We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge

She later was a plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against Newsweek for sexual discrimination. She worked there as a mail girl but quit because she wanted to write. She attended Beverly Hills High School and dreamed of being the next Dorothy Parker, but a teacher inspired her to pursue a career in journalism and she graduated from Wellesley College in 1962 with a degree in political science.Īfter an internship at the White House, she applied for a job writing for Newsweek, but was informed that women were only allowed to be researchers, secretaries, and other support staff. (Her sister Hallie is a journalist and crime novelist, and sisters Delia and Amy are screenwriters.) Nora was named after the main character in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Of course, you may have read one (or more) of her books, or be familiar with her through one of the many interesting people she was associated with - her sister Delia, her ex-husband Carl Bernstein, her playwright parents, or any number of Hollywood folks who worked with her and were her friends.īorn in New York City on to playwrights and screenwriters Phoebe and Henry Ephron, Nora and her three sisters grew up in Beverly Hills, California. You may know who Nora Ephron was because of her movies - most likely her unofficial “trilogy” of When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and You’ve Got Mail, but perhaps also Bewitched or Julie and Julia.

She sat on the board and practiced medicine at the Brooklyn. From 1870 to 1895, she ran her own practice in Brooklyn and co-founded the Brooklyn Women's Homeopathic Hospital and Dispensary. She was the first Black female doctor in New York State and the third Black female doctor in the US. She was the daughter of one of Weeksville's landowners-her father, Sylvanus Smith, was a pig farmer and a relatively wealthy member of the community. Of the many accomplished people connected to the community, one was Dr. As Weeksville expanded throughout the nineteenth century, it became a destination for people escaping slavery as well as a bedrock for a burgeoning Black middle class. Black landholders sold smaller lots to other Black people, hoping to give Black males enough land to qualify to vote in New York State elections and thus be able to steer the destinies of Black people in Kings County.

Weeksville was a space explicitly dedicated to Black political power and self-sufficiency. Interview Beyond the Talented Tenth, an Essay byīefore I became a writer, I worked for many years at the Weeksville Heritage Center, which is a museum in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, dedicated to the history of the free Black community founded in central Brooklyn in 1838.

We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge