Russell has numerous historical first ladies to gain strength from

“They’re going to eat her alive,” represented an initial assessment offered by a friend who heard the news that Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora would nominate retired city police Sgt. Carol Russell as his next police director.

“People tell me that she’s never going to survive what’s coming. Those men are going to make her life difficult. They don’t think she has the chops to handle what she’s going to face.”

Women, African-American and otherwise have overcome immense obstacles throughout history. Russell will face similar challenges encountered by the first published African woman Phyllis Wheatley who in 1773 penned “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral; and eye roadblocks faced by first black professional nurse, Mary Eliza Mahoney.

If confirmed, Russell will put out fires with similar expertise as AfricanAmerican Molly Williams, known as the first female firefighter who joined the New York Oceanus Company No. 11 in 1818. Russell may even soar with the expertise engineered by Bessie Coleman, the first African-American female pilot who gained her pilot’s license in Paris due to racial and gender discrimination under United States skies.

Coleman, rarely discussed, shared an adventurous spirit with Caucasian sister, Amelia Earhart, the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. The accomplishment earned Earhart the US. Distinguished Flying Cross.

Imagine how many men, white and black, offered dissenting views about females in flight, championing their Neanderthal beliefs that these women would never get off the ground. Despite their misogyny and bigotry, Coleman and Earhart chased their dreams somewhere over rainbows and cirrus clouds.

Euphemia Lofton Hayes with a PhD in mathematics in 1943, ranks as the first African-American female mathematician while Marian Anderson lofted high notes and loftier tunes as the first African-American to sing with the New York Opera and the first to perform at the White House.

If this column sounds like a history lesson then consider a personal goal accomplished. If young black people had a real understanding that their ancestors blazed trails decades and centuries before them then they could gain strength through knowledge.

Struggle? Any woman, AfricanAmerican, Latino should understand that dreams of success in the United States deliver a test that could be made easier if they learned more about someone like Mary McLeod Bethune, known as the “first lady of the struggle” for her tireless civil rights and education activism.

The list of female firsts includes Gwendolyn Brooks as the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, awarded to her in 1950. Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress in 1969.

If young girls knew that Mae Jemison became the first African-American woman astronaut in space and Hispanic-American Ellen Ochoa matched that accomplishment then maybe their dreams could rise above whatever difficulties being faced in Trenton.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor became the first Latina member of the esteemed group thanks to a nomination offered by the first African-American President Barack Obama.

The list of African-American firsts is extensive as Toni Morrison (first African-American to win a Nobel Prize for Literature), Shirley Ann Jackson (first African-American woman to earn a physics PhD from MIT and Condoleeza Rice (first female U.S. National Security Advisor) and first African-American woman appointed U.S. Secretary of State) highlights a list of fantastic achievers.

Closer to home, Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12th) disintegrated racial and gender barriers to become the first African American woman to serve as Majority Leader of the New Jersey General Assembly, and the first African American woman to serve as the Chair of the New Jersey Democratic State Committee. Her election to the House of Representatives made her the first African-American woman to represent New Jersey in Congress.

Sen. Shirley Turner (D-15th) served as the first African-American woman for the Mercer County Chosen Freeholders Board then produced a successful political life as a state government leader. Jennye “From the Block” Stubblefield as a West Ward representative, earned her distinguished title as the first African-American city councilwoman.

New Jersey Lt. Governor Sheila Oliver became the first African-American to earn that position with the election of Gov. Phil Murphy.

Dorothy Vaughn Palmer birthed Trenton’s first African-American Mayor Douglas H. Palmer and also served as the first black teacher in the Hamilton Twp. school district.

Russell can draw strength and knowledge from Trenton Rescue Mission Executive Director Mary Gay Abbott-Young and HomeFront Executive Connie Mercer who escaped the mind-cuffed limitations of gender to deliver support and help for thousands of men, women, children, and families.

Russell appears on the horizon as the first nominated which does not mean that she will receive confirmation. The nomination of Russell by Gusciora, the city’s first openlygay mayor, underscores a change in thought process and awareness that women can lead; must lead.

As Gusciora made his historic announcement, one could hear a crack as an almost undetectable, microscopic fragment of glass fell from the ceiling onto the City of Trenton City Council chambers.

Jeannine LaRue, a mover and shaker with personal and professional life firsts, walked over and whispered.

“We’re going to have to wrap Carol (Russell) up in our arms and embrace her, support her,” LaRue said.

Being first does not mean being alone.