In addition to being an outspoken suffragist and co-founder of the NACW — the National Association of Colored Women — Tubman opened what some historians say was the first nursing home for aging Black people. | READ NOW |
| |
|
| | | The Münster rebellion promoted community property, egalitarianism and polygamy, and its legacy is still with us. |
| | Losing your legs to a land mine might cool anyone's ardor for war. Not in this case. |
| | OZY’s Eugene S. Robinson addresses queries from the love-weary in “Sex With Eugene.” |
| | Aly Fuentes' most recent move was part of a national program model that offers safe, short-term living arrangements for young people at risk of homelessness. |
| | More than any other human, this man turned rats from pests into friends. |
|
| | |
|