Herstory Revisited

 " Love yourself, appreciate yourself, see the good in you... and respect yourself. "   Betty Shabazz (1934 – 1997), aka Betty X, was an American civil rights advocate. Her husband, Malcolm X, is a much more well-known figure, but actually his wife was a remarkable woman in her own right. Betty Dean Sanders was born on May 28, 1934, to Ollie Mae Sanders and Shelman Sandlin – an unmarried teenage couple. Despite her self-proclaiming Detroit as her place of her birth, records show she actually spent her early life in Georgia. It is generally accepted that her father abused her, and when Betty was about 11 years old, she was taken in by Lorenzo and Helen Malloy, a prominent businessman and his wife. Helen was a founding member of the Housewives League of Detroit, a group of African-American women who organized campaigns to support black-owned businesses and boycott stores that refused to hire black employees. She was also a member of the National Council of Negro Women and t...

 Elizabeth Woodville (c. 1437 – 1492) was queen of England as the spouse of King Edward IV from 1464 until his death in 1483, and future grandmother of Henry VIII. Elizabeth Woodville was born about 1437, at Grafton Regis, Northamptonshire. She was the first child of a scandalous socially unequal marriage between Sir Richard Woodville and Jacquetta of Luxembourg. The Woodvilles, though an old and respectable family, were gentry rather than noble while Elizabeth's mother, in contrast, was the widow of the Duke of Bedford, uncle of King Henry VI of England. However, the scandal soon passed and the family grew to be respected in the realm. Elizabeth Woodville was describe by her contemporaries as “the most beautiful woman in the Island of Britain”with   "heavy-lidded eyes like those of a dragon”, making her a worthy catch despite her questionable heritage. In about 1452, Elizabeth Woodville married Sir John Grey of Groby. She bore him two sons – Thomas and John – before he wa...