Bravery, as Defined by a Professor, an Olympian and an Activist 

Five luminaries, including Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Aly Raisman offer their takes on this month’s topic: bravery.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

“Twelve years ago, my younger daughter, Elizabeth, was in Vermont at a pre-wedding party with her best friends from Spelman. She went to bed and when she woke up, she couldn’t speak. All she could say [was], ‘Yes, I know.’ They rushed her to a local hospital then to the University of Vermont, where I saw her. Her mouth was twisted—a classic sign of a stroke—and oh, she cried in my arms, and I cried. [Doctors] didn’t know if she would ever speak. Her mother [Sharon Adams] bought [English-language learning software], and my daughter taught herself, with her mother’s help, to speak all over again. Bravery is improvisation in the face of impending disaster. And that’s what she manifested. There was no blueprint. This was terra incognita.”

Read more from The Wall Street Journal here.