Category: 1900 – 1949

02Jul

July 2 1917- East Saint Luis

GM – FBF – Today, I will share with you a crazy time in East St. Louis, IL. years before what happens in Tulsa, OK.

Remember – ” They were dragging us from our homes and killing us. Where is the President to help us.” – Unknown

Today in our History – July 2, 1917 – East Saint Louis go on a people hunt.

The city of East St. Louis, Illinois was the scene of one of the bloodiest race riots in the 20th century. Racial tensions began to increase in February, 1917 when 470 African American workers were hired to replace white workers who had gone on strike against the Aluminum Ore Company.

The violence started on May 28th, 1917, shortly after a city council meeting was called. Angry white workers lodged formal complaints against black migrations to the Mayor of East St. Louis. After the meeting had ended, news of an attempted robbery of a white man by an armed black man began to circulate through the city. As a result of this news, white mobs formed and rampaged through downtown, beating all African Americans who were found. The mobs also stopped trolleys and streetcars, pulling black passengers out and beating them on the streets and sidewalks. Illinois Governor Frank O. Lowden eventually called in the National Guard to quell the violence, and the mobs slowly dispersed. The May 28th disturbances were only a prelude to the violence that erupted on July 2, 1917.

After the May 28th riots, little was done to prevent any further problems. No precautions were taken to ensure white job security or to grant union recognition. This further increased the already-high level of hostilities towards African Americans. No reforms were made in police force which did little to quell the violence in May. Governor Lowden ordered the National Guard out of the city on June 10th, leaving residents of East St. Louis in an uneasy state of high racial tension.

On July 2, 1917, the violence resumed. Men, women, and children were beaten and shot to death. Around six o’ clock that evening, white mobs began to set fire to the homes of black residents. Residents had to choose between burning alive in their homes, or run out of the burning houses, only to be met by gunfire. In other parts of the city, white mobs began to lynch African Americans against the backdrop of burning buildings. As darkness came and the National Guard returned, the violence began to wane, but did not come to a complete stop.

In response to the rioting, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sent W.E.B. DuBois and Martha Gruening to investigate the incident. They compiled a report entitled “Massacre at East St. Louis,” which was published in the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis. The NAACP also staged a silent protest march in New York City in response to the violence. Thousands of well-dressed African Americans marched down Fifth Avenue, showing their concern about the events in East St. Louis.

The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) also responded to the violence. On July 8th, 1917, the UNIA’s President, Marcus Garvey said “This is a crime against the laws of humanity; it is a crime against the laws of the nation, it is a crime against Nature, and a crime against the God of all mankind.” He also believed that the entire riot was part of a larger conspiracy against African Americans who migrated North in search of a better life: “The whole thing, my friends, is a bloody farce, and that the police and soldiers did nothing to stem the murder thirst of the mob is a conspiracy on the part of the civil authorities to condone the acts of the white mob against Negroes.”

A year after the riot, a Special Committee formed by the United States House of Representatives launched an investigation into police actions during the East St. Louis Riot. Investigators found that the National Guard and also the East St. Louis police force had not acted adequately during the riots, revealing that the police often fled from the scenes of murder and arson. Some even fled from stationhouses and refused to answer calls for help. The investigation resulted in the indictment of several members of the East St. Louis police force.
Research more about race riots in America and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

28Jun

June 28 1900- Harriet E. Wilson

GM – FBF – I know that most of us have read or listened to an Ida B. Wells speach but did you know that their was a black lady auther long before her? Today, I will share that story with you. Enjoy!

Remember – “I wrote the book to tell my story and what I went through growing up in this new land. Now they want me to go to different cities speaking about it. I don’t do that good. I hear tell that a young negro girl is doing that, I hope one day I can listen to her speak about lynchings and civil rights. They say she is really good. God bless that child”

Today in our History – June 28, 1900 – Harriet E. Wilson (The first Black female to publish an article in the United States dies)

Harriet E. Wilson is considered the first female African-American novelist, as well as the first African American of any gender to publish a novel on the North American continent. Her novel Our Nig, or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black was published anonymously in 1859 in Boston, Massachusetts; and sunk into literary obscurity until 1983 when Henry Louis Gates republished the novel and documented it as the first African-American novel published in the United States.

The novel’s discovery forced literary historians to restructure the chronology of Black literature, displacing William Wells Brown from his previously accepted position as the first African American novelist. His Clotel: or, The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States was originally published in London in 1853, but did not appear in the United States until 1864, when it was published in Boston as Clotelle: A Tale of the Southern States. Also, the novel, The Bondwoman’s Narrative by Hannah Crafts, published for the first time in 2002, may have been written before Wilson’s book,
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Born Harriet E. “Hattie” Adams in Milford, New Hampshire, Wilson was the mixed-race daughter of Margaret Ann (or Adams) Smith, a washerwoman of Irish ancestry, and Joshua Green, an African-American “hooper of barrels.” After her father died when she was young, her mother abandoned her at the farm of Nehemiah Hayward Jr., a well-to-do Milford farmer “connected to the Hutchinson Family Singers”. Wilson’s mother died aged twenty-seven in Boston, after a violent and intoxicated quarrel with her Black partner. As an orphan, Wilson was bound by the courts as an indentured servant to the Hayward family until the age of 18. They overworked her mercilessly and ruined her health.

Wilson struggled to make a living after gaining her freedom. She married twice and her only son died at age seven in the poor house, where she had placed him while trying to survive as a widow.

On October 6, 1851, Wilson married Thomas Wilson in Milford. Their son, George Mason Wilson, was likely born in May or June of 1852. George, who was probably their first and only child was born at Goffstown, New Hampshire. As Gates explained in his introduction to the second edition of Our Nig, “One of the letters appended to Our Nig states that, abandoned by her husband, the author…was forced…to go to the ‘County House,’ where she gave birth to a child.”After the death of her husband, Wilson married a French apothecary named John Gallatin Robinson, who was 18 years her junior.
Wilson wrote only one novel, Our Nig. On August 18, 1859, she copyrighted it, and deposited a copy of the novel in the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts.

On September 5, 1859, the novel was published anonymously by George C. Rand and Avery, a publishing firm in Boston. She wrote her novel in an attempt to raise enough money to be reunited with her child. In her preface, Wilson wrote, “In offering to the public the following pages, the writer confesses her inability to minister to the refined and cultivated, the pleasure supplied by abler pens. It is not for such these crude narrations appear. Deserted by kindred, disabled by failing health, I am forced to some experiment which shall aid me in maintaining myself and child without extinguishing this feeble life.” Toward that end, Wilson asked, “I sincerely appeal to my colored brethren universally for patronage, hoping that they will not condemn this attempt of their sister to be erudite, but rally around me a faithful band of supporters and defenders.”
Unfortunately, the hoped-for patronage did not materialize, and tragically, George died of fever less than six months after her novel was published.

By the 1860s, Wilson had come to be known as “the colored medium” and was available for seances and readings. She was associated with the Spiritualist church and was listed in the Banner of Light as a trance reader and lecturer. A newspaper reported her lecturing on the topic throughout New England, including the towns of Lynn, Stoughton, Stoneham, and Worcester, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut. One report counts an audience of 2,500 at one of these gatherings. Wilson also delivered lectures on labor reform, and children’s education. Although the texts of her talks have not survived, newspaper reports imply that she often spoke about her life experiences.

When she was not pursuing Spiritualistic activities, Wilson was employed as a nurse and healer (“clairvoyant physician”). For nearly 20 years from 1879 to 1897, she was the housekeeper of a boarding house in a two-story dwelling at 15 Village Street (near the present corner of Dover [now East Berkeley Street] and Tremont Streets in the South End.) She rented out rooms, collected rents and provided basic maintenance.

Despite Wilson’s active and fruitful life after Our Nig, there is no evidence that she ever wrote anything else for publication.
On June 28, 1900, Hattie E. Wilson died in the Quincy Hospital in Quincy, Massachusetts. She was buried in the Cobb family plot in that town’s Mount Wollaston Cemetery. Her plot number is listed as 1337, “old section.” Reserch more about woman authers and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!.

13Jun

June 13 1908- Thomas Greene Wiggins

GM – FBF – Black Music Month is almost over and you have listened to and viewed some of the great Individual artists of our time. When I was getting my first Master’s in Wisconsin, Radio & Television Broadcasting. My teacher would always single me out since I was working on one of the biggest radio stations in the mid-west and he asked me did I know about “The Last Slave” and played :30 seconds of “The Battle of Manassas” being embarrassed I listened to Tom Wiggins, George Washington Johnson, Scott Joplin and W.C. Handy. Today let’s gain knowledge of “The Last Slave”, Enjoy!

Remember – Ray Charles attended school at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine from 1937 to 1945 and his musical teacher Mrs. Lawrence would play some old beautiful songs by “The Last Slave” and always told me that I could be just as good as “Blind Tom Wiggins”, I set out to be better – Ray Charles

Today in our History – June 13, 1908 – THE LAST SLAVE DIES

Thomas Greene Wiggins was born May 25, 1849 to Mungo and Charity Wiggins, slaves on a Georgia plantation. He was blind and autistic but a musical genius with a phenomenal memory. In 1850 Tom, his parents, and two brothers were sold to James Neil Bethune,a lawyer and newspaper editor in Columbus, Georgia. Young Tom was fascinated by music and other sounds, and could pick out tunes on the piano by the age of four. He made his concert debut at eight, performing in Atlanta.
In 1858 Tom was hired out as a slave-musician, at a price of $15,000. In 1859, at the age of 10, he became the first African American performer to play at the White House when he gave a concert before President James Buchanan. His piano pieces “Oliver Galop” and “Virginia” Polka” were published in 1860. During the Civil War he was back with his owner, raising funds for Confederate relief. By 1863 he played his own composition, “Battle of Manassas.” . This continued guardianship of Blind Tom by the Bethune family following emancipation caused some to refer to Wiggins as “the last slave.”
By 1865, 16-year-old Tom Wiggins, now “indentured” to James Bethune, could play difficult works of Bach, Chopin, Liszt, Beethoven, and Thalberg. He also played pieces after one hearing, and memorized poems and text in foreign languages. Advertising claimed Tom was untaught, but in fact he was tutored by a Professor of Music who traveled with him.
James Neil Bethune took Tom Wiggins to Europe where he collected testimonials from music critics Ignaz Moscheles and Charles Halle, which were printed in a booklet “The Marvelous Musical Prodigy Blind Tom.” With these and other endorsements, Blind Tom Wiggins became an internationally recognized performer. By 1868 Tom and the Bethune family lived on a Virginia farm in the summer, while touring the United States and Canada the rest of the year, averaging $50,000 annually in concert revenue. James Bethune eventually lost custody of Tom to his late son’s ex-wife, Eliza Bethune. Charity Wiggins, Tom’s mother, was a party to the suit, but she did not win control of her son or his income.
Blind Tom Wiggins gave his last performance in 1905.

He died three years later on June 13, 1908 at the age of 59 at his manager’s home in Hoboken, New Jersey. Blind Tom’s story became the subject of great interest around the turn of the twenty-first century. Articles about him have appeared in such periodicals as the New Yorker and the Oxford American, and in 1999 pianist John Davis made a new recording of fourteen of Blind Tom’s original pieces. In 2002 the 7 Stages Theatre in Atlanta produced a play based on Wiggins’s life entitled Hush: Composing Blind Tom Wiggins. Columbus State University holds a small collection of Blind Tom’s original sheet music. Research more about this great American artist and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

07Jun

June 7 1905- John Albert Burr

Today in our History – Most people who have to cut their lawns are grateful in many ways but during the turn of the Century
many looked unfavorably towards him because someone else they thought should have got the Idea first.As we know this America who makes your weekends go faster was the person who put in the patent first. Let’s read about the Inventor. Enjoy!

REMEMBER – I have always said that American who are blessed with morden eqiotment will always beat the one who doesn’t. – John Albert Burr

Today in our History -June 7, 1905 – Do you know which company was the first to hold a meeting with John Albert Burr?. Briggs & Straton Company – Wisconsin.

If you have a manual push mower today, it likely uses design elements from 19th Century black American inventor John Albert Burr’s patented rotary blade lawn mower.

On May 9, 1899, John Albert Burr patented an improved rotary blade lawn mower. Burr designed a lawn mower with traction wheels and a rotary blade that was designed to not easily get plugged up from lawn clippings. John Albert Burr also improved the design of lawn mowers by making it possible to mow closer to building and wall edges.

You can view U.S. patent 624,749 issued to John Albert Burr.

John Burr was born in Maryland in 1848, at a time when he would have been a teenager during the Civil War. His parents were slaves who were later freed, and he may also have been a slave until age 17. He didn’t escape from manual labor, as he worked as a field hand during his teenage years.

But his talent was recognized and wealthy black activists ensured he was able to attend engineering classes at a private university. He put his mechanical skills to work making a living repairing and servicing farm equipment and other machines. He moved to Chicago and also worked as a steelworker. When he filed his patent for the rotary mower in 1898, he was living in Agawam, Massachusetts.

“The object of my invention is to provide a casing which wholly encloses the operating gearing so as to prevent it from becoming choked by the grass or clogged by obstructions of any kind,” reads the patent application.

His rotary lawn mower design helped reduce the irritating clogs of clippings that are the bane of manual mowers. It was also more maneuverable and could be used for closer clipping around objects such as posts and buildings. Looking at his patent diagram, you will see a design that is very familiar for manual rotary mowers today.

Powered mowers for home use were still decades away. As lawns become smaller in many newer neighborhoods, many people are returning to manual rotary mowers like Burr’s design.

Burr continued to patent improvements to his design. He also designed devices for mulching clippings, sifting, and dispersing them. Today’s mulching power mowers may be part of his legacy, returning nutrients to the turf rather than bagging them for compost or disposal. In this way, his inventions helped save labor and were also good for the grass. He held over 30 U.S. patents for lawn care and agricultural inventions.

Burr enjoyed the fruits of his success. Unlike many inventors who never see their designs commercialized, or soon lose any benefits, he got royalties for his creations. He enjoyed traveling and lecturing. He lived a long life and died in 1926 of influenza at age 78.

Next time you mow the lawn, acknowledge the inventor who made the task a little easier. Read more of the great American and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

31May

May 31 1921- The Tusla Race

GM – FBF – What is the definition of a Riot – a noisy, violent public disorder caused by a group or crowd of persons, as by a crowd protesting against another group, a government policy, etc., in the streets.- What is the definition of a Massacre – the unnecessary, indiscriminate killing of a large number of human beings or animals, as in barbarous warfare or persecution or for revenge or plunder. Read the story and you tell me what happened in Tulsa, OK during the days on May 31 and June 2, 1921. THIS IS A STORY NOT TOLD AND HONORED ENOUGH. PEACE!

Remember – ” It was terrifying like what my grandparents use to talk about during slavery. We could not stop the waves of bombs, gunfire and total hate towards our people. No one should have to live like that” – Tulsa Resident

Today in our History – May 31, 1921

Tulsa race riot of 1921, race riot that began on May 31, 1921, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was one of the most severe incidents of racial violence in U.S. history. Lasting for two days, the riot left somewhere between 30 and 300 people dead, mostly African Americans, and destroyed Tulsa’s prosperous black neighbourhood of Greenwood, known as the “black Wall Street.” More than 1,400 homes and businesses were burned, and nearly 10,000 people were left homeless. Despite its severity and destructiveness, the Tulsa race riot was barely mentioned in history books until the late 1990s, when a state commission was formed to document the incident.

On May 30, 1921, Dick Rowland, a young African American shoe shiner, was accused of assaulting a white elevator operator named Sarah Page in the elevator of a building in downtown Tulsa. The next day the Tulsa Tribune printed a story saying that Rowland had tried to rape Page, with an accompanying editorial stating that a lynching was planned for that night. That evening mobs of both African Americans and whites descended on the courthouse where Rowland was being held. When a confrontation between an armed African American man, there to protect Rowland, and a white protestor resulted in the death of the latter, the white mob was incensed, and the Tulsa riot was thus ignited.

Over the next two days, mobs of white people looted and set fire to African American businesses and homes throughout the city. Many of the mob members were recently returned World War I veterans trained in the use of firearms and are said to have shot African Americans on sight. Some survivors even claimed that people in airplanes dropped incendiary bombs.

When the riot ended on June 1, the official death toll was recorded at 10 whites and 26 African Americans, though many experts now believe at least 300 people were killed. Shortly after the riot there was a brief official inquiry, but documents related to the riot disappeared soon afterward. The event never received widespread attention and has been noticeably absent from the history books used to teach Oklahoma schoolchildren.

In 1997 a Tulsa Race Riot Commission was formed by the state of Oklahoma to investigate the riot and formally document the incident. Members of the commission gathered accounts of survivors who were still alive, documents from individuals who witnessed the riots but had since died, and other historical evidence. Scholars used the accounts of witnesses and ground-piercing radar to locate a potential mass grave just outside Tulsa’s Oaklawn Cemetery, suggesting the death toll may be much higher than the original records indicate. In its preliminary recommendations, the commission suggested that the state of Oklahoma pay $33 million in restitution, some of it to the 121 surviving victims who had been located. However, no legislative action was ever taken on the recommendation, and the commission had no power to force legislation. In April 2002 a private religious charity, the Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry, paid a total of $28,000 to the survivors, a little more than $200 each, using funds raised from private donations. There is a lot more to this story and should be a major movie on the BIG screen, please research more about this massacre and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

30May

May 30 1907- Charles Henry Turner

GM – FBF – How many of us as students had classes in zoology? Would you go and get a degree in that field? Thank God for Charles Henry Turner. Enjoy!

Remember – ” I loved science so much because it’s always hiding things from our past” – Dr. Charles Henry Turner

Today in our History – May 30, 1907 – On May 30,1907, Turner graduated from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in zoology, becoming the first African American to receive such a degree from the institution.

Charles Henry Turner, a zoologist and scholar, was the first person to discover that insects can hear and alter behavior based on previous experience.

Born in 1867 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Charles Henry Turner was a pioneering African-American scientist and scholar. Among his most notable achievements, Turner was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Chicago, and the first person to discover that insects can hear and alter behavior based on previous experience. He died in Chicago, Illinois, in 1923.

Pioneering African-American scientist Charles Henry Turner was born on February 3, 1867, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father worked as a custodian and his mother was a practical nurse, and the young Turner was actively encouraged to read and learn.

Turner excelled at his studies, graduating from Gaines High School in 1886 as class valedictorian. He enrolled at the University of Cincinnati that same year, and in 1887, he wed Leontine Troy. The couple later had two sons, Henry and Darwin, before his wife’s death in 1895.

Turner graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1891, and earned a master’s degree from the University of Cincinnati the following year. During his studies, Turner found work as a teacher at a number of schools, and had an assistantship at his alma mater from 1891 to 1893.

To help find a teaching position, Turner contacted Booker T. Washington at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (later Tuskegee University) in Alabama. Some reports indicate that Turner lost out on a position at the institute to George Washington Carver, another distinguished African-American scientist. Instead Turner moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he taught at Clark College (later known as Clark Atlanta University) from 1893 to 1905.

On May 30,1907, Turner graduated from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in zoology, becoming the first African American to receive such a degree from the institution. Shortly after being turned down for a teaching position at the University of Chicago, Turner moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he taught at Sumner High School until 1922.

During his career, Turner published more than 70 research papers. He pioneered research techniques in the study of animal behavior and made several important discoveries that advanced our understanding of the natural world. Among his most notable achievements, Turner was the first person to discover that insects can hear and alter behavior based on previous experience. He showed that insects were capable of learning, illustrating (in two of his most famous research projects) that honey bees can see in color and recognize patterns. He conducted some of these experiments while working at Sumner without the benefit of research assistants or laboratory space.

In 1922, Turner moved to Chicago, Illinois, to live with his son Darwin. He died there on February 14, 1923. His last scientific paper was published the year after his death, in which he explored a method for conducting field research on fresh-water invertebrates.

Several schools have been named in Turner’s honor in St. Louis, Missouri, the city where he spent so many years as a teacher. On the campus of Clark Atlanta University, he is remembered on the Tanner-Turner Hall building. And children have learned about his influential work though the 1997 children’s book Bug Watching with Charles Henry Turner by M.E. Ross.

In recent years, his groundbreaking work has been reintroduced to the public through the publication of Selected Papers and Biography of Charles Henry Turner, Pioneer of Comparative Animal Behavior Studies (2003). Research more about this great American and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

29May

May 29 1905- Sarah E. Goode

GM – FBF – Today we are going to learn about a women who was fearless and creative for her time. Entrepreneur and inventor Sarah E. Goode was the first African-American woman to receive a United States patent.

Remember – “I know people who would sleep on the ground or on the floor. I wanted them to sleep with dignity like the people we belonged to during the slave days.” – Sarah E. Goode

Today in our History – May 29, 1905 – Sarah E. Goode dies.

Entrepreneur and inventor Sarah E. Goode was the first African-American woman to receive a United States patent.

Born into slavery in 1850, inventor and entrepreneur Sarah E. Goode was the first African-American woman to be granted a patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, for her invention of a folding cabinet bed in 1885.

Born into slavery in 1850, inventor and entrepreneur Sarah E. Goode went on to become the first African-American woman to be granted a patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, for her invention of a folding cabinet bed in 1885.

After receiving her freedom at the end of the Civil War, Goode moved to Chicago and eventually became an entrepreneur. Along with her husband Archibald, a carpenter, she owned a furniture store. Many of her customers, who were mostly working-class, lived in small apartments and didn’t have much space for furniture, including beds.

As a solution to the problem, Goode invented a cabinet bed, which she described as a “folding bed,” similar to what nowadays would be called a Murphy bed. When the bed was not being used, it could also serve as a roll-top desk, complete with compartments for stationery and other writing supplies.

Goode received a patent for her invention on July 14, 1885. She died May 29,1905. We all know how this type of bed changed our lives. Research more about this great American and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

26May

May 26 1928- Bunion Derby

GM – FBF – Even during the “Great Depression” people of color were doing outstanding feats but little to no recognition. Read the story of the first national footrace which people of color won three spots in the top ten. Enjoy!

Remember – “Running is nothing more than a series of arguments between the part of your brain that wants to stop and the part that wants to keep going.” – Winner of the Bunion Derby – Andy Payne

Today in our History – The 1928 Bunion Derby: America’s Brush with Integrated Sports.

From March 4 to May 26, 1928, a unique event grabbed the attention of the American public—an eighty-four day, 3,400-mile footrace from Los Angeles to New York City, nicknamed the bunion derby. The 199 starters included five African Americans, a Jamaican-born Canadian, and perhaps as many as fifteen Latinos, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders, representing about ten percent of the competitors. The rest were white. The derby consisted of daily town-to-town stage races that took the men across the length of Route 66 to Chicago, then on other roads to the finish in Madison Square Garden. All were chasing a $25,000 first prize, a small fortune in 1928 dollars.

Given the racial climate of 1928, black participation in the bunion derby seemed a risky venture, better suited for more tolerate racial times, either the 1870’s when professional distance racing was the rage and men of all races were accepted in to its fold, or our modern age, when the sight of African runners leading endurance events is an everyday occurrence. The 1928 race would take the men into the Jim Crow segregated South, where most whites believed blacks lacked the ability to concentrate for anything longer than the sprint distances, and had no business competing against whites.

Bunion derby organizer Charles C. Pyle looked back, longingly, to the 1870’s when the craze for professional distance running gripped the land, and sports promoters could make a fortune sponsoring these events. In those days, most towns and cities had their own indoor tracks, where “pedestrians” raced in six day “go as you please” contests of endurance. Participants were free to run, walk, or crawl around these tracks for six days. They often set up cots inside the track oval and survived on three hours sleep a night. This was a sport of the working classes. Fans bet money on their favorite pedestrians and followed them with all the fervor of today’s NFL fans. Stamina not ethnicity was the single qualifier to become a pedestrian star. Black America had its hero, Haitian born, Frank Hart who made a fortune in the sport and averaged ninety miles a day in one six day endurance race.

C. C. Pyle’s “bunioneers” found far harsher conditions than the pedestrians faced in the calm environment of an indoor track. His men tackled the mostly unpaved and pot-holed Route 66 across the American West, running daily ultra-marathons across one thousand miles of the most challenging terrain on the planet–the ninety-five degree heat of the Mojave Desert, and the freezing mountain passes and thin air of Arizona and New Mexico.

By the time derby reached eastern New Mexico, only ninety-six of the original 199 starters remained, including three of the five African American starters–Eddie Gardner of Seattle, Sammy Robinson of Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Toby Joseph Cotton, Junior of Los Angeles–and Afro-Canadian Phillip Granville, of Hamilton, Ontario. After overcoming all that, the black runners faced a man made hell when Route 66 took them to Texas where the Ku Klux Klan dominated the state legislature and the city governments of Dallas, Forth Worth and El Paso. Gardner, Joseph, Cotton, and Granville were forced out of the communal sleeping tent into a “colored only” tent, then bombarded with death threats and racial slurs as they slogged their way across the muddy, tendon ripping roads of the Texas Panhandle. In McLean, Texas, an angry mob surrounded Gardner’s trainer’s car, and threatened to burn it, claiming that blacks had no business racing against whites. In Western Oklahoma, a farmer trained a shotgun on Eddie Gardner’s back, and rode behind him for an entire day, daring him to pass a white man. After Phillip Granville’s experience with Jim Crow segregation, he began referring to himself as Jamaican Indian, and “anything but negro,” and disassociated myself from the black runners.

This abuse continued across Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri, a total of a thousand miles and twenty-four days of running hell before the derby crossed into Illinois. The men were helped along way by tightly knit black communities in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Chandler, Oklahoma, that raised money for them, gave them a clean bed for the night, and a solid meal to keep them going in the face of so much hate. They also were supported and protected by the white runners who had bonded with them like brothers over the brutal miles on Route 66.

The heroism of the black bunioneers was a symbol of hope and pride to black communities they passed along way, and to black America as a whole, who followed the men’s struggle across Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri in the Amsterdam News, California Eagle, Black Dispatch Chicago Defender, and Pittsburgh Courier. The competitors also put to rest the long held belief that blacks were unsuited to long distance running, given that three-fifths of the blacks finished compared to about twenty-five percent of the whites. The derby also showed the nation that blacks and whites could compete against one another even if they were not yet ready to live together in harmony.

On May 26, 1928, fifty-five weary men make their final laps around the track in Madison Square Garden that marked the end of their eighty-four day ordeal. Three of the top ten finishers were runners of color, including the $25,000 first prize winner, Andy Payne, a part Cherokee Indian from Oklahoma, the $5,000 third place winner, Phillip Granville of Canada, and the $1,000 eighth place winner, Eddie Gardner of Seattle. These three bunioneers were cut from the same social cloth as their white competitors—they were blue-collar men who were looking for a piece of the American dream. They did not run for loving cups or medals, but for prize money that could lift a mortgage off a farm, buy a house, or give their children some decent clothes to wear, and in the case of the black runners, they risked their lives to do so. This was a far different mentality from the university athletes and members of athletic clubs who looked down their noses at these working class distance stars, but it was also strikingly modern, a herald of the rise of professional sports in the years to come, where merit, not race determined fame and glory. This race was run in the following year but with no blacks permitted to run becuse of the nation’s depression. I could not find pictures of the winner receiving the winnings and trophy. Make it a champion day!

25May

May 25 1938- Otis Frank Boykin

GM-FBF- The creator has blessed us with fine Individuals who have the skill to teach and Invent Ideas that can help the human race, today you will read about another. Enjoy!

Remember – “The difference between genius and stupidity is, genius has its limits.” – Otis Frank Boykin

Today in our History – May 25, 1938 – Otis Frank Boykin, graduates from Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas, TX.

The inventor Otis Frank Boykin, known for inventing the wire precision resistor, was born on August 29, 1920 in Dallas, Texas. Boykin’s mother, Sarah Boykin, worked as a maid before dying in 1921 before Boykin’s first birthday. Boykin’s father, Walter Boykin, worked as a carpenter and later became a minister.
In 1934, Boykin entered Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas, later graduating in 1938 as valedictorian of his class. Following high school, Boykin began college at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, simultaneously working at an aerospace laboratory in Nashville as a laboratory assistant testing automatic controls for aircraft.

After graduating from Fisk in 1941, Boykin began working as a lab assistant for Majestic Radio and TV Corporation, in Chicago, Illinois, eventually rising to the rank of supervisor. In 1944, Boykin began working for the P.J. Nilsen Research Laboratory. In 1946 Boykin began graduate studies at Illinois Institute of Technology but dropped out within a year because his family could no longer financially assist Boykin with his tuition. Beginning in 1946 he briefly ran his own company, Boykin-Fruth, Inc., and began working on various inventions.

Otis Frank Boykin earned his first patent in 1959. He developed the wire precision resistor which enabled manufacturers to accurately designate a value of resistance for an individual piece of wire in electronic equipment. Two years later, in 1961, Boykin earned a patent for an improved version of this concept, an inexpensive and easily producible electrical resistor model with the ability to “withstand extreme accelerations and shocked and great temperature changes without change or breakage of the fine resistance wire or other detrimental effects.”

Boykin’s invention significantly reduced the cost of production of hundreds of electronic devices while making them much more reliable than previously possible. The transistor radio was one of the many devices affected by his work. Other applications of Boykin’s invention included guided missiles, televisions, and IBM computers. Additionally, Boykin’s device would enable the development of the control unit for the artificial heart pacemaker, a device created to produce electrical shocks to the heart to maintain a healthy heart rate.

Boykin created the electrical capacitator in 1965 and an electrical resistance capacitor in 1967 as well as a number of consumer products ranging from a burglar-proof cash register to a chemical air filter. In all, Boykin patented 26 electronic devices over the course of his career.

Otis Frank Boykin died in Chicago of heart failure on March 13, 1982 at the age of 61. Research more about Black Inventors and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

23May

May 23 1940- Jesse Ernest Wilkins Jr

GM – FBF – Today’s spotlight is on a boy /man who’s was called – The “negro genius” in the media. Enjoy!

Remember – “One day I will fly to the moon with math.” – Dr. Jesse Ernest Wilkins Jr.

Today in our History – May 23, 1940 – At 17 received a PHD. from The University of Chicago. Jesse Ernest Wilkins Jr.(November 27, 1923 – May 12, 2011)

In 1940 Wilkins completed his B.Sc. in math. In order to improve his rapport with the nuclear engineers reporting to him, Wilkins later received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from New York University in 1982 and 2001, thus earning five science degrees during his life.

After initially failing to secure a research position at his alma mater in Chicago, Wilkins taught mathematics from 1943 to 1944 at the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Tuskegee, Alabama. In 1944 he returned to the University of Chicago where he served first as an associate mathematical physicist and then as a physicist in its Metallurgical Laboratory, as part of the Manhattan Project. Working under the direction of Arthur Holly Compton and Enrico Fermi, Wilkins researched the extraction of fissionable nuclear materials, but was not told of the research group’s ultimate goal until after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Wilkins was the codiscoverer or discoverer of a number of phenomena in physics such as the Wilkins Effect, plus the Wigner-Wilkins and Wilkins Spectra.

When Wilkins’s team was about to be transferred to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (known at the time as site “X”), due to the Jim Crow laws of the Southern United States, Wilkins would have been prevented from working there. When Edward Teller was informed about this, he wrote a letter on September 18, 1944 to Harold Urey (who was the director of war research at Columbia at the time) of Wilkins’s abilities, informing him about the problem of Wilkins’s race, and recommending his services for a new position. As Teller explained:

Knowing that men of high qualifications are scarce these days, I thought that it might be useful that I suggest a capable person for this job. Mr. Wilkins in Wigner’s group at the Metallurgical Laboratory has been doing, according to Wigner, excellent work. He is a colored man and since Wigner’s group is moving to “X” it is not possible for him to continue work with that group. I think that it might be a good idea to secure his services for our work.

Wilkins then continued to teach mathematics and conduct significant research in neutron absorption with physicist Eugene Wigner, including the development of its mathematical models. He would also later help design and develop nuclear reactors for electrical power generation, becoming part owner of one such company,

In 1970 Wilkins went on to serve Howard University as its distinguished professor of Applied Mathematical Physics and also founded the university’s new PhD program in mathematics. During his tenure at Howard he undertook a sabbatical position as a visiting scientist at Argonne National Laboratory from 1976 to 1977.

From 1974 to 1975 Wilkins served as president of the American Nuclear Society and in 1976 became the second African American to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

From 1990 Wilkins lived and worked in Atlanta, Georgia as a Distinguished Professor of Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Physics at Clark Atlanta University, and retired again for his last time in 2003.

Throughout his years of research Wilkins published more than 100 papers on a variety of subjects, including differential geometry, linear differential equations, integrals, nuclear engineering, gamma radiation shielding and optics, garnering numerous professional and scientific awards along the way.

Wilkins had two children with his first wife Gloria Louise Steward (d.1980) whom he married in June 1947, and subsequently married Maxine G. Malone in 1984. He was married a third time to Vera Wood Anderson in Chicago in September 2003. He had a daughter, Sharon, and a son, Wilkins, III during his first marriage.

J Ernest Wilkins Sr. was an equally notable figure, but in different spheres. He was appointed Assistant Secretary of Labor in 1954 by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and thus became the first African American to hold a sub-cabinet position in the United States Government. One of Wilkins’ grandfathers was also notable for founding St. Mark’s Methodist Church in New York City.

In 2010 a niece of Wilkins, Carolyn Marie Wilkins, Professor of Music at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, wrote of Wilkins’ father and her family more generally in her biography Damn Near White: An African American Family’s Rise from Slavery to Bittersweet Success.

Wilkins died on May 1, 2011 in Fountain Hills, Arizona. He was survived by his two children, Sharon Wilkins Hill and J. Ernest Wilkins III, plus three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, and was buried at the National Memorial Cemetery, Cave Creek, Arizona on May 5. Research more Black Mathmatician’s and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!