Friday, March 29, 2024

More black history facts

By Sister Shirley Tarpley

Romare Bearden, an artist known as the “Master of Collage” (the art of covering a surface with fragments of pictures from magazines, drawing, painting, and whatever else the artist is inspired to attach. Otis Boykin in 1955, created an electrical mechanism regulating unit for the first heart pacemaker. Marshall “Major” Taylor, known as “The Black Cyclone” became the first African American to win a national title in any sport in 1898. In 1896 he won the World One-Mile Sprint Championship at a Montreal meet and set a world’s record in a Chicago bicycle race. Taylor took his motto from Booker T. Washington: “I shall allow no man to narrow my soul and drag me down.” He concluded his autobiography by asserting, “I am a Negro in every sense of the word.”

Susie King Taylor was the first Black Army Nurse. She was with the 33rd U.S. Colored Infantry and served at a laundress, cook, and nurse. She also taught classes for the men, having learned to read and write in a secret slave school. Later in the Civil War, Taylor tended the men of the famous black regiment, the Massachusetts 54th, and she worked with Clara Barton, the woman who founded the Red Cross. Walter S. McAfee is the first African American mathematician and physicist who first calculated the speed of the moon. Participating in the U.S. Army program, Project Diana in the 1940s; McAfee made the necessary calculations and on January 10, 1946, allowed a team to send a radar pulse through a special 40-feet square antenna towards the moon. Two and a half seconds later, they received a faint signal, proving that transmissions from earth could cross the vast distances of outer space.

Frederick McKinley Jones, born in Cincinnati in 1893 and orphaned at the age of nine, is best remembered for devising a method to refrigerate trucks carrying perishable food, an idea expanded to include air coolers for ships, planes, and trains. As a result of this method called pre-fabricated refrigerated construction, meat, fruit, vegetable, and butter could be transported long distances. The Institute for Colored Youth (now known as Cheyney State University) founded in Philadelphia in 1832 is the first historically Black college. It began as a private school, but was taken over by Pennsylvania in 1921 and became part of the state system. Longer than any other American college, Cheyney served the educational needs of the Black community. However, Middlebury was another college teaching African Americans during this time; it was the first college to grant a degree to an African American (Alexander Lucius Twilight) in 1823.

Peter Hill, born a slave and lived in New Jersey from 1767 to 1829, was a highly skilled clock maker (at the time, a clock was a delicate mechanism, which had to be perfectly constructed for it to work. Only the most skilled craftspeople could create one), and fortunately two of the clocks Hill made still exist. One is in the Westtown School in Westtown, Pennsylvania. The other is in the National Museum of History and Technology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Inventions: Shoe Lasting Machine by H.E. Matzeliger on September 22, 1891. Sugar Refinement by Norman Rillieux on December 10, 1846. Thermostat Control by Frederick M. Jones on February 23, 1960. Egg Beater by Willie Johnson on February 5, 1884. Dough Kneader by L. Bell on December 10, 1872. Eye Protector by P. Johnson on November 2, 1880. Fire Escape Ladder by J.B. Winters on May 7, 1878. Fire Extinguisher by T. Marshall on October 26, 1872. Folding Bed by L.C. Bailey on July 18, 1899. Folding Chair by Purdy & Sadgwar on June 11, 1889. Lawn Mower by L.A. Burr on May 19, 1989.

The Refrigerator by J. Standard on June 14, 1891. An Insect-Destroyer Gun by A.C. Richard on February 28, 1899. The Automatic Gear Shift by Richard Spikes on February 28, 1932. Chamber Commode by T. Elkins on January 3, 1897. Horseshoe by J. Ricks on March 30, 1885. The Lock by W.A. Martin on July 23rd in the 1800’s. Mailbox by Paul L. Downing on October 27, 1891. Riding Saddles by W.D. Davis on October 6, 1895. The Stove by T.A. Carrington on July 25, 1876. The Automatic Transmission by R.B. Spikes. Asphalt by Lloyd Hall. The Helicopter by Paul E. Williams. Multi-stage rocket by Adolph Shamms. The Urinalysis Machine by Dewey Sanderson; and the Traffic Signal by Garrett Morgan.

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