Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler was the first African American woman to earn an MD in this country, and she did it in 1864. She went south with her knowledge, to take care of recently freed people, and afterwards she spent her life writing and educating people about their bodies. One of her passions, evident in the foreword of her book, was teaching biology and medicine to women. I’m paraphrasing, but her argument is essentially that even though it is possible to produce babies and raise them healthily to adulthood without knowing anything, it is better for everyone if women do know a few things. It’s simple, and obviously true to most of us today, but in her day, this might have been read as revolutionary. Dr. Crumpler is an example of the kind of courage we can all use, then and now. Stand up for the truth. Persevere.