a day ago
She wanted to meet women. Instead, she cemented herself in D.C. history.
It started as a sheet of paper in 1993.
Before one of her usual soirees at Blue Penguin, a lesbian-friendly restaurant and club on Capitol Hill, Sheila Alexander-Reid printed 50 copies of a pamphlet, folded multiple times. Inside was an Elle magazine article about how Black women died at higher rates from breast cancer compared with White women. The disparity shocked Alexander-Reid, then a 33-year-old senior account executive for Washington City Paper, and she thought other Black women attending the party needed to know about it.
