28 Days Of Black History

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Good stuff Irezumi.

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1936 Berlin Olympic Games in Nazi Germany, with 18 African-American athletes part of the U.S. squad.


Future U.S. Rep. Ralph Metcalfe brought home two medals of his own — a silver in the 100 meters and a gold in the 4x100-meter relay.

Ralph Metcalfe died October 10, 1978



President Carter described Mr. Metcalfe as a leader "uncompromising in the pursuit of excellence."


https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...dea-b5a5-e9cf82cd9db1/?utm_term=.91eb64f38654

Ralph H. Metcalfe competed in the 1932 and 1936 Olympics, held in Los Angeles and Berlin, respectively. In 1932, Metcalfe won the bronze medal in the 200-meter dash and took the silver in the 100-meter dash, losing to Eddie Tolan by a mere two inches. In 1936, Metcalfe again finished second in the 100-meter dash, with Jesse Owens winning the gold. Metcalfe teamed with Owens to win a gold in the 400-meter relay that year, helping to set a world record.

In 1970, Metcalfe won a seat in the Ninety-second U.S. Congress, succeeding his mentor, the late William Dawson. Metcalfe began his career as a Daley loyalist but later broke with the mayor, becoming a strong and independent voice for his mostly African American constituency who felt ignored by the workings of the Daley machine. Metcalfe was elected to four terms in Congress and served until his death in October 1978.


http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/2199.html


Wisconsin's Olympic Legend Ralph Metcalfe Once Beat Jesse Owens

There's a now famous photo of Jesse Owens crossing the finish line during a 100-meter race at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany. The second-place finisher off to the left of the image is Metcalfe, his USA teammate. But Owens didn't always beat Metcalfe.


James Marten, chair of history at Marquette University, said Metcalfe arrived on campus as a scholarship athlete in 1930 and graduated in 1936.

"(Metcalfe) ran against the best sprinters in the country in both the 100- and 200-meter and relays, and won a number of events in national competitions," Marten said.


"One of my favorite pictures that I have from Marquette's archives is one of (Metcalfe) actually beating Jesse Owens in a track meet held in the old track over on the west side of Milwaukee," Marten said.

https://www.wpr.org/wisconsins-olympic-legend-ralph-metcalfe-once-beat-jesse-owens

Bessie Coleman

QUICK FACTS
NAME
Bessie Coleman
OCCUPATION
Pilot
BIRTH DATE
January 26, 1892
DEATH DATE
April 30, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH
Atlanta, Texas
PLACE OF DEATH
Jacksonville, Florida
NICKNAME
Brave Bessie
Queen Bess
WHO WAS BESSIE COLEMAN?

In 1922, aviator Bessie Coleman became the first African American woman to stage a public flight in America. Her high-flying skills always wowed her audience.
Who Was Bessie Coleman?
Bessie Coleman (January 26, 1892 to April 30, 1926) was an American aviator and the first black woman to earn a pilot's license. Because flying schools in the United States denied her entry, she taught herself French and moved to France, earning her license from France's well-known Caudron Brother's School of Aviation in just seven months. Coleman specialized in stunt flying and parachuting, earning a living barnstorming and performing aerial tricks. She remains a pioneer of women in the field of aviation.


(Photo: A+E Networks)

Bessie Coleman, First Black Woman Aviator
In 1922, a time of both gender and racial discrimination, Coleman broke barriers and became the world's first black woman to earn a pilot's license. Because flying schools in the United States denied her entry, she took it upon herself to learn French and move to France to achieve her goal. After only seven months, Coleman earned her license from France's well known Caudron Brother's School of Aviation.

Though she wanted to start a flying school for African Americans when she returned to the U.S., Coleman specialized in stunt flying and parachuting, and earned a living barnstorming and performing aerial tricks. In 1922, she became the first African-American woman in America to make a public flight.

Bessie Coleman’s Death
On April 30, 1926, Coleman was tragically killed at only 34 years old when an accident during a rehearsal for an aerial show sent her plummeting to her death. Coleman remains a pioneer of women in the field of aviation.

Birthday
Bessie Coleman was born on January 26, 1892 in Atlanta, Texas.

Family, Early Life and Education
Bessie Coleman was one of 13 children to Susan and George Coleman, who both worked as sharecroppers. Her father, who was of Native American and African-American descent, left the family in search of better opportunities in Oklahoma when Bessie was a child. Her mother did her best to support the family and the children contributed as soon as they were old enough.

At 12 years old, Coleman began attending the Missionary Baptist Church in Texas. After graduating, she embarked on a journey to Oklahoma to attend the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University (Langston University), where she completed only one term due to financial constraints.

In 1915, at 23 years old, Coleman moved to Chicago, where she lived with her brothers and worked as a manicurist. Not long after her move to Chicago, she began listening to and reading stories of World War I pilots, which sparked her interest in aviation.

Before Madonna, Josephine Baker, there was Florence Mills...




Florence Mills Biography
Singer, Dancer(1896–1927)

Performer Florence Mills captivated audiences during the Jazz Age and Harlem Renaissance. She performed in shows like 'Shuffle Along,' 'Plantation Revue' and 'Blackbirds.'
Synopsis
Florence Mills was born on January 25, 1896, in or near Washington, D.C., and made her stage debut at age five as “Baby Florence.” Her major breakthrough happened in 1921, when she appeared in the Off-Broadway musical Shuffle Along. The following year, she appeared on Broadway in Plantation Revue, and later the song “I'm a Little Blackbird Looking for a Bluebird” from Blackbirds became her trademark. She died in 1927.

Early Career and Background
Florence Mills was born Florence Winfrey on January 25, 1896 (some accounts say 1895), in the Washington, D.C., area. She became an entertainer as a young child, billed as "Baby Florence" and captivating audiences with song and dance. She worked in vaudeville and joined a touring company at eight years old before authorities found out she was underage. Her family eventually moved to Harlem, New York, and in 1910 Mills would form another vaudeville act—the Mills Sisters—with her siblings Olivia and Maude. Mills would later meet and wed Ulysses S. Thompson, from the troupe the Tennessee Ten, in 1923.

Big Success With 'Shuffle Along'
In 1921, Mills was hired to replace Gertrude Saunders in the Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle production Shuffle Along, which was a trailblazing musical with an all African-American creative team. The Off-Broadway show was a hit, and Mills became renowned for her performances, highlighted by the tune "I’m Craving for That Kind of Love."

Mills earned a reputation for her wondrous high-pitched voice, unique dance movements and comedic timing that allowed her to become an unparalleled force during the Harlem Renaissance. With Mills quite aware of the racial dynamics of the day and wishing to make a difference, she also served as an icon for African-American performers and audiences of all backgrounds.

International Show 'Blackbirds'
Though Shuffle Along was a big hit, Mills made her actual Broadway debut in 1922 in the show Plantation Revue with the role of Gypsy Blues. The musical was eventually renamed From Dixie to Broadway and played in England before being launched again on the New York stage in October 1924. Then, in 1926, Mills starred in the musical Blackbirds, which showcased the song she was most associated with—"I’m a Little Blackbird Looking for a Bluebird." The show toured internationally as well, and Mills became a massive, sought-after star in Britain.

Death and Legacy
In 1927, Mills became gravely ill while abroad and returned to the States. A young woman in her 30s, she died in New York City on November 1 from appendicitis. She was revered and loved by her audience, and tens of thousands came to pay their respects on the streets outside of her Mount Zion A.M.E. Church funeral.

Literary works on the artist’s life include the books Florence Mills: Harlem Jazz Queen, by Bill Egan, and the children’s publication Harlem’s Little Blackbird, written by Renee Watson and illustrated by Christian Robinson. Archives of Mills' personal and professional papers are also held at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center.

Patricia Bath Biography


Inventor, Doctor, Educator(1942–)

Among many firsts, Patricia Bath is the first African American to complete a residency in ophthalmology and the first African-American female doctor to receive a medical patent. She invented the Laserphaco Probe for cataract treatment in 1986.
Synopsis
Born in Harlem, New York, on November 4, 1942, Patricia Bath became the first African American to complete a residency in ophthalmology in 1973. Two years later, she became the first female faculty member in the Department of Ophthalmology at UCLA's Jules Stein Eye Institute. In 1976, Bath co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness, which established that "eyesight is a basic human right." In 1986, Bath invented the Laserphaco Probe, improving treatment for cataract patients. She patented the device in 1988, becoming the first African-American female doctor to receive a medical patent.

Early Life
Patricia Era Bath was born on November 4, 1942, in Harlem, New York, to Rupert Bath, the first black motorman for the New York City subway system, and Gladys Bath, a housewife and domestic worker who used her salary to save money for her children's education. Bath was encouraged by her family to pursue academic interests. Her father, a former Merchant Marine and an occasional newspaper columnist, taught Bath about the wonders of travel and the value of exploring new cultures. Her mother piqued the young girl's interest in science by buying her a chemistry set.

As a result, Bath worked hard on her intellectual pursuits and, at the age of 16, became one of only a few students to attend a cancer research workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The program head, Dr. Robert Bernard, was so impressed with Bath's discoveries during the project that he incorporated her findings in a scientific paper he presented at a conference. The publicity surrounding her discoveries earned Bath the Mademoiselle magazine's Merit Award in 1960.

After graduating from high school in only two years, Bath headed to Hunter College, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1964. She then attended Howard University to pursue a medical degree. Bath graduated with honors from Howard in 1968, and accepted an internship at Harlem Hospital shortly afterward. The following year, she also began pursuing a fellowship in ophthalmology at Columbia University. Through her studies there, she discovered that African Americans were twice as likely to suffer from blindness than other patients to which she attended, and eight times more likely to develop glaucoma. Her research led to her development of a community ophthalmology system, which increased the amount of eye care given to those who were unable to afford treatment.

Pioneer in Ophthalmology
In 1973, Patricia Bath became the first African American to complete a residency in ophthalmology. She moved to California the following year to work as an assistant professor of surgery at both Charles R. Drew University and the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1975, she became the first female faculty member in the Department of Ophthalmology at UCLA's Jules Stein Eye Institute.

In 1976, Bath co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness, which established that "eyesight is a basic human right." By 1983, Bath had helped create the Ophthalmology Residency Training program at UCLA-Drew, which she also chaired—becoming, in addition to her other firsts, the first woman in the nation to hold such a position.

Inventing the Laserphaco Probe
In 1981, Bath began working on her most well-known invention: the Laserphaco Probe (1986). Harnessing laser technology, the device created a less painful and more precise treatment of cataracts. She received a patent for the device in 1988, becoming the first African-American female doctor to receive a patent for a medical purpose. (She also holds patents in Japan, Canada and Europe.) With her Laserphaco Probe, Bath was able to help restore the sight of individuals who had been blind for more than 30 years.

In 1993, Bath retired from her position at the UCLA Medical Center and became an honorary member of its medical staff. That same year, she was named a "Howard University Pioneer in Academic Medicine."

Among her many roles in the medical field, Bath is a strong advocate of telemedicine, which uses technology to provide medical services in remote areas.

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Stephanie Buck
Writer, culture junkie, closet extrovert founder of Soulbelly, multimedia keepsakes for preserving community history
Oct 25, 2016 · 3 min


This black woman rode across America in 1930. On a Harley.
In spite of rampant racism, she was ‘very happy on two wheels’

Before the interstate highway system, road travel was haphazard at best. (Library of Congress)
Bessie Stringfield was a legendary force during the ripening of American motorcycle culture. As a woman of color participating in a taboo lifestyle, she faced immeasurable prejudice. Yet she lived by a simple credo: “What I did was fun, and I loved it.”

In 1930, at the age of 19, Stringfield became the first African-American woman to ride across the United States solo. Before the interstate highway system, road travel was haphazard at best; pavement was scarce, and dirt roads were carved with danger, if they existed at all. As a skilled rider, Stringfield navigated these challenges. But discrimination and Jim Crow laws posed even more treacherous hurdles.


Bessie Stringfield was happiest when on two wheels. (Wikimedia)
Betsy Ellis was born February 9, 1911, in Kingston, Jamaica, to a white Dutch mother and Jamaican father. Soon her parents moved the family to Boston, but both died of smallpox when Betsy was five years old. (It’s unclear when or why her name was changed to Bessie.) In Boston an Irish Catholic woman adopted Bessie and raised her in a devout household. Bessie would call the woman her “mother” the rest of her life but never name her in interviews.

When Bessie was 16 she asked her mother for a motorcycle and received a 1928 Indian Scout. Despite not knowing how to operate the controls, she attributed her talent to the grace of God, whom she called “the Man Upstairs.”

“When I get on the motorcycle I put the Man Upstairs on the front. I’m very happy on two wheels,” she told journalist and author Ann Ferrar in Hear Me Roar: Women, Motorcycles, and the Rapture of the Road (1996).

After her first trip across the U.S., Bessie would complete the journey seven more times, eventually visiting all 48 contiguous states, plus Europe, Brazil, and Haiti. Her favorite game was tossing a penny onto a map and traveling wherever it landed. To fund her trips, Bessie performed motorcycle stunts for local carnivals, which helped secure her fame.


A 1929 Harley-Davidson. Stringfield would own 27 in her lifetime—“the only motorcycle ever made.” (Getty)
As she traveled throughout the 1930s and ’40s, Bessie faced risks at every turn. As an African-American woman who participated in an alternative lifestyle, she was treated as a second-class citizen, especially in the Deep South, where few black people were able to move freely. When motels denied her accommodation, she slept in gas station parking lots — her motorcycle a bed, her jacket a pillow. Once she was reportedly knocked off the road by a white man in a pickup truck.

She married six times in total. After losing three babies with her first husband, Bessie’s heartbreak kept her from ever trying again to have children. Despite divorcing her third husband, Arthur Stringfield, he insisted she keep his surname “because I’d made it famous!” said Bessie.

By World War II, Stringfield and her Harley-Davidsons were fixtures on the motorcycle circuit. (To her, Harleys were “the only motorcycle ever made.” She would own 27 during her lifetime.) She worked with the Army as a civilian motorcycle dispatch rider, the only woman in her unit, carrying messages between domestic bases. She affixed the Army crest to the front of her blue Harley 61.

In the 1950s, Stringfield made her home in Miami, where she became a registered nurse and founded the Iron Horse Motorcycle Club. She was repeatedly pulled over, she said, by police officers who claimed “nigger women are not allowed to ride motorcycles.” Rather than quit, Stringfield arranged a meeting with the chief of police, took him to a local park, and proved her motorcycle skills first-hand. She was never targeted by police again. Instead she performed in races and earned the nickname “the Motorcycle Queen of Miami.” After winning one race disguised as a man, she took off her helmet to claim the prize and was subsequently refused.

In 2000 the American Motorcycle Association honored Stringfield with an exhibition and created the Bessie Stringfield Award, presented annually to an individual who has been instrumental in bringing motorcycling to new audiences. She was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2002. In June 2016, the Miami Times reported that 200 female riders would travel to Stringfield’s South Florida home to honor the late pioneer.

Stringfield had already died in 1993 at age 82 from complications surrounding an “enlarged heart.” Though her doctor had advised her to stop riding, “I told him if I don’t ride, I won’t live long. And so I never did quit.”

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Fantastic thread, Zumi!

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Zumi, thought of you:

It's that time again.

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Garrett Augustus Morgan, Sr. (March 4, 1877 [sometimes given as 1879] – July 27, 1963) was an African American inventor , businessmen as well as an influential political leader. Morgan's most notable invention was the gas mask originally named "smoke hood". Morgan also discovered and developed a chemical hair-processing and straightening solution. He created a successful company based on the discovery along with a complete line of hair-care products.

Early life

Morgan was born in Claysville, an almost exclusively African American community outside of Paris, Kentucky. His father was Sydney Morgan, a son and freed chattel slave of Confederate Colonel John H. Morgan of the infamous Morgan's Raiders. His mother was a slave called Elizabeth Reed, who was the result of a union between a White minister named Rev. Garrett Reed. Being half Native American, and grandson of Rev. Garrett Reed he had at least one sibling, a brother named Frank, who assisted in the 1916 Lake Erie tunnel rescue. Possessing a sixth-grade education, from Branch Elementary School in Claysville, Morgan moved at the age of 14 to Cincinnati, Ohio, in search of employment.

Career

Most of his teenage years were spent working as a handyman for a Cincinnati landowner. Like many American children growing up in the turn of the century, Morgan had to quit school at a young age in order to work full-time. Morgan was able to hire a tutor and continue his studies while working in Cincinnati. In 1895, he moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he began repairing sewing machines for a clothing manufacturer. This experience with repairing sewing machine was the impetus for Morgan's interest in how things work. His first invention, developed during this period, was a belt fastener for sewing machines. Throughout this period of time, before his first patent in 1912, he was slowly building his reputation in Cleveland for his skill at fixing things.

In 1907, Morgan with nearly a decade of experience with sewing machines, finally opened up his own sewing machine and shoe repair shop. In 1908, Morgan became more conscious of his heritage and helped found the Cleveland Association of Colored Men. In 1909, he and his wife Mary Anne expanded their business ventures by opening a shop called Morgan's Cut Rate Ladies Clothing Store. The shop had 32 employees, and made coats, suits, dresses, and other clothing. Around 1910 his interest in repairing other people's inventions waned, and he became interested in developing some of his own.

He was the subject of a newspaper feature in Cleveland Ohio, Ohio, for a heroic rescue in 1916 of workers trapped within a water intake tunnel, 50 ft (15 m) beneath Lake Erie. He performed his rescue using a hood fashioned to protect his eyes from smoke and featuring a series of air tubes that hung near the ground to draw clean air beneath the rising smoke. This enabled Morgan to lengthen his ability to endure the inhospitable conditions of a smoke-filled room. Morgan is also credited as the first African American in Cleveland to own an automobile.

The smoke hood was completed circa 1912. He received his patent for it that year as well. The successful invention of the smoke hood precipitated the launch of the National Safety Device Company in 1914. It is unknown if the smoke hood brought him any commercial success. No sales figures have been found but his use of guerrilla marketing, going to different venues and demonstrating his smoke hood by strapping it on and entering a smoke filled teepee, certainly demonstrated his faith in his own invention. In 1913 he incorporated hair care products into his growing list of patents and launched the G. A. Morgan Hair Refining Company, which sold hair care products, including his patented hair straightening cream, a hair coloring, and a hair straightening comb invented by Morgan.

Later in life he developed glaucoma and by 1943 was functionally blind. He had poor health the rest of his life, but continued to work on his inventions. One of his last was a self-extinguishing cigarette, which used a small plastic pellet filled with water placed just before the filter. He died on July 27, 1963 aged 86 and is buried at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_Morgan

Nice work

Black history is American History.

Good.