Spotlight Women: Elizabeth Warren - US Senator

Senator Elizabeth Warren

I have to say that over the last two years I have found a formidable role-model. I can see who I am through the words and actions of Elizabeth Warren. Many would say, "No, you should see yourself in women like Maxine Waters!" I do see myself in Maxine Waters, too. I find that she speaks for people who look like her. She speaks for the Black woman and woman in general. What I haven't been able to see in her, thus far, is the fight for people who don't look like her. That's when you know that your caring comes from a place outside the whelm of differences and reside in a place of obscurity. Warren has a love for all who suffer and cry out in need of a leader, and she gives them exactly what they need. This blog will be a videography of her finest speeches, in my opinion. Senate hearings and stories and why they have made a profound impact on my life as an activist, advocate and leader. I want you to see Elizabeth Warren through my eyes. 

Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1948, she was the first person to graduate college in her family. Her father worked as a maintenance man at the local high school. Her mother worked at Sears in the catalog department, because her father had a heart-attack. She spent most of her childhood at the lower part of the middle class, but managed to graduate from Rutger Law School, while raising a child. She married her college sweetheart in 1970, and began doing what women do as a wife. Except she had drive, and wanted so much more. The first video I will share, is an answer from God, when she was a young mother striving to keep her job as a teacher.

She told this story, to help explain why childcare is vital to young working women. She was at a conference for Healthcare Action in 2018. She helped the women listening understand that she can understand their struggles, because she struggled, too, and won. Some people will give up, but with honest fervor and zeal, Elizabeth Warren told them the story of Abraham and the lamb in the bush. It lets me know that when God has a call on your life, there will always be an Aunt Bea, or in my case an Aunt Beverly. Someone who will answer your prayers at the very moment you need it. Every woman who knows God, has had one of these moments. It's all falling apart and then...Here comes God working his magic. Let me know Elizabeth Warren is "blessed and highly favored".

In 2016, Wells Fargo begins a tumultuous ending. The bank had been creating fake accounts to build their worth as a bank. The way it worked is that entry-level employees in the banks would create fake accounts without customers knowing. These accounts weren't used for anything, but to build the banks reputation of having more accounts than other banks and being ranked higher among those in the same industry. But, that is against the law and they were fined 185 million dollars by the Securities and Exchange Committee. There was 5,300 lower-level employees fired, the CEO John Stumpf resigned, the creator of the scam Carrie Tolstedt also stepped down. Not before Stumpf went before Senator Elizabeth Warren, and the Senate Finance Committee. Here just one of the exchanges between Stumpf and Warren.

This is actually the first time I'd seen her. This exchange appeared on my Facebook page and I asked myself, "Who is this woman, telling this White man he needs to be fired?" Because he is responsible for the sun rising that morning, and he was so self-assured that he found it relevant to answer her. Well, she saw no relevance in his response, at all, and finished him off in one "fell swoop". It was incredible, and I think her oral diction is impeccable. I strive to be so crystal clear, when I tell people who are wrong that they are just that, and explain in clear terms where they fall short. Because of that, however, I don't get many people willing to face me in a conversation, meeting or an impromptu conversation. I have facts, I have opinions, I have sarcasm and bible quotes, I have it all and am ready for you. I wished I was Elizabeth Warren, and bad men just had to sit and listen to me tell them off. That would be an ideal place for me.

In a speech that held precedent on the Senate floor, she blasted Jeff Sessions. He was Trump's nominee for Attorney General. Warren opposed his nomination, and was ready to read a letter from Coretta Scott-King wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee. At the time, it was 1968, and Sessions' was being considered for a Federal Judge Appointment. He had done and said some pretty racist things during the Civil Rights Movement. As Trump's "watch dog", she held the floor overnight to block Trump's progress. When she began to read the letter, Republican leaders cut her off and shut her down. She then went to her office, and took to Facebook "Live". She read the letter in its entirety to those of us who were watching. "She persisted", even if she didn't get to finish, she knew they were afraid of what she had to say. She had won...

I am a woman. I love a man, and one day I hope to be someone's mother. That is not everything that I am, or will be. I have hope, dreams and aspirations a part from those things. Although her first marriage failed, and she married again, in 1980. Even that is a symbol of telling us that we always don't get it right, but there is a possibility for a second chance. A woman like Elizabeth Warren shows me that it can be done. She tells her story and everyone else's story with the grace that proves that fighting isn't ever in vain. People are watching, and could learn from your experiences, lessons and understanding. I like the way she doesn't "mind her own business", and the way she minds the business of America. She tells it like it is, and with her Feminist ideas and conjecture, she is changing the face of womanhood in the world. I want to be that way. Her story is our story, her life is our life and we are all better, because she lived the life she did.

Elizabeth Warren's website and social media pages:

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=W000817

https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethWarren/

https://twitter.com/SenWarren

https://www.instagram.com/elizabethwarrenma/

Spotlight Women: Felicia McGhee

Dr. Felicia McGhee

I graduated with Dr. McGhee in 1988. Back then, we were on two separate roads, and destinations. I was always feisty and ready to "get down". Felicia was conservative, fun and disciplined. She was in the marching band, had tons of friends and was always on the honor roll. Even then, she was an over achiever. Striving in the steps of her parents, two educators in the city of Pontiac, she tried her best to do well academically.  They had instilled in her the character and zeal to succeed and be a whoever she wanted to be, and she took it very seriously. It is their influence that helped her become the woman she is today, and that is a true testament of their commitment to education. Felicia has a Bachelor's in Communication from the University of Michigan, a Master's in Public Administration and a Doctorate of Philosophy, with a concentration in Communication and Information Science, from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

Felicia's parents were not only educators in Pontiac but had become administrators in the system. They moved up from the ranks of teachers, to principals of the local high schools. They served the school district during the same years and retired together and moved to Alabama. Her mother, Essie McGhee, was the head principal at Pontiac Northern (currently the only high school in Pontiac, now known as Pontiac High), and was the first black female of a high school in Pontiac, which is now the only high school in Pontiac. Her father, Thomas McGhee, was the athletics director at the time we attended. He would later become an assistant principal at Central. Both her parents have higher degrees. Her mother, like Felicia, has a doctorate degree.

After graduating from the University of Michigan, Felicia wanted to become a television news reporter.  Her first on-air job was at WQBH radio station in Detroit. While working at the radio station, she decided to take a leap of faith.  She decided she was going to move to Montgomery without a job. She went to her parents and told them that she was moving to Alabama. While there, she would pursue a non-existing news career and sell shoes, until she got her big break. Two weeks before the big move, the news director at the ABC affiliate in Montgomery called her and Felicia got her big break!  She was offered the job as a meteorologist She knew absolutely nothing about meteorology, but Felicia convinced the woman on the phone that she was able to do the job. She went to the Pontiac library and studied all about meteorology. One the first of her job as a meteorologist the reporter quit, so she became a reporter and never had to do the weather! That's where her career took off, with one of several happenstances that occurred.

 After three years she left that position, and went to Mississippi for a while to work at the ABC affiliate there, WTOK. There she worked as a morning show anchor. She realized that she was not a morning person, and didn’t like waking up at 2:30am to go to work. She then went to the ABC affiliate in Chattanooga, WTVC.  She began teaching at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 1999.  She received her master's while teaching at the University of Tennessee- Chattanooga. In the midst of all of these moves and career highs and lows, she got engaged. She married and has one child, a boy named Thomas. Although, her marriage ended, she had the joy of being a mother and the life-long gift of Thomas.

When Thomas turned two, he had his immunizations for school. Shortly after getting those shots, he began having seizures. After one seizure, Thomas could not speak at all. With nothing left to do, they learned sign language in order to communicate. One day, while at school, his teacher let him out on a cold day. Despite Felicia's stark warning that her son was not to be allowed to go outside if the temperature dropped below 40 degrees.  That December, the teacher forgot about this directive and let him go outside when it was 19 degrees. As a result, Thomas had a seizure, but something extraordinary happened, when he came to he was speaking in full sentences, again. Lovingly, Felicia admits that he hasn't stopped talking since that day.

That tough tragedy is only one of three she had to endure in her lifetime. She not only had to deal with Thomas' seizures, but other life changing tragedies. In 2011, she lost her younger brother, Thomas Jr. in an automobile accident. The following year, she lost her life-long best friend, Natalie Lyon. Dealing with the grief, she began to evaluate her marriage, career and how she saw life, and she made some hard choices. Natalie is pictured in the collage below with the U of M frame. Thomas Jr. is pictured in the, "McGhee Family" collage above, photographed with Felicia, on the upper left side.

As an instructor and anchorwoman, she was always sought after for the position. Not trusting her worth, she would question her supervisor's seriousness. She hasn't paid for school since her undergraduate degree, because she always took a chance on who and what she was. Twice she was challenged to make a list of demands, and she made a list. She thought up the most astronomical demands she could think of. To get her doctoral degree she had to drive an hour and 45 minutes one way, so she asked for gas money. She wanted a three-year sabbatical with pay, so she could go to school. Also, on that list she also asked for free daycare for Thomas and a hefty bonus. She got everything, but the free daycare! She created yet another list to acquire her most recent position of department head (the first black female of an academic unit) at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

This week, is Felicia's first week as head of the Communication Department at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. She has been there her entire teaching career and is excelling in her field. Since retiring from the media, she has done a documentary on the desegregation of the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, and plans to write a book soon. It will focus on how the media framing of Black men in shootings by the police. It's been all worth it. The chances she took, the driving an hour and forty-five minutes twice a day to school, leaving Thomas in the care of strangers at six in the morning, the guilt, the tragedy, the pain and divine circumstances.

All these things working together to create who she is, today. God has always done mighty things in her life, even when she had to make hard choices. She spends her days in the classroom, now, and not the newsroom. I think she is comfortable in both. When she makes her first appearance in the classroom, she likes to sit in the back of the room, just to see how surprised the students the students are when they find out she is the professor.

For some reason the students just assume that the class will be taught by an older white male.   Some are surprised that she is a black woman. They are also surprised that she is a middle-aged woman, who doesn't look middle aged, but exudes the knowledge and abilities of a person much older. In high school she exuded the same wealth. Her students are blessed to have a seasoned newswoman to lead them towards their own goals and aspirations. Every lesson that she has learned she can give to them. She can show them how success isn't just what you do, but how deep your faith and words can carry you. This is the truth of a real teacher. Use everything in you, to make you who you want to be.

You can catch up Felicia on her Facebook page:

 https://www.facebook.com/fmhilt13

Or view her professional profile at:

https://www.utc.edu/communication/profiles/bxd718.php

Student success story:
https://youtu.be/llZXPks6A44