She Can Bring Us Home

"Long before it became the slogan of the Obama campaign, Dr. Dorothy Ferebee (1898-1980) lived by the motto "Yes, We Can". An African American elite descended from lawyers, journalists, politicians, and possibly a white governor of Virginia, Ferebee was an obstetrician and civil rights activist from Washington, D.C. She was articulate, attractive, and effective as well as relentlessly self-promoting and tragically flawed. At a time when African Americans faced Jim Crow segregation, menial job opportunities and lynch mobs, Dorothy Ferebee advised presidents on civil rights and assisted forei...