“That They Lived: African Americans Who Changed the World” features Riley’s grandson, Caleb, and Lola photographed in timeless black and white, dressed as important individuals such as business owners, educators, civil rights leaders, and artists, alongside detailed biographies that begin with the figures as young children who had the same ambitions, fears, strengths, and obstacles facing them that readers today may still experience. The goal? To teach children on the cusp of puberty that they could be anything they aspired to be, that every famous person was once a child who, in some cases, overcame great obstacles to achieve. Rochelle reached out to Lola’s mom, Cristi Smith-Jones, and asked to pair her writing with Smith-Jones’s incredible photographs for a book. She was so proud to see this little girl so powerfully honor the struggle and achievement of women several decades her senior.
Rochelle riley detroit free press series#
In February 2017, Rochelle Riley was reading Twitter posts and came across a series of black-and-white photos of four-year-old Lola dressed up as different African American women who had made history. The journey to this unlikely outcome is an engrossing tale of outside forces that shape racial and cultural identity, the importance of mentorship and friendship, and the lasting impact of an unstable and often heartbreaking family dynamic. Like the plum tree that blooms even during dark and dreary times, Wilson overcame his childhood challenges and later, his health issues, to achieve distinction in medicine, higher education and global health research.
Having developed a veneer of invulnerability as a child, he kept these medical diagnoses a secret until now. His adult life as a physician was ironically beset with significant health challenges, including diagnoses of cardiomyopathy that rendered him uninsurable, a potentially blinding eye disease and cancer that at first was thought to be terminal. Under the guidance of his high school English teacher, Wilson turned his life around and obtained an MD from Harvard Medical School. He was often forced to play the role of caregiver to his younger sister, and together they grew to depend on each other for support until their teenage years. Roy Wilson’s childhood in Japan was marked by parental absence, sexual abuse, extended periods as a runaway, physical confrontations and frequent moves. Through this inspiring and deeply personal story of struggle and success, Wilson shares insights gleaned through his life experiences, many of which helped others reach their highest potential as students, faculty, physicians and people.īorn to a Japanese mother and Black father, much of M. His accomplishments include the presidencies of four universities, dean of two medical schools and deputy director of one of the National Institutes of Health’s 27 Centers and Institutes. Roy Wilson forged an extraordinary life of accomplishment and acclaim.
From a childhood marked by loneliness and want, M.
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