Dr. Mae Jemison #1327
$ 10.00
Caption from poster__
Dr. Mae Jemison
Mae Jemison became the first African American woman
astronaut in 1987. She was a physician who also spent
time with the Peace Corp. After Mae Jemison left NASA's
space program, she joined the staff of a medical school,
and also runs her own technology firm.
Astronaut Mae Jemison became the first African-American woman to enter space when she served on the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavor in September 1992. Jemison's life, however, is also full of terrestrial accomplishments. A high school graduate at the age of 16, she attended Stanford University on a scholarship, graduating with a B.S. degree in chemical engineering and having fulfilled the requirements for an A.B. in African and Afro-American Studies. After graduating from medical school (Cornell University, 1981), Jemison joined the Peace Corps, serving as its area medical officer from 1983 to 1985 in the West African countries of Sierra Leone and Liberia. After serving in NASA from 1987 to 1993, Jemison founded The Jemison Group, Inc., which developed ALAFIYA, a satellite-based telecommunications systems intended to improve health care delivery in developing nations. She also was a professor in the Environmental Studies Program at Dartmouth College, where she directed the Jemison Institute for Advancing Technology in Developing Countries. When I'm asked about the relevance to Black people of what I do, I take that as an affront. It presupposes that Black people havenever been involved in exploring the heavens, but this is not so. Ancient African empires -- Mali, Songhai, Egypt -- had scientists, astronomers. The fact is that space and its resources belong to all of us, not to any one group.
