[Eoscstudents] Black History

[Levenia Carey]

Here are a few more key players.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

QUICK FACTS

 

DID YOU KNOW?

 

Garrett A. Morgan (1875-1963) was the first black to receive a patent 
for a safety hood and smoke protector.   He demonstrated its worth in 
1916 by rescuing workers trapped in a smoke-filled tunnel of the 
Cleveland, Ohio, waterworks.  Born on a farm near Paris, Kentucky, 
Morgan became a very astute businessman and inventor in Cleveland.  
Garrett A. Morgan liked to invent things.  In 1913, he discovered a 
material that straightened hair.  The money he made with this product 
let him work on other inventions. The Gas Mask was one of his most 
famous.  It helped save many lives during World War I.

 

In 1923, Garrett Morgan patented a three-way automatic traffic signal 
which he sold to General Electric. The traffic lights that help you 
cross the street safely today evolved from this invention.

 

Later he and his colleagues started the "Cleveland Call and Post" which 
is today a popular African-American newspaper.

HENRY "HANK" AARON (1934-    ) was a baseball player with the Atlanta 
Braves who broke Babe Ruth's record of 714 home runs.  Born in Mobile, 
Alabama, the third of eight children, Aaron began his professional 
career in 1952 with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American 
League. The Clowns paid him $200 a month, and Aaron led the league with 
a .467 average his first season.  The Braves, than based in Milwaukee, 
purchased his contract for $10,000 in 1954.  Three years later, he was 
named National League MVP.  When it became clear that he would probably 
break Babe Ruth's record, Aaron received thousands of hate-filled 
letters, some of which threatened his life.  However, he went on to hit 
his 715th home run on April 8, 1974, in a game against the Los Angeles 
Dodgers.  He retired in 1976 with a home run total of 755.  Aaron became 
a vice president with the Atlanta Braves and was elected to the Baseball 
Hall of Fame in 1982.  "I had to break the record," he said, "I had to 
do it for Jackie [Robinson] and my people and myself and for everybody 
who ever called me a nigger."  

In 1893 * Nancy Green (1831-1898) a former slave from Montgomery County, 
Kentucky, was the first Aunt Jemima and the world's first living 
trademark. She made her debut at age fifty-nine at the Columbian 
Exposition in Chicago, where she served pancakes in a booth.  The Aunt 
Jemima Mills Company distributed a souvenir lapel button which bore her 
photograph and the caption, "I'se in town honey."  The slogan later 
became the slogan on the company's promotional campaign.  Green was the 
official trademark for three decades.

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-   ), poet and novelist, was the first black to 
win a Pulitzer Prize for her book of poetry "Annie Allen."  She became 
established as a major American poet, and in 1976, she was the first 
black woman inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters.  A 
sensitive interpreter of Northern ghetto life, she began to write poetry 
at age seven; her poems were published in the Chicago Defender.  From 
1969 on, she has promoted the idea that blacks must develop their own 
culture.  She changed her writing style in an effort to become 
accessible to the ordinary black reader.  She was poet laureate of 
Illinois for sixteen years, and is poetry consultant to the Library of 
Congress.   In 1989 she received a lifetime achievement award from the 
National Endowment for the Arts.

 

Gwendolyn grew up in the Chicago suburb of Bronzeville.  Education, art, 
and music were very important to Gwendolyn's family, and she was 
encouraged to express herself through writing.  Her first poem was 
published when she was only 13 years old.  Her poems portray the lives 
and suffering of inner-city African-Americans.  Some of her poems are 
especially appealing to children.  

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