As part of Black History Month we want to celebrate the African-American self-taught inventor and period pioneer Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner.
Kenner, who at the age of 44, in the mid-1950s, invented the world’s first adjustable sanitary belt to keep sanitary pads in place.
Continue reading #BlackHistoryMonth Moment: #MaryBeatriceKenner invented the 1st feminine sanitary belt! [details]
Jack L. Cooper is widely acknowledged as the first African American radio broadcaster. Cooper, born in Memphis, Tennessee on September 18, 1888, was the youngest of 10 children.
Continue reading #BlackHistoryMonth Moment: #JackLCooper- 1st Black radio DJ/announcer! [Details]
Very sad news to report…
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a towering civil rights icon who battled alongside Martin Luther King Jr., negotiated global hostage releases, and shamed corporations for their lack of corporate diversity and failure to support voting rights, has died. He was 84.
Jackson was hospitalized on Nov. 12 following a lengthy battle with the neuromuscular disease progressive supranuclear palsy, a condition similar to Parkinson’s disease. He was later released from the hospital later that month. Jackson was a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, a Democratic presidential candidate and one of the world’s best-known Black activists.
It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of Civil Rights leader and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Honorable Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr.,” said a statement from the organization on Instagram. “He died peacefully on Tuesday morning, surrounded by his family.”
Despite the illness that softened his voice and weakened his steps, he had continued to advocate for civil rights, and was arrested twice in 2021 over his objection to the Senate filibuster rule. That same year he and his wife Jacqueline were hospitalized with COVID-19 complications at a Chicago hospital.
Born in Greenville, South Carolina, Jackson’s rise to prominence began after he and seven other men were arrested in 1960 ‒ he was 18 at the time ‒ for protesting segregatation at their town’s public library. He then joined King burgeoning civil rights fight, and was just feet away when King was assassinated in 1968.
Jackson founded what would ultimately become the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, and ran for president as a Democrat in 1984 and 1988, energizing and registering millions of Black voters.
“As we continue in the struggle for human rights, remember that God will see us through, even in our midnight moments,” Jackson said in 2017 as he announced his neuromuscular disease diagnosis.
Jackson visited Minneapolis in 2021 to support protesters awaiting the verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who was days later convicted of killing a Black man, George Floyd. While there, he also attended services for Daunte Wright, a Black man who was shot and killed by a police officer during a protest against police violence in a nearby suburb. Speaking in a subdued voice, Jackson reminded the young activists leading a protest march that their cause was just.
Born in fall 1941 to a teen mother and her married neighbor, Jackson was adopted by the man his mother married, and he considered both to be his fathers. He attended a segregated high school and played football in college, dropping out a few credits short of his master’s degree in divinity in 1966 to join the civil rights movement full-time.
By 1965, he’d marched with King and others from Selma to Montgomery to push for Black voting rights, and by 1967 was running operations for King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Chicago, the city that would become his home.
Under Jackson, the SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket used boycotts and public attention to pressure companies to hire more Black workers. Jackson ultimately earned his divinity degree after being ordained a minister in 1968.
In 1983, shortly before announcing his run for president, Jackson traveled to Syria to negotiate the release of an American pilot shot down over Lebanon, and the next summer, negotiated the release of 22 Americans and 26 political prisoners from Cuba after meeting with former dictator Fidel Castro.
His successes bolstered his presidential campaign, although he lost the primary to Walter Mondale, who went on to lose to Ronald Regan. Jackson ran again for president in 1988, putting on a strong showing but ultimately falling to Mike Dukakis, who eventually lost to George H.W. Bush.
After that second loss, Jackson shelved his own political aspirations but continued his efforts for civil rights and justice.
In 1990, Jackson opposed the pending invasion of Iraq and negotiated the release of hundreds of people who Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had threatened to use as human shields, and then in 1999 won the release of three U.S. POWs during the Kosovo War.
In 2000, Clinton awarded Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, citing his decades of work to make the world a better place.
“It’s hard to imagine how we could have come as far as we have without the creative power, the keen intellect, the loving heart, and the relentless passion of Jesse Lewis Jackson,” Clinton said.
Trahern Crews, who helped found the Black Lives Matter-Minnesota chapter, said he grew up with Jackson’s “I am Somebody” recitations ringing in his ears. Jackson often led crowds in a call-and-answer chant that usually included variations on “I may be poor … but I am … Somebody. I may be young … but I am … Somebody.”
That allowed future generations to stand up and follow and his footsteps and declare Black Lives Matter and recognize our humanity,” Crews said. “When we go back and watch videos of Rev. Jesse Jackson marching and fighting for housing rights, voting rights, ending housing discrimination and said ‘I am Somebody,’ that encouraged activists of today to stand up and fight against 400 years of racist policies in the United States.”
During Black History Month, we honor trailblazers like Bessie Coleman, who refused to let barriers keep her grounded.
Bessie Coleman defied the odds, becoming the first Black woman to earn an international pilot’s license in 1921. When flight schools in the U.S. denied her entry due to discrimination, she took her dreams to France and made history. Returning home, she wowed crowds as a daring stunt pilot, inspiring generations to chase their ambitions fearlessly.
Bessie Coleman was born in Waxahachie, Texas in 1892. Her mother was of African ancestry and her father was of African and Native American ancestry.
Due to discrimination in the United States, however, she went to France to attend an aviation school to become a pilot. In 1921, she became the first American woman to obtain an international pilot’s license.
Coleman came back to the United States and became a stunt pilot. She also raised money to start a school to train African American aviators, hoping to afford them opportunities that were not then available in the U.S.
“Well, because I knew we had no aviators, neither men nor women, and I knew the Race needed to be represented along this racist important line, so I thought it my duty to risk my life to learn aviating and to encourage flying among men and women of the Race who are so far behind the white men in this special line, I made up my mind to try. I tried and was successful.” – Bessie Coleman, Excerpt from “Aviatrix Must Sign Life Away to Learn Trade,” Chicago Defender, October 8, 1921
Coleman was killed in 1926 during an aerial show rehearsal. Her barrier-breaking life, determination, and impressive career accomplishments continue to provide inspiration for others to this day.
Before Ford, there was a car company in Ohio building automobiles by hand.
In 1915, that company produced the Patterson-Greenfield automobile.
Charles Richard Patterson was born in Virginia in 1833. By the mid-1800s, he had made his way to Greenfield, Ohio, where he mastered the highly skilled trade of carriage building. This was not simple labor. It required engineering, woodworking, metalwork, upholstery, and mechanical design. By the late 19th century, C.R. Patterson and Sons was producing luxury horse-drawn vehicles and operating with a racially integrated workforce at a time when segregation was the norm.
By the late 19th century, the United States had been fully ushered into a period of dramatic industrial and economic growth commonly known as the Gilded Age. Subsequently, at the turn of the century, the advent of purpose-built, single cylinder, self-propelled automobiles further revolutionized the coach and carriage manufacturing industries. Although emerging robber barons or “Captains of Industry”; dominated the economy through monopolies, smaller independent companies also saw opportunities to put themselves on the map, one such company, C.R. Patterson and Sons, would go on to become an early pioneer for independent car manufacturers and a trailblazer for black entrepreneurs.
Born into slavery on a Virginia plantation in 1833, Charles Richard Patterson or C.R. Patterson fled north to Greenfield, Ohio with his loved ones in the 1850s where he established himself as a blacksmith. Shortly after working as a foreman for the Dines and Simpson Carriage and Coach Makers Company, Patterson partnered with a white carriage manufacturer, J.P. Lowe, forming J.P. Lowe & Company in 1873. Charles Richard Patterson quickly became a high- profile and well-respected resident in Greenfield. Patterson, in addition to working as a foreman where he developed a reputation for overseeing the production of high-quality products, was also a trustee of the Greenfield African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1880, where he also taught Sunday school. When his son was denied admission to an all-white secondary school in the area, he filed a lawsuit against the local Board of Education, a case which he won. By 1888 the company had attracted 10 workers, a sizeable number for small businesses at the time. However, despite the company’s notable success, in January 1893, the overextension and failure of some of the country’s largest companies such as the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Co. ignited a panic and ensuing economic crisis. Commonly known as the Panic of 1893, the depression lasted four years and saw stock prices plummet and unemployment skyrocket across the country reaching as high as 25 percent. Patterson, seeking to start his own company, used the opportunity to buy out Lowe’s shares and became the sole proprietor of the company, renaming it C.R. Patterson and Sons, an act virtually unheard of at the time for a Black man. Patterson ran a successful business producing 28 different horse-drawn carriage styles and approximately 500 horse-drawn carriages per year as well as employed an integrated workforce of 35-50 craftsmen.
Following his death in 1910, Charles’s son, Frederick Douglas Patterson inherited his father’s carriage business. In addition to graduating top of his class in high school and being the first black athlete to play football for Ohio State University, Frederick Douglas Patterson was also the vice president of the National Negro Business League. The organization, founded by Booker T. Washington in 1900, was designed to generate economic growth and autonomy within the Black community. Frederick, utilizing his entrepreneurial disposition, quickly recognized the potential and growing popularity of horseless carriages and produced the company’s first automobile in 1915. Following the production of the Patterson-Greenfield Automobile, he became the first and only Black owner and operator of an automobile Company. Frederick said of the Patterson- Greenfield Automobile: “It is not intended for a large car. It is designed to take the place originally held by the family surrey. It is a 5-passenger vehicle, ample and luxurious.” The Company offered several models of coupes and sedans including a state-of-the-art 4-cylinder 30 hp Continental “Red Devil” speedster. The company was well respected and saw considerable success but failed to keep up with Ford’s assembly line manufacturing capacity at the turn of the century. By the 1920s, the company shifted its efforts towards designing truck and bus chassis made by other manufacturers such as Ford and General Motors. The company was renamed Greenfield Bus Body Company following Frederick’s death In 1932 but, due to the crippling effects of the Great Depression, the independent auto manufacturer was ultimately forced to close production in 1939.[Source]
If you have a manual push mower today, it likely uses design elements from 19th Century Black American inventor John Albert Burr’s patented rotary blade lawn mower.
Continue reading #BlackHistoryMonth Moment: #JohnAlbertBurr PERFECTED the lawn mower! [Details]
Lucy Terry Prince died in 1821. Her obituary appeared in the August 14, 1821 issue of the Vermont Gazette newspaper. The author wrote that she was a “remarkable woman” with rare qualities. At that time, newspaper obituaries were usually short. Lucy Terry Prince’s obituary was long and said many good things about her intelligence and talents. This was unusual for two reasons: she was a woman, and she was Black.
In the 1800s, society thought that white men were more important than Black people and women. What did Lucy Terry Prince do in her lifetime to be called a remarkable woman in the newspaper?
White slave traders kidnapped Lucy Terry as a baby from Africa in the 1730s. She lived as an enslaved person in Rhode Island and Deerfield, Massachusetts.
Lucy Terry is credited as the author of the of the first poem composed by an African American woman, Lucy Terry Prince was a remarkable woman whose many accomplishments included arguing a case before the Supreme Court. Lucy was stolen from Africa as an infant and sold to Ebenezer Wells of Deerfield, Massachusetts.
Lucy Terry Prince died in 1821. Her obituary appeared in the August 14, 1821 issue of the Vermont Gazette newspaper. The author wrote that she was a “remarkable woman” with rare qualities. At that time, newspaper obituaries were usually short. Lucy Terry Prince’s obituary was long and said many good things about her intelligence and talents. This was unusual for two reasons: she was a woman, and she was Black.
In the 1800s, society thought that white men were more important than Black people and women. What did Lucy Terry Prince do in her lifetime to be called a remarkable woman in the newspaper?
White slave traders kidnapped Lucy Terry as a baby from Africa in the 1730s. She lived as an enslaved person in Rhode Island and Deerfield, Massachusetts.
In Massachusetts, several community members and friends died in a French-led Abenaki raid in 1746. Lucy Terry created a poem about the raid. This poem, called The Bars Fight, was meant to be shared out loud. It was published about 100 years later. This poem made Lucy Terry America’s first published African American poet. Terry was well known for being intelligent and gifted with language.
Lucy Terry married a Black man named Abijah Prince around 1750. He was no longer enslaved and helped Lucy Terry Prince gain her freedom. Together, they had six children. The family moved to farmland in Guilford, Vermont, in 1775.
In Guilford, the Princes had racist neighbors. The neighbors tore down their fences and destroyed their crops. Lucy Terry Prince argued her family’s case before the Governor of Vermont in 1785. She impressed the Council with her skilled speech and “captivated all around her.”
The Prince family won their case, but that did not stop the abuse. Later, a mob led by the neighbor burned the Prince’s hay and harmed their farmhand. Vermont courts found the mob guilty. But the damage to the farm was already done. After her husband’s death in 1794, Lucy Terry Prince left Guilford.
Prince and some of her children moved to Sunderland, Vermont. Her husband bought land there many years earlier. To claim the land, they argued in the Vermont Supreme Court and won. In Prince’s old age, many would visit her home to hear her speak and share stories. When she died in 1821, she was a well-loved and respected member of the Sunderland community.
The following obituary was published for Prince on Tuesday, August 21, 1821, in the Greenfield, Massachusetts, paper The Frankylin Herald:
At Sunderland, Vt., July 11th, Mrs. Lucy Prince, a woman of colour. From the church and town records where she formerly resided, we learn that she was brought from Bristol, Rhode Island, to Deerfield, Mass. when she was four years old, by Mr. Ebenezer Wells: that she was 97 years of age—that she was early devoted to God in Baptism: that she united with the church in Deerfield in 1744—Was married to Abijah Prince, May 17th, 1756, by Elijah Williams, Esq. and that she had been the mother of six children. In this remarkable woman there was an assemblage of qualities rarely to be found among her sex. Her volubility was exceeded by none, and in general, the fluency of her speech was not destitute of instruction and education. She was much respected among her acquaintances, who treated her with deference.[16]
The Prince family was remembered in Guilford for many decades after their death.
Our SALUTE to BLACK ACHIEVEMENTS and Black History Month CONTINUES!
James McCune Smith was not just any physician. He was the first African American to earn a medical degree, educated at the University of Glasgow in the 1830s, when no American university would admit him. For this groundbreaking achievement alone, Smith warrants greater appreciation. Continue reading #BlackHistoryMonth Moment: #JamesMcCuneSmith-America’s 1st Black physician! [details]
The gas mask – Invented by Garrett Morgan in 1912, the gas mask saved thousands of soldiers’ lives during World War I, when poisonous gas was first used as a weapon. If that weren’t enough, he also invented the modern traffic signal.
Continue reading #BlackHistoryMonth Moment: #GarrettMorgan and his MANY INVENTIONS!! [details]
President Donald Trump shared a racist video on his social media platform Thursday night that depicted former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes in a jungle, then removed it hours later amid bipartisan outrage, including from close allies.
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