Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr., was the first African-American general for the US Army, after starting as a volunteer in the Spanish-American War. Following many years of service he became an adviser for the military on racial discrimination, pushing for full integration of the armed forces. He earned a Bronze Star Medal and Distinguished Service Medal.…
Category: Black History Month
Black History Month
Black History Month Feb. 19: Daniel Alexander Payne – 1st Black College President
Daniel Alexander Payne (February 24, 1811 – November 2, 1893) was an American bishop, educator, college administrator and author. A major shaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), Payne stressed education and preparation of ministers and introduced more order in the church, becoming its sixth bishop and serving for more than four decades (1852–1893)…
Black History Month
Black History Month Feb. 18: Sarah E. Goode – 1st Black woman to be granted a patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Born into slavery in 1850, Sarah E. Goode was the first African American woman to be granted a patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. After being freed from slavery at the end of the Civil War, Goode moved to Chicago, where she started a career as an entrepreneur. With her husband Archibald,…
Black History Month, OhioMBE
Black History Month Feb. 17: Frederick Douglass Patterson – 1st Black Car Manufacturer
Frederick Douglass Patterson was born in 1871. During his childhood, his father became the sole owner of the C. R. Patterson and Sons Carriage Company of Greenfield, Ohio. After attending college and spending a couple of years as a teacher, Patterson joined this company. He took charge of the business following his father’s death in…
Black History Month
Black History Month Feb. 16: Maggie Lena Walker – First woman to be a bank president
Maggie Lena Walker was the first woman in America — of any color — to charter and serve as president of a bank. Maggie was born on July 15, 1864, in Richmond, Virginia. She attended school and graduated in 1883, having been trained as a teacher. She married a brick contractor in 1886 and left her…
Black History Month
Black History Month Feb. 15, – bell hooks, Black feminist scholar
bell hooks (who spells her name without capitals) is one of the most widely published black feminist scholars in the U.S. An outspoken cultural critic, educational theorist and professor of English, she is famous for her analyses of the politics of race, gender, class and culture, and for her attacks on what she calls the…
Black History Month
Black History Month Feb. 14: Elijah McCoy, inventor
The son of former slaves from Kentucky who had escaped via the Underground Railroad to Canada, at 15 years of age Elijah McCoy traveled to Scotland seeking the educational opportunities from which blacks were excluded in the Americas. He trained in mechanical engineering and then moved to the United States, where he was denied engineering…
Black History Month, OhioMBE
Black History Month – Feb 13: Henrietta Lacks, progenitor of the HeLa cell line
Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1, 1920, in Roanoke, Virginia. Lacks died of cervical cancer on October 4, 1951, at age 31. Cells taken from her body without her knowledge were used to form the HeLa cell line, which has been used extensively in medical research since that time. Lacks’s case has sparked legal…
Black History Month
Black History Month Feb. 12 – NAACP founded
Founded on Feb. 12, 1909 in New York City by a group of black and white citizens committed to social justice, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the nation’s largest and strongest civil rights organization. The NAACP’s principal objective is to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of…
Black History Month
Black History Month Feb. 10: Bessie Coleman – 1st Black woman to earn a pilot’s license
Bessie Coleman was the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license. Because flying schools in the United States denied her entry, she taught herself French and moved to France, earning her license from France’s well-known Caudron Brother’s School of Aviation in just seven months. Coleman specialized in stunt flying and parachuting, earning a living…