Little Known Black History Facts
Dr. Andrea Hayes-Jordan is the country’s first black female pediatric surgeon. She currently serves as an Associate Professor at two major Texas hospitals. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Medical School, Dr. Hayes-Jordan extended her education an additional two years so that she could become one of the few pediatric surgical oncologists in the country. […]
Front and center at the winter Olympic games in Sochi, Russia are five black athletes who could, individually, make more Olympic black history. Beginning with speed skater Shani Davis, who already made history by becoming the first Black male athlete to win a Winter Games Olympic individual sport medal in 2006. Davis could become the […]
In 1827, early black author Robert Roberts introduced a book called – The House Servant’s Directory or A monitor for private families: comprising hints on the arrangement and performance of servants’ work. The book was a guide for house servants that helped them to understand the rules of keeping a prominent white household. It also […]
Just in time for payday… The new sleek $100 bills were released by the U.S. Federal Reserve on October 8, 2013. The design was the creation of 43-year-old African American artist, Brian Thompson. Thompson walks in his father’s footsteps, who served as a cylinder maker at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing in D.C. […]
During the 19th century, black-owned barbershops had mostly prominent, white clientele. It was difficult for a black man to approach a black barber for a shave or haircut using the same instruments he used on the white customers, even in the north. The shops were run by either slaves or “waiting men” or by freedmen […]
African American tech executive John Thompson has been appointed the new chairman of Microsoft Corporation, replacing chairman and co-founder Bill Gates. Thompson is the former CEO of Symantec Corporation and hopes to bring Microsoft into better competition with Apple and Google. He was the first and only African American leader of a major technology company […]
The Jackson Rooming House, the “Boarding House of the Stars” in Tampa, Florida, served as the only lodging for black entertainers and civil rights leaders during segregation. Located at 851 Zack Street, the Jackson Rooming House was the place to stay for Count Basie, Cab Calloway, James Brown, Ella Fitzgerald, and Ray Charles. The home […]
In a pile of reel-to-reel cassette tapes in an Arizona Goodwill store, was a rare taped recording of a speech made by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The woman who found it, Mary Scanlon, had no idea the tape was rare when she bought it for $3. Dr. King made the speech at Arizona State […]
In 1964, the marchers for civil rights and equality of African Americans sang the song that became known as the Civil Rights anthem: “We Shall Overcome”. With chords and words built from old spirituals, the song was the soundtrack of struggle and Dr. King’s promiseland. What some may not have known is that “We Shall […]
Philippa Schuyler was a pianist child prodigy, born in the 1930’s. She composed a famous piece called “Harlem’s Mozart: The Shirley Temple of American Negroes.” Born to a black journalist and a white daughter of a Texas ranger, (who had at one time, worked as a bathing beauty for a local slave owner), Philippa’s parents […]
At 89 years-old, Morrie Turner, who is the first nationally syndicated African American cartoonist in America, was still making cartoons for the children of Sacramento. Turner sketched the first black comic strip called “Wee Pals”, which hit the newspapers of Chicago in 1965. Turner described his first comic strips as challenging. The papers were very […]
Scientists have recovered the first genome from the skeleton of a 7,000-year-old European hunter-gatherer. The discovery comes from a human skeleton found in 2006 in the La Braña-Arintero cave complex in northwest Leon, Spain. What the scientists have found is that the man, who was from the Mesolithic period between 5-10,000 years ago, was European […]
