African Americans have created transformative and multi billion dollar markets on a consistent basis!
“But for ourselves who are colored and know our plight too well, for ourselves there is a need, more than anything else, for great patterns to guide us, great lives to inspire us, strong men and women to lift us up and give us confidence in the powers we, too possess.” Langston Hughes, 1941
“The Real McCoy,” Elijah McCoy. This inventor held 57 United States patents, mostly related to the railway. His inventions were of such high quality and precise function that people began using the phrase “the real McCoy” to refer to the quality of Elijah McCoy’s products. In 1872, Elijah McCoy developed an automatic lubricator that spread oil evenly over a train’s engine while it was still moving. The invention allowed trains to run for long periods of time without stopping, which saved both time and money.
“The McCoy Lubricator Cup” quickly became best in class. McCoy’s cup distributed oil evenly and regularly over an engine’s moving parts in such a unique and path-breaking way that McCoy was awarded his first patent.
“The McCoy Lubricator Cup” greatly reduced the need for maintenance and extended the time a train could continuously run by hours and sometimes days, making the operation of a train less costly and more profitable. The cup was said to be so good that many train engineers desired to pilot only trains that were equipped with the McCoy oiler system, not wanting a substitute in respect to McCoy’s product quality and design. Many would ask, “is this train equipped with ‘The Real McCoy?’ ”
Reginald F. Lewis is considered “the Jackie Robinson of the business world.” He was the first African American to close an overseas billion dollar leveraged buyout deal. He acquired an unprecedented global conglomerate of 64 companies in 31 countries, and paved the way for future black entrepreneurs.
“I want to inspire people. I want someone to look at me and say, ‘because of you I didn’t give up.'” Reginald F. Lewis
“Keep going. To build a better society in America. To be compassionate America… Keep going, no matter what.” Reginald F. Lewis, Chairman and CEO of TLC Beatrice International Holdings
Reginald F. Lewis’ company owned a major German based Ice Cream and Frozen deserts company, Artigel
Reginald F. Lewis’ company owned a major Ireland based snack food company, Tayto
Reginald F. Lewis’ company owned 2 French grocery store chains: Franprix and Leader Price
Reginald F. Lewis acquired sewing machine company McCall Pattern Company and later sold it for $65 million, making a 90-to-1 ROI
Jesse Russell completely digitized speech, which significantly reduced bandwidth by using certain modulation schemes and allowed 4 times the number of people on the same spectrum and was the first digital cellular system in any place in the world.
Previously, Jesse Russell pointed out in an interview, cell phones were put in cars. The problem was that much of the time when people placed a call, the recipient was not in a car and therefore not in a position to answer the call. Drawing on his own experiences growing up, he suggested there would be greater utility if people carried phones as opposed to keeping them in cars. That would “help people become more productive” and improve the utility of the cell phone. Once he sold his team on the concept, he sketched out a way to make phones smaller, cheaper, and accessible to people wherever they were. This helped launch a new era of mobile communications.
African American inventor, Emmit McHenry commercialized the Internet by creating the the .com code for Internet Domain Registration
Emmit McHenry and his business partner, Albert White started an engineering company named Network Solutions in 1979. For 16 years, he and his partners toiled away and built a solid company. They could not get money from any financial institutions so they mortgaged their properties and maxed out their credit cards.
They were awarded a contract with the National Science Foundation to create the U.S. Government’s and World first domain name addressing system for the Internet. This was back when the Internet was just a government project, and its commercial potential hadn’t been realized.
Emmit McHenry created a complex computer code whereby ordinary people can now surf the web or have e-mails without studying computer science. Emmit McHenry created what we know today simply as .com.
The U.S government granted Network Solutions an additional contract to continue developing a domain registry service for the internet as the sole domain name registrar for “.com, .net, .edu, .gov and .org” domains.
Frank Yerby became the first Black writer to reach best-seller status in the United States and the first Black writer to have a movie adapted by a major Hollywood studio, 20th Century Fox
“Frank Yerby first had his poems published in small magazines when he was 17, moved to Europe in the early 1950s because, as he said in a rare interview, the United States at that time was “no place for a young man whose list of ancestors read like a mini-United Nations.”
Yerby’s first literary success came in 1944, when he received the O. Henry Memorial Award for his short story “Health Card,” which focuses on the racial inequities faced by an African American soldier and his wife. Prior to that story, Yerby had written a protest novel about racial inequities in the South, but publishers rejected it. However, Frank Yerby was a black writer who dared to believe that he could earn a living as a writer.
Indeed, he went on to become the first African American to write a series of best-selling novels and the first black author to have a book purchased by a Hollywood studio for film adaptation. In 1947, the best-selling book, “The Foxes of Harrow,” was adapted by 20th Century Fox of the same name and was nominated for an Oscar.
During his prolific career, Yerby wrote 33 novels, sold more than 65 million books. Fox paid Frank Yerby $150,000 for the motion picture rights to The Foxes of Harrow, which was his first novel. Yerby was quoted by Ebony Magazine as insisting as a condition of the purchase, “I won’t stand to see any of the colored characters debased. I painted them as they were–human beings with human qualities–and if it’s filmed, they must remain that way.”
Frank Yerby went on to become the first black writer to become a millionaire from his pen. Frank Yerby’s popular novels were multimillion-selling historical romances set in the post Civil War South. His audience was mostly white housewives who enjoyed the moonlight and magnolia melodramas of a writer from Augusta, Ga. Few realized that Yerby was black and had long left the South to live in Europe. Few were also aware of the subtle message about the racial inequities of the South that permeated his work.
Michael Hollis is an example of the type of visionary and talented entrepreneur from the black community who also set an example of what the possibilities are and the need for more blacks to access the investment capital ecosystem
Air Atlanta: Billed as the “Airline Born to Serve Business” when it began in February of 1984, Air Atlanta was started not by an aviator, but by an attorney who saw a great opportunity. Michael Hollis was a graduate of Dartmouth and the University of Virginia School of Law, and a practicing lawyer when he set out in 1981 to establish an airline in Atlanta.
Michael Hollis received initial backing from the National Alliance of Federal and Postal Employees, a Black union whose pension fund committed $500,000 to invest as venture capital. After securing this funding, Hollis also was able to secure backing from the Equitable Life Assurance Society ($15 million) and the Aetna Life Insurance Company ($7.7 million). Air Atlanta had nearly $90 million in start-up funding by the time it took to the skies in 1984.
The airline started with 10 pilots, many of whom were recruited from established carriers like Continental and Braniff, and 50 flight attendants, many of them solicited as raw recruits from newspaper ads, and mechanics and support staff. At one point during Air Atlanta’s three years of existence, its non-union employee staff numbered 400. Hollis purchased an initial aircraft fleet of five Boeing 727s. Normally able to hold over 100 passengers, the planes were outfitted with wider, roomier seats amounting to only 88. Gourmet meals were served on china accompanied by cloth napkins. Passengers waiting to board were offered courtesy editions of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
Air Atlanta flew some three million passengers during its service life, most of which were business travelers. Its routes included New York, Memphis and Miami. Internal problems and lack of consistent cash flow helped bring the early demise of the first major commercial airline company owned by an African American.
Sam Cooke was a trailblazing recording artist who helped shape the soul and pop scene with hits like “You Send Me,” “Chain Gang” and “Sad Mood.” Forging a link between soul and pop, he had a diverse repertoire that attracted both black and white audiences, and started his own record label and publishing company.
The Father of Soul Music, Sam Cooke first reached the top of the charts in 1957 with “You Send Me.” A string of pop and R&B hits soon followed. He recorded his first single, 1957’s “Lovable,” under the pseudonym “Dale Cooke.” Later that year, Sam Cooke released his first number one hit, “You Send Me.” Music fans loved this ballad so much that it toppled Elvis’ “Jailhouse Rock” from the top of the charts. Before long he put his crystal-clear, velvet-smooth voice to work on such up-tempo tunes as “Only Sixteen” and “Everybody Loves To Cha Cha Cha.”
In addition to being a talented singer and songwriter, Cooke had business smarts. He established his own publishing company for his music in 1959 and negotiated an impressive contract with RCA in 1960. Not only did he get a substantial advance, but Cooke would also get ownership of his master recordings after 30 years. Getting this was a remarkable feat for any recording artist at the time. He continued to be a pioneer behind the scenes, founding his own record label in the early 1960s. Working with other artists on his label, Cooke helped develop the careers of Bobby Womack and Billy Preston, among others.
Sam Cooke was ahead of his time
Sam Cooke SAR’s label did not feature Sam Cooke, but rather featured all of Cooke’s artists such as the latter-day Soul Stirrers with Jimmie Outler and Johnnie Taylor singing lead, The Valentinos (including Bobby Womack), Billy Preston, Mel Carter, The Simms Twins, Johnnie Morisette, L. C. Cooke (Sam Cooke’s younger brother). Sam Cooke was the first major black artist to start his own independent record label.
Sam Cooke wasn’t just interested in singing and songwriting. He declared in a 1963 press release, “My future lies more in creating music and records than in being a nightclub performer.” SAR Records was intended to be just such an outlet, where Cooke could recruit acts he saw as special and exercise his producing arm. SAR co-founder J.W. Alexander explains: “We wanted to give young black artists the benefit of as good a production as they could get with a major company. We never thought of it as a training ground. We thought of it as an opportunity to contribute something back to the community.”
Saltpeter
Free Frank McWorter was the first African American to found a town, and establish a planned community in the United States.
A former Slave, “Free Frank” McWorter paid for his own freedom from slavery, found his family and freed them too, became a brilliant entrepreneur and founded/purchased a town.
“Free Frank” McWorter displayed an unmatched enterprising spirit even as his country denied him the full rights of citizenship.
Frank McWorter was born in 1777 in what is now Union County, S.C. His mother was Juba, a West African slave belonging to George McWhorter, who is assumed to be Frank’s father.
Even as a slave, Frank McWorter became skilled at manufacture of saltpeter and gunpowder and he was so efficient and proficient that he was able to hire himself out to earn money in his spare time.
He saved his money and first purchased his wife’s freedom, and then purchased his own freedom in 1819 at age forty-two. Frank McWorter changed his name to Free Frank when he purchased his freedom.
Soon after he became free, he purchased his oldest son Solomon’s freedom. In 1830, Free Frank McWorter migrated with free family members to the Illinois frontier near the Mississippi River, where he established a farm and the community of New Philadelphia. Over his lifetime he was able to purchase his remaining family members – ultimately responsible for the freedom of 16 family members at the cost of more than $500,000 in today’s dollars.
Free Frank started several successful businesses. Indeed, he turned his 160 acres of Illinois farmland into a cash operation by transporting his produce to the Mississippi River for sale. With the purchase of additional acreage he established the first known town platted by an African American, naming it New Philadelphia. Before the Civil War, New Philadelphia had become one of the stations along the Underground Railroad for shepherding escaped slaves to Canada.
New Philadelphia is significant because it was the first town in America founded by an African-American proprietor.
For a man’s life work to be to purchase the FREEDOM of his children and grandchildren is something remarkable and accomplishing something that seemed impossible.
“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” Muhammad Ali
Jake Simmons, Jr. was an oil tycoon who was once listed in Forbes Fortune 400 and was the ‘most feared’ black man in Oklahoma.
“One-tenth of the folks run the world. One-tenth watch them run it, and the other eighty percent don’t know what the hell’s going on.” Jake Simmons, Jr.
Jake Simmons, was born near Sawokla, Indian Territory in 1901. His father owned a large ranch near the town that would eventually be named Haskell. Jake Simmons, as a member of the Creek tribe, used the allotment system to build a prosperous cattle ranch. He and his several children took their land allotments in proximity to one another, creating the 1,000-acre spread. Jake Simmons grew up learning the value of hard work by herding cattle and mending fences for his father.
“To him, land represented an asset, not a lifestyle,” author Jonathan Greenberg wrote in the biography, “Staking a Claim: Jake Simmons Jr. and the Making of an African-American Oil Dynasty. By the time he was 10 years old young Jake had made up his mind never to be a farmer . . . ” ‘I want to be an oilman,’ he said.”
So prosperous was the Simmons ranch that it caught the attention of Booker T. Washington, one of the most influential brilliant and intellectuals visited the Simmons’ home while on a trip to Oklahoma. On his visit he convinced Jake to attend HBCU Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Washington would become a life-long friend and mentor to Jake Simmons. While attending Tuskegee, he worked summers at the Ford plant in Detroit. He was vice president of his senior class and spoke at his graduation in 1919.
After graduating from Tuskegee, Jake worked for a time in Detroit, but soon returned to Oklahoma. In the 1920s, oil was discovered on his allotment. Haskell was experiencing an oil boom, and men such as J. Paul Getty were drilling in the area. Simmons entered the oil business and became arguably one of the most successful African Americans in the history of the oil industry.
Simmons brokered oil leases in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Kansas and branched out into real estate, insurance and the cattle business. He worked with other successful oil men such as Frank Phillips, E.W. Marland and Henry Sinclair. His experience in brokering oil deals in Oklahoma led to his work in representing American oil companies in Africa.
Simmons was the first black to be appointed to the National Petroleum Council in 1969. He was also active in the civil rights movement. He fought for the rights of blacks in the courts, but was also a capitalist who believed in creating jobs to help others. Simmons opposed in 1938 a bond issue that would put money into a white school in the city of Muskogee but nothing into the black one. Despite shotgun blasts that blew out his windows, and callers shouting, “We’re gonna get you, nigger–you’re a dead man!,” he served as head of Oklahoma’s NAACP, was president of the Negro Chamber of Commerce, “single-handedly desegregated the Muskogee branch of the Knights of Columbus.”
“Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die life is a broken–winged bird that cannot fly.” Langston Hughes
”Always be prepared. Your opponent will have the advantage of colorlessness.” William Henry Hastie (1st African American Federal Judge and one of the twentieth century’s leading African American lawyers and jurists)
In 1986, her talk show aired. The Oprah Winfrey Show was the number one talk show for 24 years, winning numerous awards, including Emmys and People’s Choice Awards.
Oprah Winfrey, TV personality, actress, film producer and entrepreneur
Oprah Winfrey is a global media leader, philanthropist, producer and actress. She has created an unparalleled connection with people around the world, making her one of the most respected and admired people today. As Chairman and CEO, she’s guiding her successful cable network, OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, and is the founder of O, The Oprah Magazine and Harpo Films.
“Oprah Winfrey had a challenging early upbringing, but overcame that and at the age of 17, won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant and was offered an on-air job at WVOL, a radio station serving the African American community in Nashville, TN. Oprah also won a full scholarship to HBCU Tennessee State University, where she majored in speech communications and performing arts. While working at WVOL, Oprah’s broadcasting career was also taking off so she left TSU and signed on with a local television station as a reporter and anchor.
In 1976, she moved to Baltimore to join WJZ-TV News as a co-anchor. There, she co-hosted her first talk show, People Are Talking, while continuing to serve as anchor and news reporter. She had found a niche that perfectly suited her outgoing personality, and word soon spread to other cities. In January 1984, she was invited to Chicago to host a faltering half-hour morning program on WLS-TV. In less than a year, she turned AM Chicago into the hottest show in town. The format was soon expanded to an hour, and in September 1985 it was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show.
A year later, The Oprah Winfrey Show was broadcast nationally, and quickly became the number one talk show in national syndication. In 1987, its first year of eligibility, the show received three Daytime Emmy Awards in the categories of Outstanding Host, Outstanding Talk/Service Program and Outstanding Direction. The Following year, the show received its second conservative Emmy as Outstanding Talk/Service Program, and Oprah herself received consecutive Emmy as Outstanding Talk/Service Program, and Oprah herself received the International Radio and Television Society’s “Broadcaster of the Year” Award. She was the youngest person to receive the honor.
By the time America fell in love with Oprah Winfrey the talk show host, she had already captured the nation’s attention with her poignant portrayal of Sofia in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple. Oprah Winfrey’s performance earned her nominations for an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award as Best Supporting Actress. Critics again lauded her performance in Native Son, a movie adaptation of Richard Wright’s classic 1940 novel.
Her love of acting and her desire to bring quality entertainment projects into production prompted her to form her own production company, Harpo Productions, Inc., in 1986. Today, Harpo is a formidable force in film and television production, as well as magazine publishing and the Internet. In 1988, Harpo Productions, Inc. acquired ownership and all production responsibilities for The Oprah Winfrey Show from Capital Cities/ABC, making Oprah Winfrey the first woman in history to own and produce her own talk show. The following year, Harpo produced its first television miniseries, The Women of Brewster Place, with Oprah Winfrey as star and executive producer. It was quickly followed by the TV movies There Are No Children Here (1993), and Before Women Had Wings (1997), which she both produced and appeared in.”
Oprah Winfrey is an Academy Award-nominated actress for her role in “The Color Purple” and earned critical acclaim in “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.” Most recently, she produced and acted in the Academy Award-winning film “Selma.” For 25 years, Winfrey was host of the award-winning talk show “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
“It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from. The ability to triumph begins with you. Always.” Oprah Winfrey
Oprah has been a force in Hollywood – been an Executive Producer, Producer, starred in box office hits and nominated for an academy award.
by Trisha Gopal and Beryl Shereshewsky Updated 3:51 AM ET, Sat August 15, 2020
CNN – Dr. Lonnie Johnson might be one of the most brilliant inventors of our time. The scientist and engineer is responsible for over 100 patents, including a thermoelectric energy convertor and a thin film lithium battery. But his most famous invention? One of the best toys of the 20th century, the Super Soaker. And it came to existence all thanks to an accidental discovery.
“When I came up for the idea for the water gun, I was working on something else,” Johnson recalls. “I was working on a new idea for a heat pump that would use water as a working fluid instead of Freon.” At the time, there was concern about how the continuous use of Freon would impact the environment, so Johnson set out to see if he could develop a refrigeration system that used water, instead.
“I was experimenting with some nozzles that I machined, and I shot a stream of water across the bathroom and I thought, ‘Geez, maybe I should put this hard science stuff aside and work on something fun like a water gun. Maybe I could get enough money to support my habit,” Johnson recalls. This wasn’t the engineer’s first foray into toy-making. “When I was a kid, I always wanted to make a better toy, something I enjoyed playing with,” he remembers.
Oh, did we mention that he also invented the Nerf gun?
“Some of my most famous patents are for the Nerf guns and Super Soakers,” Johnson says. “For the N-Strike Nerf product line, those guns were all based on my patents … Super Soaker, of course, that entire line started as a result of my invention.”
From the time I got the idea for the Super Soaker, it took about seven years before I found a path to get it commercialized,” Johnson recalls. “Then, it was about 10 years from the time I got the idea to the time it became the No. 1 selling toy in the world. It’s a story of perseverance.”
A kid holding one of Dr. Lonnie Johnson’s most famous inventions, the Super Soaker
“It is not your environment, it is you – the quality of your mind, the integrity of your soul and the determination of your will that will decide your future and shape your life.” Dr. Benjamin E. Mays
Dr. Levi Watkins was the first surgeon to successfully implant an automatic heart defibrillator in a human patient
In an operating room at Johns Hopkins Hospital in February 1980, Dr. Watkins, a young African American cardiac surgeon made history when he stopped the heart of a 57 year old woman and successfully implanted the first automatic cardiac defibrillator. It is because of his vision and innovation this medical breakthrough has been responsible for saving the lives of millions worldwide.
He performed this groundbreaking procedure while he was also fighting to diversify the medical staff and student ranks at John Hopkins Hospital. His legacy of recruiting and mentoring minority students helped to change the landscape of the medical profession.
Dr. Watkins also pioneered the use of lasers in heart surgery. Dr. Watkins was the first black Chief Resident of Cardiac Surgery at Johns Hopkins.
Dr. Watkins attended Tennessee State University as an undergraduate, studying biology. He then made history at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where he became the first African American to study and graduate from the school with a medical degree. It was an experience he described over the years as isolating and lonely, but would be the first of many milestones.
“All my work since the integration of Vanderbilt University has been about inclusion, equity and opportunity,” Dr. Watkins said in an interview with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, whose all-white medical school denied him admission in 1966.
Black inventor and engineer Gerald “Jerry” Lawson was one of the few Black engineers of his time – who moved to Silicon Valley in 1968 and joined Fairchild Semiconductor. Jerry Lawson was primarily responsible for the innovation and use of interchangeable cartridges in consumer gaming consoles, changing the landscape of the gaming industry as we know it. In 2020, the gaming industry generated 140 billion. None of this modern-day success would have been possible if it wasn’t for Jerry Lawson.
Up until 1974, all commercial video game products had been based on discrete, dedicated logic circuitry to generate on-screen gameplay. No commercial production at the time used a computer as the heart of its architecture. Around 1973, Lawson started working on his own coinoperated video game, which he called “Demolition Derby” that used Fairchild’s F8 microprocessor – so he was a natural to lead an initiative to create a programmable and interchangeable video game cartridge. The challenge at the time was that video game systems did not have swappable ROM, where games were stored, so only one game could ever be played.
Fairchild’s President became aware of Jerry Lawson’s passion for video games and determined that Lawson should head up a new video game project. The project was top-secret. Tech historian and journalist Benj Edwards quoted Jerry Lawson as telling him: “I had a secret assignment. Even the boss that I worked for wasn’t to know what I was doing. I was directly reporting to a vice president at Fairchild with a budget.” Jerry Lawson led his engineering team to commence into unchartered territory. Jerry Lawson became the chief engineer of the video game division and built it from the ground up. “I was the number one employee. My set task was to work on the prototype,” he told Vintage Computing and Gaming.
“We were afraid — we didn’t have statistics on multiple-insertion and what it would do and how we would do it because it wasn’t done,” Jerry Lawson told Vintage Computer and Gaming. “I mean, think about it: nobody had the capability of plugging in memory devices in mass quantity like in a consumer product. Nobody.” At the time, it was unheard of to bring a multi-game, cartridge-based system to the consumer.
Under Jerry Lawson’s ingenuity, Fairchild’s Channel F was the first gaming console with its own microprocessor. Lawson created the gaming world’s first digital at-home joystick. The F8 microprocessor gave the system enough computing power to implement AI subroutines, which made the Channel F the first console system that allowed players to play against the computer. Before that, video games required a human opponent. The Channel F was also revolutionary because it was the first console system that could play programmable game cartridges. Before the Channel F, consoles could only play games that were coded on the system when the unit shipped. Under Lawson’s guidance, the Channel F even featured the very first “pause” button for a gaming console.
“He’s absolutely a pioneer,” said Al Alcorn, the Atari co-founder and Pong developer who competed against Lawson, when talking about his peer to the Mercury News. “When you do something for the first time, there is nothing to copy.”
Fairchild’s Channel F, the first game console to use cartridges
The first back-to-back 100-meter Olympic Champion, Wyomia Tyus has gone unnoticed or forgotten, undervalued and this happens too often to blacks – Tyus unparalleled accomplishments took place in sports, but it happens across the board including: business, commerce, technology and finance.
At the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Wyomia Tyus, one of legendary Coach Ed Temple’s Tigerbelles of Tennessee State University became the first person in history — man or woman to be crowned the fastest in the world in back-to-back Olympics — by winning two consecutive gold medals in the 100-meter dash in 1964 and 1968. It would take 20 years for anyone to match that feat (Carl Lewis defended his 100-meters gold in 1988), and nearly 50 years for anyone to surpass it (Usain Bolt won his third straight 100-meters gold in 2016). However, Wyomia Tyus never graced the cover of a Wheaties box or Sports Illustrated even though she had a “one-of-kind” accomplishment.
“The press was saying I was too old at 23,” Tyus said during an interview with Sky News. Despite many not expecting her to win the 100-meters at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, she proved them wrong – and created history! Tyus’s 400-meter relay team, which won the gold medal and set a new record, dedicated their medal to John Carlos and Tommie Smith (who both bowed their heads and raised their arms to the sky, fists clenched). Wyomia Tyus made a stand at those Games regarding human rights. Wyomia Tyus is one of history’s greatest Olympians and a pioneer in protesting for Civil Rights (she donned black shorts to protest the inhumane treatment of African Americans in the US during the 1968 Olympics). “I wore black shorts from day one rather than the white pair that was issued to us. It was because I was fighting for human rights and that was the right thing for me to do,” said Tyus, who was 23 at the time.”I just knew I had my dark shorts and this will be my way of standing with people [who] were saying what is happening in the world is unfair. I was brought up with this. I was brought up with Jim Crow [laws enforcing racial segregation] so that was my reason for wearing it.”
Wyomia Tyus is a Black woman who achieved unprecedented athletic success at a time when both Black people and women were struggling for recognition and equality. “It was … because I was not only Black but a woman. Because you’ll notice that no one — except Howard Cosell — was trying to notice me or give me a flag when I had done something no one else in the world had ever done… At the time, they were not about to bathe a Black woman in glory.”
Wyomia Tyus became a founding member and vital force in the formation in 1974 of the Women’s Sports Foundation – which set out to increase the participation of women in sports. Over three million girls and women have been supported by the Women’s Sports Foundation through hundreds of programs. “Without the Black Athletes, we would have been nothing,” said Donna de Varona, the foundation’s 1st president and founding member along with Billie Jean King and Wyomia Tyus. It was important for Wyomia Tyus to play a vital role in women gaining access and advancing in management positions in the sports industry and not just competing on the field or court.
The legacy of breakthrouhs and work accomplished in many fields and markets – the rich culture of success in many fields and markets – of black achievement and success – has too often been ignored, unnoticed, undervalued and wiped away. Our talented and exceptional – like Wyomia Tyus and Jesse Russell and Jerry Lawson deserve their recognition. And for those to come behind them from our community, they deserve the opportunity to dream, grow, evolve and to present their gifts to the world.
“Every time they talk about the 100 meters, they also have to speak of me and what I did, because I was the first.” Wyomia Tyus
Fueled by their belief in the “equality of all men under the law,” black attorneys challenged the racist practices of America’s legal structure though it seemed an insurmountable task in the early 20th Century – and one of those men was William Henry Hastie who was a brilliant and fierce civil rights lawyer.
William Henry Hastie was one of the twentieth century’s leading African American lawyers and jurists. Hastie distinguished himself as an educator, civil rights attorney, and a public servant. He successfully argued major civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. With Charles Hamilton Houston, his second cousin, Hastie dramatically improved the standing and reputation of the Howard University Law School during the 1930s and 1940s. Hastie was the first African American to be appointed as a federal district court judge and also the first African American to be appointed as a federal appellate judge. Hastie was also the first African American Governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Hastie was a proponent and major force for racial equality.
Hastie’s formal education followed his cousin Charles Hamilton Houston and graduated from Dumbar High School in Washington D.C. as class valedictorian in 1921 and went on to distinguish himself at Amherst College in 1925, again as valedictorian. Hastie further distinguished himself at Harvard Law School, becoming the second African American behind Charles Hamilton Houston to serve on the Harvard Law Review and earned a bachelor of law degree from Harvard in 1930 and a doctor of Jurisprudence degree in 1933. Hastie then joined Charles Hamilton Houston’s Washington, D.C. law firm.
From 1940 to 1942, he was a civilian aide to the United States Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, advocating for equal treatment of African Americans in the Army. One of the earliest and most celebrated evidences of Hastie’s integrity was his resignation, in the middle of the war, from the highest civilian post to which a black had been appointed – Special Adviser to Secretary Stimson. Hastie’s quarrel was with the Air Force, which resolutely continued to follow the flight patterns of Jim Crow. And the best way Hastie knew to call attention to this festering wrong was to remove himself from collaboration with those who had authority to take corrective action. When Hastie “took the unprecedented step” of resigning in protest, creating “consternation in official Washington” and setting a new standard of “character, conduct and courage. Never before–or since–had a Black resigned a post on his level to protest racism.” However, Hastie’s efforts would not be for naught; his reports on racism in the military attracted national notice, and in 1944 the Army high command ordered that African American officers be trained alongside white officers.
Throughout his legal career, Hastie successfully argued several major civil rights cases. In 1944, Hastie and Thurgood Marshall were the co-lead lawyers in the landmark Supreme Court case Smith v. Allwright. In the case, the Supreme Court held that the petitioner, a black man named Lonnie Smith, could not be precluded from voting in primary elections. This was a landmark ruling of the United States Supreme Court with regard to racial desegregation and voter suppression. The U.S. Supreme Court in Smith v. Allwright shocked the southern body politic by invalidating the white-only Democratic primary – interpreting the eleven states of the old Confederacy as enclaves of authoritarian rule, thus Smith was the beginning in a long process that culminated in the early 1970s with the consolidation of democratic rule in America.
In 1946 Hastie and Marshall also won Morgan v. Virginia, in which Hastie argued before the U.S. Supreme Court successfully that Virginia’s law enforcing segregation on interstate buses was unconstitutional. Irene Morgan, boarding a bus from Virginia to Maryland, was ordered to sit in the back, she objected saying the Virginia law did not apply to interstate journey.
Morgan v. Virginia was not a typical civil rights case in that it did not comment on a state’s right to segregate whites from blacks. Still, Morgan’s refusal to give up her seat foreshadowed Rosa Park’s more famous action a decade later and marked an early and important victory in the civil rights
movement. Morgan was a significant step on the road to overturning the rule of “separate but equal” that had been the law of the land ever since Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896).
William Henry Hastie once wrote: “St. Francis of Assisi is said to have prayed: ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.’ But at times it may be better for the Omnipotent One to give men the wit and the will to continue to plan purposefully and to struggle as best they know how to change things that seem immutable.”
William Henry Hastie and Thurgood Marshall won a major civil rights case, Morgan v. Virginia, in which Hastie argued before the Supreme Court successfully that Virginia’s law enforcing segregation on interstate busses was unconstitutional
Jeh Vincent Johnson was a brilliant black architect who forged pioneering and skilled designs including for several buildings on the Vassar College campus in Poughkeepsie, NY.
Jeh Vincent Johnson was the son to the prominent sociologist and President of Fisk University, Charles S. Johnson and was a ‘path breaking’ African American architect. Jeh Johnson founded the NOMA (National Organization of Minority Architects) — an organization that has opened doors for aspiring architects of color and women.
He also took an active role in social issues on the national level. In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson appointed him to serve on the National Commission on Urban Problems. He chaired the National Committee on Housing for the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and was awarded a special citation from the AIA’s New York chapter for his advocacy of equal opportunity in the field, his pioneering work on housing issues, and his commitment to maintaining the cultural integrity and social responsibility of the profession of architecture.
Growing up, Jeh Johnson was considered a child prodigy, finishing first in his class in high school. Jeh Johnson followed that up and received his A.B. degree from Columbia University in 1953 – graduating class valedictorian in the School of Architecture – before being drafted to serve in the Counter Intelligence Corps of the U.S. Army until 1954. He then earned his M.A. in architecture in 1958 from Columbia University.
In 1956, Johnson was hired by renowned architect to the stars, Paul R. Williams, as a young designer. After graduate school, he received the William Kinne Fellows Fellowship and traveled throughout Europe studying architecture. He later joined the architectural firm of Adams and Woodbridge Architects in 1958. In 1962 he cofounded Glindale and Johnson, along with William Glindale, where the focus was on single and multi-family housing, community centers, churches, and schools. Two years later Johnson accepted a faculty position in architecture and design at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. Vassar President, Elizabeth Bradley said Johnson “combined the broad, critical thinking of liberal arts with the practical tools of architecture. In both his teaching and his own architectural work, his contributions were nothing less than transformational.”
Johnson’s many architectural projects include the former Poughkeepsie Day School building, the Susan Stein Shiva Theater and Library, and the ALANA Cultural Center on the Vassar College campus – which is now named the: Jeh Vincent Johnson ALANA Cultural Center. As a teacher he has inspired hundreds of students to go on to successful careers as architects and teachers in design schools around the country, while his commitment to fairness and humane values in architecture and urban design has improved the quality of the lives of thousands of Americans.
Vassar College renamed the Cultural Center building after the path breaking “sociologically trained-architect” – Jeh Vincent Johnson
Victor Hugo Green’s – ‘Green Book’ saved black lives on the road. First published in 1936, the ‘Green Book’ was the brainchild of a Harlem-based postal carrier named Victor Hugo Green. Like most African Americans, Green had grown weary of the discrimination blacks faced whenever they ventured outside their neighborhoods.
As African Americans began to increase their ownership of automobiles to travel for business and pleasure, they still were restricted by racial segregation. State laws in the South required separate facilities for African Americans and many motels and restaurants in northern states excluded them too. In an effort to help African Americans avoid humiliation and danger when traveling, Victor Hugo Green created what was originally known as “The Negro Motorist Green Book.”
From the Green Book: “with the introduction of this travel guide in 1936, it has been our idea to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments, and to make his trips more enjoyable.”
The Green Book was a guide that provided African Americans a list of safe places to eat, sleep and even fuel their cars as they navigated unfamiliar and potentially unsafe parts of the country during the Jim Crow era. The first edition of the Green Book – 10 pages long, focused on hotels and restaurants in New York City as “Whites Only” policies meant that black travelers often couldn’t find safe places to eat and sleep, and so-called “Sundown Towns” – municipalities that banned black Americans after dark – were scattered across the country. Too often black families during the Jim Crow-era came into contact with racist business owners and the experience was a “painful embarrassments suffered which ruined a vacation or business trip.” The 1937 edition, titled “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” had 16 pages and focused on New York City businesses. It cost 25 cents. The guide proved popular, and Green expanded it to 24 pages covering 21 states and the District of Columbia the following year. It doubled in size in 1939, to 48 pagers and 44 states.
Green was able to expand the book by gathering field reports from fellow postal carriers as well as Green Book readers by offering cash payments to those who provided useful information. By the early 1940s, thousands of establishments nationwide – identified as either black-owned or verified to be nondiscriminatory – were listed in the Green Book. For example, hungry motorists passing through Washington, D.C., were encouraged to stop for a bite at several places, including the Sugar Bowl on Georgia Avenue, or the Brass Rail near modern-day Howard University. Those looking for a bar in the Atlanta area were told to try the Sportsman’s Smoke Shop or Butler’s. In Richmond, Virginia, the Rest-a-Bit was the go-to spot for a ladies’ beauty parlor.
This former ‘Green Book’ site, Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in New Orleans, LA opened in 1941. The Chase family opened this restaurant and it became legendary – as during the Civil Rights movement Martin Luther King, Jr. and local leaders would brainstorm in the upstairs meeting room of the restaurant. Dooky Chase’s was also the first art gallery for black artists in New Orleans. The food was/is some of the best anywhere.
Thanks to a sponsorship deal with Standard Oil, the Green Book was available for purchase at Esso (known today as ExxonMobil) gas stations across the country. Though largely unknown to whites, the Green Book sold upwards of 15,000 copies per year – so that by 1962 there were 2 million copies in circulation. Thanks to its service to the motoring public’s safety, it is thought to be one of America’s earliest – and least appreciated – highway safety devices.
“There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment.”
That was how the authors of the “Negro Motorist Green Book” ended the introduction to their 1948 edition. With Jim Crow still looming over much of the country, a Moto on the guide cover also doubled as a warning: “Carry your Green Book with you – You may need it.”
The ‘Green Book’ ceased publication in 1967, three years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. African Americans were fortunate that Victor Hugo Green’s – ‘Green Book’ offered safe passage throughout the United States.
The ‘Green Book’ was sold at churches, black businesses and at Esso gas stations, the only major retailer to offer them. Esso not only welcomed black customers – more than a third of its dealers in the 1940s were African Americans.
Dr. Patricia Bath’s revolutionary invention of a device known as the Laserphaco Probe changed the way eye surgeons restore or improve vision – which uses laser to get rid of cataracts – and her Laserphaco technique is used in more than 1 million cataract surgeries performed worldwide annually
HBCU, Howard University College of Medicine graduate, Patricia E. Bath, an ophthalmologist who took a special interest in combating preventable blindness in underserved populations and along the way became the first black female doctor to receive a medical patent. Indeed, The United States Patent and Trademark Office, which has singled out Dr. Bath’s achievement several times over the years, said in a 2014 news release that her work had “helped restore or improve vision to millions of patients worldwide.”
In an interview for the Changing the Face of Medicine exhibition, Dr. Bath described her “personal best moment”: using an implant procedure called keratoprosthesis to restore the sight of a woman in North Africa who had been blind for 30 years. “The ability to restore sight is the ultimate reward,” she said.
Dr. Bath studied chemistry and physics at Hunter College in Manhattan, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1964, and received her medical degree at Howard University in Washington in 1968. Following her graduation from the Howard University Medical School she went to New York to do an internship at Harlem Hospital and a fellowship at Columbia, setting the stage for her insights into the racial disparities in statistics on blindness and her proposals for community ophthalmology.
“Disproportionate numbers of blacks are blinded by preventable causes,” Dr. Bath wrote in a 1979 paper in the Journal of the National Medical Association. “However, thus far, no national strategies exist for reducing the excessive rates of blindness among the black population.”
After Dr. Bath relocated to Los Angeles, she became the first woman on the faculty of the department of ophthalmology at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at U.C.L.A. She was, she said, offered an office in the basement next to the animal laboratory. “I said it was inappropriate and succeeded in getting acceptable office space.”
In conducting the research that led to her first patent, Dr. Bath took a sabbatical in Europe in part to escape racism and sexism in the American academic and scientific worlds. Even when she succeeded, her achievement was not universally celebrated. “There was not acceptance,” she told Time, “and in some instances there was anger that petite moi, little me, had indeed shattered the glass ceiling, had a scientific breakthrough.”
“The narrative of surprise — it has to change,” she told the magazine. “I realize that when I achieve these things it helps what other women, and other people of color, black women, can do. But keep in mind: I never had any doubts.”
By 1983, Dr. Patricia 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.
Dr. Charles Richard Drew broke barriers in a racially divided America to become one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. Known today as “the father of blood banking,” Dr. Charles Drew was a pioneer in developing ways to store and transport blood. His methods were adopted by the American Red Cross.
His pioneering research and systematic developments in the use and preservation of blood plasma during World War II not only saved thousands of lives, but innovated the nation’s blood banking process and standardized procedures for long-term blood preservation and storage techniques.
Shortly after the Red Cross’s national blood donation program began in 1941, African Americans were excluded from giving blood. In 1942, the organization began allowing black people to give blood, but without any medical rationale, segregated blood by race. Dr. Charles Drew publicly protested the blood segregation policy. He argued that there was no scientific basis for it. “Further than that, you need blood. We are at War.”
A native of Washington, D.C., Dr. Charles Drew attended Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School, arguably the greatest high school in the history of the United States based on academic and professional achievements and in addition to Dr. Charles Drew produced celebrated graduates Sterling Brown, H. Naylor Fitzhugh, Nannie Helen Burroughs, William Henry Hastie, Charles Hamilton Houston, Robert Heberton Terrell, Benjamin O. Davis Jr., Paul Capel III, Robert C. Weaver, and James E. Bowman.
Dr. Charles Drew’s accomplishments as the creator of the modern-day blood bank came during a time when opportunities for African Americans in the medical field were nearly non-existent and society at large was beset with racial division and prejudice
Charles Drew performed academically in high school as an average student but was a gifted athlete recruited in 1922 on a football and track scholarship by Amherst College in Massachusetts. He was one of only 13 African Americans in a student body of 600, where the racial climate exposed him to hostility from opposing teams. His own football team passed over him as captain his senior year even though he was the team’s best player.
During World War II, Dr. Charles Drew developed a way to get life-saving blood plasma to service members injured in battle
Beyond sports, Charles Drew didn’t have a clear direction until a biology professor piqued his interest in medicine. Like many other fields, medicine was largely segregated, greatly limiting education career options for African Americans. For Charles Drew, the narrow road would lead to McGill University College of Medicine in Montreal Canada. There, Charles Drew distinguished himself, winning the annual scholarship prize in neuroanatomy; becoming elected to the medical honor society Alpha Omega Alpha; and staffing the McGuill Medical Journal. He also won the J. Francis Williams Prize in medicine after beating the top 5 students in an exam competition. In 1933, Charles Drew received his MD and CM (Masters of Surgery) degrees, graduating second in a class of 137.
Charles Drew’s interest in transfusion medicine began during his internship and surgical residency at Montreal Hospital (1933 – 1935) working with bacteriology professor John Beatie on ways to treat shock with fluid replacement. Charles Drew aspired to continue training in transfusion therapy at the Mayo Clinic, but racial prejudices at major American medical centers barred black scholars from their practices. He would instead join the faculty at HBCU Howard University College of Medicine, starting as a pathology instructor, and then progressing to surgical instructor and chief surgical resident at Freedmen’s Hospital.
In 1938, while earning a doctorate at Columbia University, Charles Drew won a fellowship to train at Presbyterian Hospital in New York with eminent surgeon Allen Whipple. Instead of following the traditional path of residents to gain experience in surgical pathology and bacteriology, surgical laboratory research, outpatient clinic, operating rooms and surgical wards. Whipple assigned Drew to work under John Scudder, who was granted funding to set up an experimental blood bank. This would prevent him from privileges afforded to his white peers, especially direct access to patients.
Dr. Charles Drew said the following on January 27, 1947: “So much of our energy is spent in overcoming the constricting environment in which we live that little energy is left for creating new ideas or things. Whenever, however, one breaks out of this rather high-walled prison of the “Negro problem” by virtue of some worthwhile contribution, not only is he himself allowed more freedom, but part of the wall crumbles. And so it should be the aim of every student in science to knock down at least one or two bricks off that wall by virtue of his own accomplishment.”
Dr. Charles Drew organized America’s first large-scale blood bank and trained a generation of black physicians at Howard University. He also became the first African American to be appointed an examiner for the American Board of Surgery. At Howard University he devoted himself to training and mentoring his medical students and surgical residents, and raising standards in black medical education. He also campaigned against the exclusion of black physicians from local medical societies, medical specialty organizations, and the American Medical Association.
“I am certain that man is made both good and bad by his institutions…that these institutions are responsible for the shaping of our personalities, our morals, and the patterns of our social relations. The reshaping of our institutions, guided by the highest ideals of religious conviction, is our responsibility (1950).” Charles S. Johnson
