Sophia Danenberg
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Sophia Danenberg (born 1971/72) is an American mountain climber. She is the first African American of either sex, and the first Black woman of any nationality, to climb to the summit of Mount Everest.
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http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-fcbHhVcjfqc2H89YaUGmWzc-?cq=1&p=1717
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/ourtown/060714/everest/
and her site:
http://www.sophiadanenberg.org/
above courant.com link is dead.
At 7 AM - May 19 2006 Sophia Danenberg reached the top of Mount Everest, this making her the first African-American from anywhere to sit on the top of the world.
Withstanding bad weather during the night that delayed other climbers in her party, Danenberg and Sherpas she'd hired - Pa Nuru Sherpa and his brother Mingma Tshiring, were the only people there. She wasn't as excited as you might expect, had bronchitis, a stuffed nose, frostbite on her cheeks, and her oxygen mask was clogged.
"So I was like, cool, I made it," she says. "I have to get this oxygen mask fixed before I get off this mountain."
Since 1953 some 2,500 people have stood atop the 29,035 Everest, the first black man South Africa's Sibusiso Vilane didn't get there until 2003. Vilane made news around the world, but no one noticed Sophia not even her local paper or TV Station.
Sophia has a father that is black and mother who is Japanese: She whould say most people are surprised to hear that she was the 1st African-American to scale Everest. "There aren't a lot of African - Americans or black people from anywhere, American or otherwise in high-altitude mountaineering." She's never met another black person on any big mountain in the world, and when the subject comes up with mostly white male climbers, they agree. "They don't really notice that I'm a black woman, but they'll notice you as a woman."
