Black History Slideshow

64
Black History Month Heroes and Heroines

Transcript of Black History Slideshow

Black History Month

Heroes and Heroines

The Carter G. Woodson monument, erected in commemoration of this great scholar, stands

today on Hal Greer Boulevard in Huntington.

Carter Godwin WoodsonDecember 9, 1875 - April 4, 1950

Carter G. Woodson

Founder of Black History Week, the precursor to Black History Month.

Freedom Fighters

Harriet TubmanNat Turner

Denmark VesseyDavid Walker

Sojourner TruthFrederick Douglass

Booker T. WashingtonMarcus Garvey

Crispus Attucks

Of mixed African and American Indian ancestry, Attucks was the slave of William Brown of Framingham, Mass. Attucks escaped around 1750 to work on whaling ships. On March 5, 1770, Boston patriot Samuel Adams convinced sailors and dockworkers to protest the presence of British troops. Attucks was a leader of the 50 men in the protest, shouting “Don't be afraid,” as they advanced on the British. The soldiers fired on the protestors, killing Attucks and four others in what became known as the Boston Massacre.

James Armistead

An African American slave in Virginia, Armistead sought and received permission from his master, William Armistead, to enlist under Gen. Marquis de Lafayette, a French officer who joined George Washington's army during the American Revolution.

As a double agent, Armistead was able to move freely between both camps. He provided Lafayette with critical information that enabled the general to intercept Cornwallis's much-needed naval support and ultimately defeat Cornwallis at Yorktown in Oct. 1781, the decisive battle that ended the Revolution.

Dred Scott

In 1846, Dred Scott and his wife Harriet filed suit for their freedom in the St. Louis Circuit Court. This suit began an eleven-year legal fight that ended in the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a landmark decision declaring that Scott remain a slave. This decision contributed to rising tensions between the free and slave states just before the American Civil War.

Mary McLeod Bethune

Founder of Bethune-Cookman College in Florida in 1904, advisor to President Roosevelt, and founder of the National Council of Negro Women, Bethune is known as a social reformer and educator.

W.E.B Dubois

William Edward Burghardt DuBois, to his admirers, was by spirited devotion and scholarly dedication, an attacker of injustice and a defender of freedom.

A harbinger of Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism, he died in self-imposed exile in his home away from home with his ancestors of a glorious past—Africa.

There were very few scholars who concerned themselves with honest study of the black man and he sought to fill this immense void.

A. Philip Randolph

Black labor movement leader, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and later a key figure in the civil rights movement, Asa Philip Randolph believed that the key to black progress rested in the black working class. Thus, throughout most of his life he worked to help the black working class and sought to end discrimination.

1889–1979

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was one of the foremost leaders of the abolitionist movement, which fought to end slavery within the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War. He became recognized as one of America's first great black speakers. He won world fame when his autobiography was publicized in 1845. Two years later he began publishing an antislavery paper called the North Star.

Douglass served as an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and fought for the adoption of constitutional amendments that guaranteed voting rights and other civil liberties for blacks. Douglass provided a powerful voice for human rights during this period of American history and is still revered today for his contributions against racial injustice.

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey is best remembered as a pivotal figure in the struggle for racial equality throughout the world. He founded the UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) and championed the 'back to Africa' movement of the 1920s. His legacy makes him an inspirational figure for many civil rights leaders and politicians today, and in his lifetime he was hailed as a prophet and redeemer by black people everywhere.

Dr. Ernest Everett Just

Ernest Just of Charleston, South Carolina was a zoologist, biologist, and research scientist in the field of physical chemistry.

According to "African Americans in the Sciences" Ernest Just was involved with "research on egg fertilization, experimental parthenogenesis, hydration, cell division, dehydration in living cells, the effects of ultraviolet rays in increasing chromosome numbers in animals and in the altering the organization of the egg with special reference to polarity."

(1883-1941)

Daniel Hale Williams

Daniel Hale Williams organized the Provident Hospital, the first black hospital in the United States. In 1893, Williams performed the first successful closure of a wound of the heart and pericardium.

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was the major African-American spokesman in the eyes of white America. Born a slave in Virginia, Washington was educated at Hampton Institute, Norfolk, Virginia. He began to work at the Tuskegee Institute in 1881 and built it into a center of learning and industrial and agricultural training.

Booker Taliaferro Washington

Adam Clayton Powell Jr

1908–72, American politician and clergyman, b. New Haven, Conn. In 1937 he became pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City, and he soon became known as a militant black leader. He was elected to the city council of New York in 1941, and was elected for the first time to the U.S. Congress in 1945. Although a Democrat, he campaigned for President Eisenhower in 1956.

Ralph BuncheAfter serving in the U.S. War Department and State Department during World War II, Bunche was active in the preliminary planning of the United Nations. He joined the permanent U.N. Secretariat in New York in 1947.

The next year he was unexpectedly thrust into the role of brokering a truce between warring Arabs and Jews in the Middle East when the chief mediator was assassinated. For his success in negotiating a peaceful settlement, Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950.

Ella Baker

Ella Baker was a founding member of the Young Negroes Cooperative League, whose members pooled funds to buy products and services at reduced cost.

In 1957 Baker and several Southern black ministers and activists established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a major force in organizing the civil rights movement. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. served as the group's first president and Baker as the director. She mainly worked behind the scenes, while King assumed the role as spokesman.

The Little Rock Nine

The Little Rock Nine, as they later came to be called, were the first black teenagers to attend all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. These remarkable young African-American students challenged segregation in the deep South and won. Although Brown v. Board of Education outlawed segregation in schools, many racist school systems defied the law by intimidating and threatening black students—Central High School was a notorious example.

Daisy Bates

Civil rights leader whose tireless efforts led to the desegregation of Little Rock, Arkansas' Central High School. She guided nine students in their 1957 crusade to enroll in the white school. The students' initial effort was rebuffed, and the governor, Orval Faubus called in the National Guard to stop the students at the door.

Fannie Lou Hamer

Her career as a civil rights activist started in 1962, when she helped the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to organize a voter registration drive in Ruleville, Miss., which challenged the state's laws that were designed to deny blacks the right to vote.

She lost her job on the plantation as a result of her efforts and assumed the position as a field secretary for the SNCC.

Malcolm X

1925–65, militant black leader in the United States, also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, b. Malcolm Little in Omaha, Neb. He was introduced to the Black Muslims while serving a prison term and became a Muslim minister upon his release in 1952. He quickly became very prominent in the movement with a following perhaps equaling that of its leader, Elijah Muhammad.

Barbara Jordan

She ran for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives in 1962 and 1964, but lost both times.... however, she made history when she was elected to the newly drawn Texas Senate seat in 1966, thereby becoming the first Black to serve in that body since 1883. She was an oddity at that time, as the first Black woman in that state's legislature. Barbara Jordan was the first Black woman to serve in the U.S. Congress from the South.

Colin Luther Powell

Powell, Colin Luther, 1937–, U.S. army general and government official, b. New York City, grad., City College (B.S., 1958); George Washington Univ. (M.A., 1969). The son of Jamaican immigrants, Powell was the first African American and the youngest person to chair (1989–93) the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first African American to serve (2001–5) as secretary of state.

He entered the U.S. army (1958) as a commissioned officer and served two tours of duty (1962–63, 1968–69) during the Vietnam War.

Carol Moseley Braun

Moseley-Braun made history in 1992 when she was elected to the U.S. Senate, becoming the first black woman to do so. She upset two-term incumbent Alan Dixon in the Democratic primary and went on to defeat Republican candidate Richard Williamson.

As a senator, she sponsored several progressive education bills and championed strong gun control laws. She was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004

Music

• Charlie Christian• Louis Armstrong• Jimi Hendrix

• Robert Johnson

• Muddy Waters• Blind Tom Wiggins• B.B. King

• Elmore James• Bessy Smith• Billy Holiday

• Ella Fitzgerald• Marion Anderson• Leontyne Price• Ray Charles

Marian Anderson

An African-American contralto (same range as alto), best remembered for her performance on Easter Sunday, 1939 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. On January 7, 1955, Anderson broke the color barrier by becoming the first African-American to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera.

Louis Armstrong

Nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter, singer, and an influential figure in jazz music.

Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. With his instantly recognizable gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also skilled at scat singing (vocalizing using sounds and syllables instead of actual lyrics).

Billie HolidayThe future "Lady Day" first heard the music of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith on a Victrola at Alice Dean's, the Baltimore "house of ill repute" where she ran errands and scrubbed floors as a young girl.

She made her singing debut in obscure Harlem nightclubs (borrowing her professional name from screen star Billie Dove), then toured with Count Basie and Artie Shaw before going solo. Benny Goodman dragged the frightened singer to her first studio session. Between 1933 and 1944, she recorded over 200 "sides," but she never received royalties for any of them.

Stevie Wonder

Stevland Hardaway Morris (born May 13, 1950, as Stevland Hardaway Judkins), known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist. A child prodigy, he has become one of the most creative and loved musical performers of the late 20th century. Wonder signed with Motown's Tamla label at the age of 11and continues to perform and record for Motown as of the early 2010s. He has been blind since shortly after birth.

Actors and Actresses

• Ira Frederick Aldridge• George Walker• Dewey "Pigmeat"

Markham• Cab Calloway• Scatman Crothers• Ossie Davis• Dorothy Dandridge• Esther Rolle

• Ira Frederick Aldridge• Ruby Dee• Sidney Poitier• Cicely Tyson• Cleavon Little• Denzel Washington• Halle Berry• Audra McDonald• Morgan Freeman

Dorothy Dandridge

(November 9, 1922 – September 8, 1965)

Dorothy was an African-American film and theatre actress, singer and dancer. She is perhaps best known for being the first black actress to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1954 film Carmen Jones.

Denzel Washington

Washington has received two Golden Globe awards, a Tony Award, and two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor for the historical drama-war film Glory (1989) and Best Actor for his role as a corrupt cop in the crime thriller Training Day (2001).

Bessie ColemanThe world's first licensed black pilot. Bessie Coleman was born in Texas in 1892. During World War I, she read about the air war in Europe.

She became interested in flying and became convinced she should be up there, not just reading about it. She started looking for a flying school but what she didn't realize was that she had two strikes against her: She was a woman and she was black.

Great Inventors

Marjorie Stewart Joyner

Madame CJ Walker

Dr. Patricia Bath

George Washington Carver

Benjamin Banneker

Elijah McCoy

Lewis Latimer

"Black minds have been inventors, engineers and master-builders since

antiquity. We must maintain the time-honored tradition in

preparation for the 21st century and beyond." - B.L. Crudup, P.E.

Jan Matzeliger

Lasting Machine

Jan worked on his "lasting machine" for ten years secretly. His machine could produce between 150 and 700 pairs of shoes a day. Even the best Laster could only produce 50 shoes a day. He brought affordable shoes and better jobs to those in the industry through his inventions.

Benjamin Banneker

In the Stevie Wonder song "Black Man," the Motown marvel sings of Benjamin Banneker: "first clock to be made in America was created by a black man." Though the song is a fitting salute to a great inventor (and African Americans in general), it only touches on the genius of Benjamin Banneker and the many hats he wore – as a farmer, mathematician, astronomer, author and land surveyor.

Lewis Latimer:

Latimer's Bulb

Latimer, with Joseph V. Nichols, came up with both idea to use carbon filaments and the process for manufacturing the carbon filaments.

Garrett A. Morgan

Many of the world's most famous inventors only produced one major invention that garnered recognition and cemented their prominent status. But Garret Augustus Morgan, one of the country's most successful African-American inventors, created two – the gas mask and the traffic signal.

Madame C. J. Walker

First African American Millionaire.

"I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations....I have built my own factory on my own ground“.

Dr. Charles Richard Drew Developer of the modern blood bank

It's impossible to determine how many hundreds of thousands of people would have lost their lives without the contributions of African-American inventor Dr. Charles Drew. This physician, researcher and surgeon revolutionized the understanding of blood plasma – leading to the invention of blood banks.

Thomas L. Jennings

Thomas L. Jennings was the first African American to receive a patent, on March 3, 1821 (U.S. patent3306x). Jennings' patent was for a dry-cleaning process called "dry scouring". The first money he earned from his patent was spent on the legal fees (my polite way of saying enough money to purchase) necessary to liberate his family out of slavery and support the abolitionist cause.

Elijah McCoy

Ever heard the expression is that the "real McCoy?" If you have, you've been talking about Elijah McCoy without even knowing it.

Elijah McCoy, prolific inventor, helped trains and all things with engines, move more smoothly and safely.

By the end of his life he had received 57 different patents.

George Washington Carver is perhaps to this day the nation's best known African American scientist. In the period between 1890 and 1910, the cotton crop had been devastated by the Bo weevil. Carver advised to cultivate peanuts instead. Before long, he developed more than 300 different products that could be made from the peanut. Everything from milk to printer's ink.

George Washington Carver

Granville T. Woods

By the time he died, Woods had received more than sixty patents and had beaten the mighty Thomas Edison and won.

The information he learned from books and from working in the railroad business led to his most important invention, which he called the "Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph."

Ernest Just

Dr. Ernest Just was a pioneer in the fields of biology and chemistry at a time when it was extremely difficult for African Americans to get a scientific education. Ernest Just was the first person to unlock the secrets of cell function and structure.

Marjorie Stewart Joyner

Marjorie Joyner invented a permanent wave machine that would allow a hairdo to stay set for days, although she never received any money for her invention. She co-founded, with Mary Bethune Mcleod, the United Beauty School Owners and Teachers Association in 1945.

Percy Julian

Dr. Julian was an internationally acclaimed synthetic organic chemist. Only the third African American to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry, he specialized in the field of natural products chemistry, the identification of active chemical components of extracts from plants and the synthesis of those components in the laboratory from smaller molecules. This technology is very important for medicines, food products, paper, paints, and fire-fighting foams, among other things.

Invented a sugar processing evaporator and an improved sugar refining process that safely saved time and money in the making of sugar from sugar beets or sugar

cane.

Norbert Rillieux

John Henry Thompson

Thompson wanted to bridge the gap between art and technology. Four years later as a chief scientist at Macromedia™, he was able to make progress towards this goal. He developed a number of products, many of them based on his most famous invention, Lingo programming: a scripting language that helps render visuals in computer programs. Thompson used Lingo in one of his better-known computer inventions, Macromedia™ Director. Macromedia™ Director is able to incorporate different graphic formats (such as BMP, AVI, JPEG, QuickTime, PNG, RealVideo and vector graphics) to create multi-media content and applications, thus combining computer programming language with visual art.

Frederick McKinley Jones

Anytime you see a truck on the highway transporting refrigerated or frozen food, you're seeing the work of Frederick McKinley Jones. One of the most prolific Black inventors ever, Jones patented more than 60 inventions in his lifetime. While more than 40 of those patents were in the field of refrigeration, Jones is most famous for inventing an automatic refrigeration system for long haul trucks and railroad cars.

Every time a person crunches into a potato chip, he or she is enjoying the delicious taste of one of the world's most famous snacks – a treat that might not exist without the contribution of black inventor George Crum. The son of an African-American father and a Native American mother, Crum was working as the chef in the summer of 1853 when he incidentally invented the chip. It all began when a patron who ordered a plate of French-fried potatoes sent them back to Crum's kitchen because he felt they were too thick and soft.

Otis Boykin

Look around the house today and you'll see a variety of devices that utilize components made by Boykin – including computers, radios and TV sets. Boykin's inventions are all the more impressive when one considers he was an African American in a time of segregation and the field of electronics was not as well-established as it is today.

All in all, he earned 11 patents and invented 28 different electronic devices. Some of his lesser known inventions include a burglar-proof cash register and a chemical air filter – both of which were never produced.

Lonnie G. Johnson

Lonnie George Johnson is an American inventor and engineer who holds more than 80 patents. Johnson is most known for inventing the Super Soaker water gun, which has ranked among the world's top 20 best-selling toys every year since its release.

Dr. Patricia Bath

As a noted Ophthalmologist and famous black inventor, Dr. Patricia Bath has dedicated her life to the treatment and prevention of visual impairments. Her personal belief that everyone has the "Right to Sight" led to her invention in 1985 of a specialized tool and procedure for the removal of cataracts. With the Laserphaco Probe and procedure, Dr. Bath increased the accuracy and results of cataract surgery, which had previously been performed manually with a mechanical grinder.

Dr. Mark Dean

Dr. Mark Dean started working at IBM in 1980 and was instrumental in the invention of the Personal Computer (PC). He holds three of IBM's original nine PC patents and currently holds more than 20 total patents. The famous African-American inventor never thought the work he was doing would end up being so useful to the world, but he has helped IBM make instrumental changes in areas ranging from the research and application of systems technology circuits to operating environments. One of his most recent computer inventions occurred while leading the team that produced the 1-Gigahertz chip, which contains one million transistors and has nearly limitless potential.

Politics and Activism

Shirley Chisholm

In 1968, After finishing her term in the legislature, Chisholm campaigned to represent New York's Twelfth Congressional District. Her campaign slogan was "Fighting Shirley Chisholm--Unbought and Unbossed." She won the election and became the first African American woman elected to Congress.

Thirman Milner

Thirman Milner, the first African American mayor of Hartford elected 1981-1987 and in New England. Born in Hartford in 1934, Mr. Milner was attending New York University when he heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speak. After hearing and meeting Dr. King, young Thirman decided to become a civil rights activist.

Elizabeth Horton Sheff

Community leader and activists, Elizabeth Horton Sheff spearheaded the case, United States Sheff vs. O’Neill – a landmark civil rights lawsuit that seeks to prepare all children to live and prosper in a growing racial/ethnic, economically globally connected world. This effort produced the many magnet schools that now exist in the State of Connecticut, as well as other educational reforms.

Hiram Revels

Born a free black, Revels worked as a barber and as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. During the Civil War he helped recruit two regiments of African American troops in Maryland and served as the chaplain of a black regiment.

After the war, he was elected an alderman (1868). In 1870, Revels was elected as the first African American member of the United States Senate.

President Barack H. Obama