Given it is black history month, it feels right to highlight amazing black women who have helped grow the world of science, specifically, plant ecology. Dr. Tanisha Williams is a black, female plant ecologist and botanist. The reason I am choosing to write about her, is because there are not many times the media focuses on women, working women, or black women and Dr. Williams falls under all of those categories which is why she deserves to be highlighted amongst our class. Dr. Williams grew up loving nature and was always exposed to it, especially through her grandmother who kept plants everywhere in her home. This sparked an interest towards plants for Dr. Williams which she later explored during her PhD at the University of Connecticut.
She is passionate about biodiversity and protecting it against climate change caused by humans. Dr. Williams most recently started #BlackBotanistsWeek which is an online movement to promote a community of black individuals who have a love for plants. Her goal is to find people to connect with through this movement and continue promoting diversity in botany. Moreover, it is common for black people to be falsely accused of wrong doings and be targeted for no good reason. This has been experienced by Christian Cooper who was bird watching in Central Park when Amy Cooper, a woman who was walking her dog unleashed, called the cops on Christian after he told her dogs must be leashed in the park and fed her dog a treat. This incident all started with Christian peacefully birdwatching and escalated to a woman accusing the black man of threatening her and her dog’s life while calling the cops on him. It is incidents like these that occur when people like Dr. Williams start movements and promote activities like bird watching for black people so that black people have a safe community to be a part of but also so that society is exposed to what ecologically engaging activities look like. Birdwatching is something not many people have seen others do and being black in today’s day and age unfortunately, makes you an automatic target. So this movement allows society to observe black individuals engaging in such activities and hopefully educates them on how opposite from harmful these activities are.
Ultimately, Dr. Williams has built an amazing community with #BlackBotanistsWeek which allows for minorities such as black people, plant ecology, and women to shine and feel safe.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 