On JoAnne A. Epps, and the health impacts of racism and sexism

Dealing with death is never easy.

But the recent loss of two pioneering Black female leaders ― acting Temple University president JoAnne A. Epps at 72 and acting New Jersey Gov. Sheila Oliver at 71 — hit me especially hard.

Part of the reason is that these women were trailblazers who died at the apex of their careers. No sooner had Epps and Oliver finished climbing the proverbial crystal stair that Langston Hughes wrote about, they were gone.

The way I was dragging around the house on the day Epps died, you’d think I had known her personally. Instead, I had merely followed Epps’ historic journey from afar after she was named acting president of the school in April. I admired the former law school dean’s willingness to delay her plans to retire from administrative work and focus on teaching to step in to help the university following the abrupt resignation of its first African American president, Jason Wingard. She took ill during the memorial service for the renowned historian Charles L. Blockson last week and died hours later.

It is a lot to process.

I was in the midst of writing this column when I learned about another well-respected Black female college president who also had beaten the odds and made it to the top, only to die days after Epps. Orinthia T. Montague, who was named president of Volunteer State Community College in Tennessee in 2021, died Sept. 22 at age 56.

Then we have Lt. Gov. Oliver, who died serving as acting governor while Gov. Phil Murphy vacationed in Italy. No Black woman has ever been elected governor of any state, yet this one made it to the top job (even if it was only as an understudy). The lieutenant governor also made history when she became the first African American woman to win a statewide election in the Garden State and was later named speaker of the General Assembly.

The deaths of these incredible women when they were at the pinnacle of their careers have me thinking about the obstacles Black women face throughout their lives, and the impact they have on our health.

I’m in awe of these three women.

It’s now well-established that racism has a negative impact on a person’s physical health. It makes sense: Research shows that health-care providers often hold biases against marginalized populations, which can lead to disparities in treatment. What’s more, studies have found that the actual experience of racism can have a direct impact on health by raising stress hormones, which, if chronic, can have toxic effects on organs and other body systems.

There’s even a name for what it’s like to constantly have to cope with the stress of living in a racist society — weathering. Arline T. Geronimus, author of Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society, coined the term, which describes the impact systemic oppression has on people’s health. So it should be no surprise that, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black Americans’ life expectancy is four years lower than that of white Americans.

For context on this issue, I turned to University of Pennsylvania professor Walter Palmer. “No other group in America has suffered the way that African Americans have,” he told me.

And yes, Palmer said he believes racism can have deeply negative effects on a person’s health, to the point where he has launched a campaign to get the United States to declare racism a national public health crisis. Living with racism for 400 years has surely had a “profound impact” on Black people’s health, he said.

» READ MORE: From Cheltenham to Temple and all stops in between, JoAnne A. Epps made people feel ‘special, important, and seen’

But Epps, Montague, and Oliver were not only Black. They were also female, which carries a whole other set of issues.

A growing body of research is also finding that gender inequality — when played out in the mostly male upper hierarchies of companies, institutions, and governmental bodies (including college campuses and state legislatures) — also has negative impacts on our health. Namely, the more sexism women are exposed to at work or at home, the more likely they are to have chronic conditions and rate their health poorly.

None of us can know for certain if any of this was a factor in the untimely deaths of these three accomplished women. But it doesn’t take a researcher to surmise that all of them likely had to endure all kinds of sexism and racism to get as far as they did. Because of their race and sex, they had to work harder and be better just to be considered equal to their peers. Who knows what heights they might have achieved had they not been born both Black and female?

“Many men historically have held a view that women don’t have the ability to lead, that women somehow don’t have the same level of intellect that men have,” Oliver told the Star-Ledger in 2010. “If there is any tension, I think the tension could be described in those terms.”

I’m in awe of these three women, especially when I consider that they grew up during a time that led the late Malcolm X to declare in 1962, “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.” Yet this remarkable trio managed to crash through their respective glass ceilings — even if just temporarily.

After Epps’ death, Temple University officials removed the “acting” from her title and now recognize her as the 13th president of the school. Too bad she wasn’t able to live to see it.