Page 51 - BusinessWest October 28, 2024

those bodies. And sometimes, there were no bodies to retrieve. It’s not just black history — this is American history.”
At the funeral ceremony, participants read names of many of these unburied individuals, and members of a local theater group read monologues drawn from Whitaker’s historical research. The account of a father forced to choose to die along with his young son or watch the boy drown is especially wrenching.
“In this country, no one really, genuinely talks about the people who were lynched,” Whitaker says in the film. Which is why she produced it — to give those people a voice, get people talking about some too- recent history, and, by grappling with that reality, just maybe start the process of healing.
“I decided to have a funeral for the over 4,000 African-Americans who were lynched in the United States to close that chapter and move forward. America has to do the same thing to help heal this country. You’ll get some pushback from people: ‘why do you want to stir that up?’ But it hasn’t been stirred enough. People were saying, ‘ah, that’s so depressing.’ I say, well, if you think this depressing, try hanging from a tree.”
She then asks, “what can I do? I can’t bring them back, but I can give them a prayer.” For doing so much more, Whitaker is an uncommonly powerful Woman of Impact.
Pain and Promise
As she spoke with BusinessWest in her Amherst home about her multi-faceted life and career, virtually every wall in every room was covered with her paintings — some traditional in medium, some incorporating mixed media, including fabrics and, in a few cases, unprocessed cotton.
“Cotton has this fluffy appearance to it, but just take
your hand and squeeze right there,” she said. “Just squeeze. You feel the seeds? Once Eli Whitney got the seeds out, they had more uses for cotton.”
And the slaves who picked it, as the cotton gin essentially rejuvenated the plantation slavery industry. “The thing is, when you go to pick this, you’ve got to
be careful because this is like knives,” she continued, pointing out the sharp wall surrounding the fluffy cotton. “You learn early how to avoid that.”
Rembert, who passed away in 2021, knew that well; he grew up picking cotton on a plantation, and he understood the dark history of the crop in the South.
Whitaker’s path was somewhat different; the seventh child of Eddie and Charlie Mae Jackson from Waycross, Ga., she attended Clark Atlanta University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree with honors and then earning a public health degree at Yale University School of Medicine and undergoing advanced medical training in internal medicine and nephrology at Emory University School of Medicine, where she was the only Black woman in her class.
After some years on the West Coast, she moved
to the Pioneer Valley when her husband was hired
at UMass Amherst as a professor of Mathematics. For a decade, she worked at Springfield Southwest Community Health Center, where, in addition to bettering and saving lives, she designed a children’s coloring book advising against drugs, created a community-health newsletter, and produced an imaginative ‘puppet opera’ for young people titled “Monsters Among Us.” In 2006, she went into private practice.
But nephrology wasn’t her only interest; to address her concerns about the academic standing of African- American children in Amherst schools, she established the Academic Initiative for Maximum Success, which resulted in a dramatic increase of Black students in AP
“
When I look
back and I think of all these things, and the ripple effect of it all, I’m please”d with that.
Womeno
IMPAC
A PROGRAM OF BUSINESSWES
WOMAN OF IMPACT? THAT’S AN UNDERSTATEMENT.
CONGRATULATIONS TO DR. SHIRLEY JACKSON WHITAKER
With love and admiration from Khama, Yves, Lisa, Cinda, Albert, Kathleen & Amelia.
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MPACT
Shirleywhitaker.com Ashes2ashes4ever.com BornBlackandLucky.com
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