(PAGE 3) Little Known Black History Facts
48.
In response to the Brown vs. Board of Education decision the White Citizens Council
was formed. Their primary goal was to continue segregation, despite the ruling that
“separate but equal was unconstitutional.”
47.
In 1965, Bill Cosby became the first African American to star in a television series with
his role opposite Robert Culp in “I Spy.”
46.
Tennessee was the first state to pass a law for the enlistment of “all male free persons of
color between the ages of fifteen and fifty years of age.”
45.
Fredrick Eversley, an African American sculptor, created a stainless steel sculpture of
two wing-like shapes framed by neon lights at the entrance to the Miami International
Airport.
44.
A.W. Martin is the African American inventor that created the door lock.
43.
Fanny Jackson Coppin, bought into freedom by her aunt, was an educator and
missionary. Her innovations as head principle of the Institute of Colored Youth included
a practice teaching system and an elaborate industrial training department.
42.
The African American Advisors to President Franklin D. Roosevelt were called the “Black
Brain Trust.”
41.
Iowa-born Archibald Alexander attended Iowa State University and earned a civil
engineering degree in 1912. While working for an engineering firm, he designed the
Tidal Basin Bridge in Washington, D.C. Later he formed his own company, designing
Whitehurst Freeway in Washington, D.C. and an airfield in Tuskegee, Alabama, among
other projects.
40.
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Edward Alexander Bouchet was the first African
American to graduate (1874) from Yale College. In 1876, upon receiving his Ph.D. in
physics from Yale, he became the first African American to earn a doctorate. Bouchet
spent his career teaching college chemistry and physics.
39.
Vermont was the first U.S. territory, in 1777, to abolish slavery. Pennsylvania was the
first state to do so, in 1780.
38.
George Washington Carver designed the concept of a moveable school, with teachers
and equipment traveling to remote areas to instruct the poor in agriculture and nutrition.
This concept was later adopted in underdeveloped areas around the world.
37.
Dr. William Hinton, a Black physician, is credited with creating a test to detect the
syphilis disease.
36.
Allen Allensworth, in 1908, founded a Black town where African Americans could run
their own businesses and government.
35.
Philip Emeagwali wrote a computer program that won a prize in the Price/Performance
category of the 1989 Gordon Bell competition (for "price-performance ratio as measured
in megaflop/s per dollar on a genuine application"). The program performed operations
at a rate of 3.1 gigaflops per second.
34.
Sojourner Truth’s real name was Isabella Baumfree.
33.
Joseph N. Jackson invented a programmable remote control for television.
32.
In a 22-hour operation in 1984, Dr. Benjamin Carson, Sr., an African American surgeon,
successfully separated a pair of twins born joined at the head.
31.
Poet Rita Dove served as the nation's poet laureate from 1993 to 1995. She also won a
Pulitzer Prize for a collection of her poems published in 1986, only the second African
American poet to win that prize.
30.
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Rebecca Cole was the second black woman to
graduate from medical school (1867). She joined Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first white
woman physician, in New York and taught hygiene and childcare to families in poor
neighborhoods.
29.
Lincoln University is the oldest Historically Black University in the U.S. It was founded in
1854.
28.
Andrew Brimmer was appointed the first Black person to serve on the Federal Reserve
Board in 1966.
27.
Nelson Mandela, South African president and political activist, was released from prison
after 27 years in February 1990.
26.
On August 20, 1948, a 42-year-old Satchel Paige pitched the Cleveland Indians to a 1-0
victory over the White Sox in front of 78,382 fans, a night game attendance record that
still stands. He also holds the record for the oldest “rookie” debut, at 42 years old, and
the oldest player to compete at 59 years old.
25.
M.C. Harney, an African American inventor, invented the lantern lamp, which replaced
the use of candles as the primary source of lighting when daylight was unavailable. His
device was patented on August 19, 1884.
24.
Marie V. Brittan Brown, a female African American inventor, designed a security system
which was patented on December 2, 1969.
23.
Andrew "Rube" Foster organized the Negro National League, the first Black baseball
league, in 1920. The first independent Black professional baseball team was the Cuban
Giants, formed in 1885.
22.
In 1959, the Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors in Prince Edward Co., Virginia,
voted to close its public schools in a show of “massive resistance” against integration.
The vast majority of the county's 1,700 African American students and some white
students went without formal education from 1959–1964.
21.
Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., became the first African American general in the U.S. Air Force
in 1954.
20.
Joseph Hayne Rainey was the first African American elected to the U.S. House of
Representatives. He was a congressman from South Carolina elected to that post in
1890 and enjoyed the longest tenure of any Black during Reconstruction.
19. Sir William Arthur Lewis, a professor of economics at Princeton University, was the
first African American to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. He received the award in 1979
which represents the highest level of accomplishment for an economist.
18.
February was chosen as Black History Month because two important birthdays occur in
February—that of Abraham Lincoln, the author of the Emancipation Proclamation, and
that of Frederick Douglass, an early African American abolitionist.
17.
In 1959, Dr. William C. Davis, invented instant mashed potatoes. Not too surprisingly, he
invented them while doing research on potatoes at the University of Idaho.