Category: 1950 – 1999

16Jun

June 16 1984- Edwin Moses

GM – FBF – I will never forget the demanding Coach Lawrence Dunn who coached me at Junior One where we never lost a track meet in ten years and the great Alfonso Jennings who had just graduated from Maryland – Eastern Shore and was Asst. Track Coach at TCHS. He would go on to create a N.J. and National Dynasty in the High School ranks and creator of The Trenton Track Club (TTC) where he is still coaching and three weeks ago he had one of his female runners compete in Atlanta, GA. for a tune up race before the USA Nationals. He is also in the Penn Relays Hall of Fame. I ran the 400 yrds, 800 yrds and 4×400 yrd. Relay and Long Jumped. Thanks to you both. Today let’s read about a Track Great. Enjoy!

Remember – ” I really don’t see the hurdels. I sence them like a memory.” – Edwin Moses

Today in our History – June 16, 1984

Edwin Moses wins his 100th consecutive 400-meter hurdles race!

Being an Olympic-level competitor is a testament itself to an athlete’s dedication and endurance, but winning medals consistently for ten years is a feat few can claim. On June 4, 1987 Edwin Moses ended his 10-year winning streak in the 400-meter hurdles.

From August 1977 to May 1987, Moses won 122 consecutive races in that event. During a meet in Madrid, Spain, fellow American Danny Harris, who had finished second in the 400-meter hurdles in the 1984 Olympics, beat Moses by .13 seconds to end the winning streak.
Before then, Moses, the world record-holder with a time of 47.02 seconds, hadn’t lost since Aug. 26, 1977, when he was beaten in West Berlin by West Germany’s Harald Schmid. Moses was a 20-year-old student at Morehouse College at the time.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, Moses ended up in Atlanta on an academic scholarship to Morehouse College where he majored in physics and industrial engineering while competing for the school track team. Morehouse didn’t have its own track, so he used public high school facilities around the city to train.

Initially, Moses competed mostly in the 120-yard hurdles and 440-yard dash. Before March 1976, he ran only one 400-meter hurdles race. Once he turned his focus to the event he made remarkable progress.

His trademark technique was to take a consistent 13 steps between each of the hurdles, pulling away in the second half of the race as his rivals changed their stride pattern. That summer, he qualified for the U.S. team for the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. In his first international meet, Moses won the gold medal and set a world record of 47.63 seconds.

After losing to Harris in 1987, Moses won 10 more races in a row, collecting his second world gold in Rome in August of the same year, and then he finished third in the final 400-meter race of his career at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul.
Reflecting on his career years later, Moses told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “I wish I hadn’t been robbed in 1980. I had the chance to go. I was in such great shape.” That was the year President Jimmy Carter ordered that the U.S. team boycott the Olympic games in Moscow to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.

Moses won his second gold at the Los Angeles Games in 1984. In 1988, Moses went for his third in Seoul, but felt his chances were hurt when NBC moved the finals to earlier in the day, so that it could be broadcast live in the U.S. He had run in the semifinals less than 24 hours earlier.

Moses finished third for the bronze, in 47.56 seconds. Teammate Andre Phillips won in 47.19, breaking Moses’ Olympic record.

If he’d had a full 24 hours to recover, “I’m sure it would have” made a difference, Moses said.

Since then, the scheduling for the 400 hurdles has changed so that a day separates the semifinals and finals. It has given hurdlers time to recuperate, making record performances in the finals more likely.

“That’s really changed the event, ” Moses said.
For a track titan hunting for a last taste of glory, it changed too late. Research more of this great American and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

14Jun

June 14 1977- Ethel Waters Dies

GM – FBF – Today as we are honoring Black Music Month, I have been with people who would say that Nate King Cole was the first black to have a T.V. show in the 1950″s and I would have to educate them. Let’s take a better look, Enjoy!

Remember – “One day, I pray that there will be more negros who will be on the small screen to tell are stories. – Ethel Waters ( Thank God she did live long enough to see her prayer come true)

Today in our History – June 14,1977 – Ethel Waters Dies

Ethel Waters, one of the most influential jazz and blues singers of her time, popularised many song classics including “Stormy Weather”. Waters was also the first African-American woman to be given equal billing with white stars in Broadway shows, and to play leading roles in Hollywood films. Once she had established herself as one of America’s highest paid entertainers she demanded, and won, dramatic roles.

Single-handedly Waters shattered the myth that African-American women could perform only as singers. In the early 1950s, for example, she played a leading role in the stage and screen versions of Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding. Ethel played a Southern mammy, but demonstrated with a complex and moving performance that it was possible to destroy the one-dimensional Aunt Jemima image of African American women in American theater and cinema.
In a career that spanned almost sixty years, there were few openings for an African-American woman of her class, talent and ability. She appeared on television as early as 1939 when she made two experimental programmes for NBC: The Ethel Waters Show and Mamba’s Daughters.

The Ethel Waters Show was a one-hour American television variety special that ran in the earliest days of NBC, on June 14,1939, and was hosted by actress and singer Ethel Waters. Waters was the first black performer, male or female, to have her own TV show and may very well have been the first black person to appear on television.The special was transmitted from the NBC Studios in New York over W2XBS.

The special included Waters performing a dramatic sequence from her most recent Broadway play Mamba’s Daughters, along with two actresses from the production, Georgette Harvey and Fredi Washington. The cast also included Joey Faye and Philip Loeb, performing skits.
But it was her regular role as the devoted, cheerful maid in ABC’s popular situation comedy Beulah (1950-52) that established her as one of the first African-American stars of the small screen.

Waters’ dramatic roles on television were also stereotyped. Throughout the 1950s she made appearances in such series as Favorite Playhouse, Climax, General Electric Theater, Playwrights ’56 and Matinee Theater. Without exception, Waters was typecast as a faithful mammy or suffering mother. In 1961 she gave a memorable performance in a Route 66 episode, “Good Night, Sweet Blues,” as a dying blues singer whose last wish is to be reunited with her old jazz band. Consequently Ethel became the first black actress nominated for an Emmy award. She later appeared in The Great Adventure (“Go Down Moses”), with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee in 1963; Daniel Boone (“Mamma Cooper”) in 1970; and Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law (“Run, Carol, Run”) in 1972.

But, says African-American film and television historian
Donald Bogle in Blacks in American Films and Television (1988): “Waters’ later TV appearances lack the vitality of her great performances (she has little to work with in these programs and must rely on her inner resources and sense of self to get by), but they are part of her evolving image: now she’s the weathered, ailing, grand old woman of film, whose talents are greater than the projects with which she’s involved.”

In the late 1950s ill-health forced Waters into semi- retirement. A deeply religious woman, most of her public appearances were restricted to Billy Graham’s rallies. She died in 1977 at the age of 80. Resarch more about this great ‎American shero and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

11Jun

June 11 1963- George Wallace

GM – FBF – Today I will take you back to when Eduction was a must. Now in your mind just remember that George Wallace Stood in a Doorway at the University of Alabama 55 Years Ago Today.

Rememebr – “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” – Governor George Wallace (D)

Today in our History – June 11, 1963 – George Wallace Stood in a Doorway at the University of Alabama 55 Years Ago Today

IN JANUARY OF 1963, following his election as Governor of Alabama, George Wallace famously stated in his inaugural address: “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

The staunch conservative demonstrated his loyalty to the cause on June 11, 1963, when black students Vivian Malone and James A. Hood showed up at the University of Alabama campus in Tuscaloosa to attend class. In what historians often refer to as the “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door,” the governor literally stood in the doorway as federal authorities tried to allow the students to enter.

When Wallace refused to budge, President John F. Kennedy called for 100 troops from the Alabama National Guard to assist federal officials. Wallace chose to step down rather than incite violence.

The summer of 1963 was a tense time in this nation’s history. The day after Wallace’s standoff, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in Jackson, Miss. Violence also struck in Cambridge, Md., and Danville, Va., that June.
Kennedy spoke to a national audience hours after the Alabama showdown, outlining his plans for federal legislation to make way for further integration.

The landmark speech angered conservative Americans. Representative Charles C. Diggs, Jr. a Democrat from Michigan who would go on to serve as the first chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said: “If the Negroes don’t get their demands, they will turn to other leadership that will produce an even greater crisis than this one.”

Sure enough, crisis after crisis plagued America over the next few years, culminating in 1968 with the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, as well as mass rioting at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago (although that had more to do with the Vietnam War than racial injustice).

Today, 55 years removed from Wallace’s protest, the University of Alabama’s student body is 13 percent African American, which is only slightly lower than the national average of 14 percent of college students, but is equal to the overall percentage of black people in the United States.

Race violence, however, erupted at other places in the nation. In the same week: A Negro leader was shot in the back and mortally wounded at Jackson, Miss. Race riots broke out at Danville, Va., and Cambridge, Md.

President Kennedy, on June 11, went on radio and television appealing to the nation to give Negroes equal rights. He called for new federal laws to deal with race problems. In Congress, a bitter battle began over the President’s legislative proposals.
On June 14. mass demonstrations spread to the nation’s capital. Several thousand Negroes—and several hundred white sympathizers—massed at the White House, then marched quietly through midtown Washington with signs protesting racial discrimination—both local and national.

The march ended at the Justice Department, where Attorney General Robert Kennedy congratulated the marchers on their peaceful demonstration and assured them the Federal Government is trying to speed integration and improve Negro job opportunities. Research more about unrest on our American and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

08Jun

June 8 1982- Leroy Robert Paige

GM – FBF – Lawnside, NJ was developed and incorporated as the first independent, self-governing black municipality north of the Mason-Dixon Line in 1840. Many of my family still live in and all around the surrounding towns of Lawanside and living in Trenton it was a treat to visit family because we spent days in that community and I have met many of the best during that time. So think of the stars in every field coming to this community because it was safe from white oppression during the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. I saw, met, talked to and learned from many who were passing through on the way to Philadelphia, Atlantic City,New York City and right in our backyard of Cherry Hill, NJ where the famed Latin Casino was a show place . My brother and I played catch with Mr. Paige in the summer of ’63 and I will never forget his words of knowledge that helped me in my future basball career in Jr. HS, HS, College and the Minor Leagues. There is so much to his story that I can’t tell it all but enjoy some of the hilights.

Remember – “They said I was the greatest pitcher they ever saw…I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t give me no justice.” – Leroy Robert Paige

Today in our History – Leroy Robert Paige better known as (better known as Satchel Paige) was born. July 7, 1906 – June 8,1982.

The mere idea that his birthday is an estimate provides perfect evidence to the mystery that was Satchel Paige. In 1965, 60 years after Paige’s supposed birthday, he took the mound for the last time, throwing three shutout innings for the Kansas City Athletics.

His pitching was amazing and his showboating was legendary. His career highlights span five decades. Pronounced the greatest pitcher in the history of the Negro Leagues, Paige compiled such feats as 64 consecutive scoreless innings, a stretch of 21 straight wins, and a 31-4 record in 1933. For 22 years, Paige mauled the competition in front of sellout crowds. Sure, he liked the attention, but to him, there was only one goal. That goal would be to pitch in the Major Leagues.

In 1948, Paige’s dream came true. The Cleveland Indians were in need of extra pitching for the pennant race. Legendary Bill Veeck tested Paige’s accuracy before offering him a big league contract. As the story is told, Veeck placed a cigarette on the ground to be used as a home plate. Paige took aim at his virtually nonexistent target. He fired five fastballs, all but one sailing directly over the cigarette. Veeck was indeed pleased, and Paige helped the Indians win the pennant.

In addition to Cleveland, Paige played for St. Louis and Kansas City. When his Major League career was completed, he compiled a modest 28-31 record with a 3.29 ERA. He also served as coach for the Atlanta Braves in 1968. What made Paige so memorable was his longevity in the game. The main reason his age was so difficult to track was his seemingly endless success. He rarely answered questions about his age, and when he did, he replied with something like: “Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

In 1971, Leroy “Satchel” Paige was given the ultimate honor, he was elected to join the very best in baseball history in the Hall of Fame.

Legendary Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams claimed, “Paige was the greatest pitcher in baseball.” Famed New York Yankee Joe DiMaggio said Satchel Paige was the “best and fastest pitcher I’ve ever faced.” Celebrated St. Louis Cardinal pitcher Dizzy Dean remarked, “He’s a better pitcher than I ever hope to be.” Homestead Grays first baseman and Hall of Famer Buck Leonard declared, “He threw fire.”

Paige’s showmanship, athleticism, and personality attracted both white and black audiences. He proved that black athletes could compete with and beat their white counterparts, helping pave the way for fellow African Americans to join Major League Baseball. Research more about this great American hero and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

06Jun

June 6 1966- James Meredith

GM – FBF – I have not forgotten about “The greatest generation” and how they gave their lives on this day in Normandy, France. Our generation still delt with a war in our streets from wanting to be free to get an education and vote. This story below – We should never Forget!

Remember – ” If I can’t walk in America, down her streets from stste to state something is wrong with this we call America” – James Meredith

Today in our History – June 6, 1966 –

One sweltering morning in June 1966, James Meredith set out from Memphis with an African walking stick in one hand, a Bible in the other and a singular mission in mind. The 32-year-old Air Force veteran and Columbia University law student planned to march 220 miles to the Mississippi state capital of Jackson, to prove that a black man could walk free in the South. The Voting Rights Act had been passed only the year before, and his goal was to inspire African-Americans to register and go to the polls. “I was at war against fear,” he recalls. “I was fighting for full citizenship for me and my kind.”

It wasn’t the first time Meredith had charged into hostile territory all but alone. Four years earlier, he’d become the first black person to enroll at the University of Mississippi, in Oxford, despite vehement protests from Gov. Ross Barnett and campus riots that left 2 people dead and more than 160 wounded, including dozens of federal marshals. When Meredith graduated from Ole Miss in 1963, he wore a segregationist’s “Never” button upside down on his black gown.

On the second day of his self-described “walk against fear,” a handful of reporters, photographers and law enforcement officials awaited his arrival in the late afternoon heat near Hernando, Mississippi. Jack Thornell, a 26-year-old cub photographer for the Associated Press in New Orleans, was sitting in a parked car along with a colleague from arch-rival United Press International, waiting for a Life photographer to bring them Cokes, when Meredith and a few followers came into view.

All of a sudden, a man started shouting, “I just want James Meredith!” Shotgun blasts rang out across the highway, striking Meredith in the head, neck, back and legs. Thornell jumped out of the vehicle and started clicking away, taking two rolls of pictures with his pair of cameras. He then drove back to Memphis in a panic, convinced he would be fired for failing to photograph both the assailant and the victim. Meanwhile, minutes passed before an ambulance reached Meredith, who lay in the road alone. “Isn’t anyone going to help me?” he remembers shouting.

Of the many photographs that Thornell made of the incident, one shows the fallen man on dusty Highway 51 screaming in agony. It was published in newspapers and magazines nationwide and went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. The image suggests the very pain and frustration of being black in the Deep South of the 1960s. “When people saw scenes like this in newspapers and on TV—when they saw what was actually happening down South—they couldn’t believe it,” says Thornell, who is 65 and retired and lives in Metairie, Louisiana. He says his one lasting regret about that day four decades ago is that he didn’t put his camera down to help the wounded Meredith.

As it happens, Thornell took one picture of the incident in which the gunman can be seen. But it wasn’t needed for evidence. An unemployed hardware clerk from Memphis named Aubrey James Norvell was apprehended at the scene of the shooting and pleaded guilty before the case went to trial. He served 18 months of a five-year prison sentence, then all but dropped out of sight. Now 79, Norvell lives in Memphis. He declined to discuss the past.

After Meredith was shot, civil rights leaders gathered in his hospital room, among them Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael and Floyd McKissick. The civil rights movement had lately been strained by internal dissent, with leaders such as King calling for nonviolence and integration and others such as Carmichael promoting a more radical black power stance. But for now the leaders put aside their differences to carry on Meredith’s pilgrimage.

While Meredith recuperated from his wounds, scores of people gathered in Hernando to resume what was now called the “Meredith March.” Led by King, Carmichael and McKissick, the marchers walked for nearly three weeks, helping to register thousands of African-American voters along the way. Meredith himself rejoined the pilgrimage on June 26, its final day, as some 12,000 triumphant protesters entered Jackson surrounded by cheering crowds. Looking back, he says he was inspired by people on both sides of the color divide. “You can’t forget that whites in the South were as unfree as any black,” he explains. “White supremacy was official and legal—it was enforced by judges and the law people—and a white that failed to acknowledge and carry out the mandate of white supremacy was as subject to persecution as any black.”

Meredith would graduate from Columbia law school, run (unsuccessfully) for Congress in New York and Mississippi, and work as a stockbroker, professor and writer. Then, in the late 1980s, the former civil rights icon shocked many admirers when he joined the staff of the ultraconservative North Carolina senator Jesse Helms and endorsed former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke’s campaign to become governor of Louisiana. Meredith, still fiery at 71, defends those choices, saying he was “monitoring the enemy.” Married with five children and five grandchildren, Meredith lives in Jackson and still occasionally addresses groups on civil rights issues.

“He helped make significant strides in the overall struggle for civil and human rights, and none of that is diminished by what happened later,” says Horace Huntley, director of the Oral History Project at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, in Alabama. “Those accomplishments are etched in stone.”

04Jun

June 4 1972- Angela Davis

GM – FBF – This is one of the most wanted Individuals in the USA back in the 60’s and 70′. Enjoy!

Remember – “Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo – obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.” – Angela Davis

Today in our History – June 4, 1972 – Angela Davis acquitted.

Angela Yvonne Davis, a black militant, former philosophy professor at the University of California, and self-proclaimed communist, is acquitted on charges of conspiracy, murder, and kidnapping by an all-white jury in San Jose, California.

In October 1970, Davis was arrested in New York City in connection with a shootout that occurred on August 7 in a San Raphael, California, courtroom. She was accused of supplying weapons to Jonathan Jackson, who burst into the courtroom in a bid to free inmates on trial there and take hostages whom he hoped to exchange for his brother George, a black radical imprisoned at San Quentin Prison. In the subsequent shoot-out with police, Jonathan Jackson was killed along with Superior Court Judge Harold Haley and two inmates.

Davis, who had championed the cause of black prisoners and was friends with George Jackson, was indicted in the crime but went into hiding. One of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most wanted criminals, she was apprehended only two months later. Her trial began in March 1972 and drew international attention because of the weakness of the prosecution’s case and obvious political nature of the proceedings. In June 1972, she was acquitted of all charges.

After leaving the criminal justice system, she returned to teaching and writing and in 1980 was the vice-presidential candidate of the U.S. Communist Party. In 1991, she became a professor in the field of the history of consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Four years later, she was appointed a presidential chair at the university amid controversy that stemmed from her communist and black militant background. Her writings include Angela Davis: An Autobiography and Women, Race, and Class. Though no longer a member of the Communist Party, Davis continues to be active in politics, most notably speaking out against the death penalty. Reserch more about other great Black women in history and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

01Jun

June 1 1974 – Howard R. Amos

GM -FBF – Today we are going back home to New Jersey with a black man who was born in Pennsauken and graduated from the “”Castle on the Hill” – Camden High School. Enjoy!

Remember – ” Education is the new currency and I will teach this new currency to anyone who will listen” – Harold Amos

Today in our History – June 1, 1974 – Appointed advisor to President M. Richard.

Harold Amos (September 7, 1918 – February 26, 2003) was an American microbiologist and professor. He taught at Harvard Medical School for nearly fifty years and was the first African-American department chair of the school.

Amos was born in Pennsauken, New Jersey to Howard R. Amos Sr., a Philadelphia postman, and Iola Johnson. He attended a segregated school and graduate first in his class from Camden High School in New Jersey. He graduated from Springfield College with a baccalaureate. Amos was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving in the Quartermaster’s Corps in World War II as a warrant officer, eventually discharged in February 1946. In the fall of 1946 Amos enrolled in the biological sciences graduate program at Harvard Medical School, earning an MA in 1947 and graduated with a PhD from Harvard Medical School in 1952. Upon completing a Fulbright Scholarship, Amos joined the Harvard Medical School faculty in 1954. He was the chairman of the bacteriology department from 1968 to 1971 and again from 1975 to 1978. In 1975, he was named the Maude and Lillian Presley professor of microbiology and molecular genetics. He was a presidential advisor to Richard Nixon, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1974), the Institute of Medicine and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Amos was awarded the National Academy of Sciences’ Public Welfare Medal in 1995 and the Harvard Centennial Medal in 2000. He directed the Minority Medical Faculty Development Program (MMFDP) of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation after his retirement from Harvard. A diversity award at Harvard Medical School is named after Amos. He inspired hundreds of minorities to become medical doctors. Amos’s research focused on using cells in culture to understand how molecules get into cells and how entry is regulated during cell starvation or in plentiful conditions. Amos published over seventy scientific papers. He was well known as an inviting and welcoming mentor to both students and junior faculty members. He spoke fluent French and was a devoted Francophile. Research more about this great American and share with your babies and make it a champion day!

May 27 1973- Shirley Ann Jackson

GM – FBF – This powerful black woman taught at Rutgers University, so she has to be one of the best, Enjoy!

Remember – “We need to go back to the discovery, to posing a question, to having a hypothesis and having kids know that they can discover the answers and can peal away a layer.” – Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson

Today in our History – May 27, 1973 – Shirley Ann Jackson, earned her Ph.D.

Shirley Ann Jackson, born in 1946 in Washington, D.C., has achieved numerous firsts for African American women. She was the first black woman to earn a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.); to receive a Ph.D. in theoretical solid state physics; to be elected president and then chairman of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); to be president of a major research university, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York; and to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Jackson was also both the first African American and the first woman to chair the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Jackson’s parents and teachers recognized her natural talent for science and nurtured her interest from a young age. In 1964, after graduating as valedictorian from her high school, Jackson was accepted at M.I.T., where she was one of very few women and even fewer black students. Despite discouraging remarks from her professors about the appropriateness of science for a black woman, she chose to major in physics and earned her B.S. in 1968. Jackson continued at M.I.T. for graduate school, studying under the first black physics professor in her department, James Young. In 1973, she earned her Ph.D.

Shirley Jackson completed several years of postdoctoral research at various laboratories, such as Fermi in Illinois, before being hired by AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1976, where she worked for 15 years. She conducted research on the optical and electronic properties of layered materials, surface electrons of liquid helium films, strained-layer semiconductor superlattices, and most notably, the polaronic aspects of electrons in two-dimensional systems. She is considered a leading developer of Caller ID and Call Waiting on telephones.

After teaching at Rutgers University from 1991-1995, Jackson was appointed chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission by Bill Clinton. In 1999, Jackson became President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she still serves today. In 2004, she was elected president of AAAS and in 2005 she served as chairman of the board for the Society. Dr. Shirley Jackson is married to a physicist and has one son. Research more about black women and science and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

24May

May 24 1956- Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner and Mildred Davidson Austin Smith

GM – FBF – If you think that today’s post is too PC for you then you don’t understand how this Inventions help shape not just women but everyone’s lives. Enjoy!

Remember – “Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated.” – Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner

Today in our History – May 24, 1956 – Sister’s who Invenred things that we all understand today.

Before the advent of disposable pads, women were using cloth pads and rags during their period. Tampons were available for women but they were discouraged from using them because they were seen as not decent.

Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner, an African-American inventor and her sister, Mildred Davidson Austin Smith founded an alternative in 1956 – a sanitary belt. Three years later, Mary invented the moisture-resistant pocket for the belt. This gave women a better substitute for handling their period, even if it was not as comfortable as the modern sanitary pad.

Kenner’s sanitary belt with its moisture-proof napkin pocket made it less likely that menstrual blood could leak. Her invention was patented 30 years after it was introduced because the company which was initially interested in her invention rejected it when they realized that Kenner was African-American. Nevertheless, Kenner went on to invent a lot of household items throughout her adult life.

Along with her sister Mildred, Kenner patented a bathroom toilet tissue holder that allowed the loose end of a roll to be accessible at all times.She further patented a back washer that could be attached to the wall of a shower to help people clean parts of their back that were hard to reach. Mildred, who was struck with multiple sclerosis at a young age, invented a children’s board game that explored family ties. In 1980, she trademarked the game’s name, “Family Treedition.” Her game was subsequently manufactured in several fashions, including the Braille language.

Mary was the more prolific inventor of the two as she eventually filed five patents in total, more than any other African-American woman in history. The two sisters did not have any professional training, and they never became rich from their inventions. They made inventions ultimately to improve the quality of life.

The sisters were both born in the town of Monroe, N.C., Charlotte. Mildred was born January 31, 1916, and died in 1993. Her sister, Mary was born May 17, 1912, but passed away at the age of 84. Research more about great women who helped shape our lives and work with your babies. Make it a champion day!.

22May

May 22 1982- Marion Croak

GM – FBF- Technology is part of our lives and will continue, today we look at a Black woman who is a giant in her field. Enjoy!

Remember – “Believe in the power of truth … Do not allow your mind to be imprisoned by majority thinking. Remember that the limits of science are not the limits of imagination.” – Marian Croak

Today in our History – May 22, 1982 – Marion Croak joins then named Bell Laboratories. (AT&T).

As part of Face2Face African Americans commitment to informing and connecting black people around the world, I have resolved to devote each day of the month in celebrating black women and man who have contributed to highlight their inventions and/ or contributions to the USA and the world.

Marian Croak is the senior vice president for application and services infrastructure for AT&T. Croak has been granted 100 patents in relation to voice over internet protocol or VOIP. She has an additional 100 patents currently under review with the U.S. Patent Office. Her patents are directly related to “assessing the installation of a component in a packet-switched network” to “dynamically adjusting broadband access bandwidth.” As told to BizTech.

Her journey started in 1982 when she began working at AT&T – Croak, along with other colleagues advocated for the switch from wire technology to internet protocol. Croak spent 32 years at AT&T; in 2014 she left the iconic company to join Google as its vice president of research and development for access strategy and emerging markets. In this role, she’s responsible for expanding internet capabilities around the globe.

Croak is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Southern California. She earned a PhD in Social Psychology and Quantitative Analysis.

In 2013 Croak was inducted into the Women in Technology International (WITI) hall of fame. She also sits on the board of the Holocaust and Human Rights Educational Center.

We honor Marian Croak’s contributions to the world as a black woman. Make it a champion day!