Category: Inventors/ or firsts

26Jun

June 26 1956- Bernard Anthony Harris Jr.

GM – FBF – As a baby boomer, I remember President John F. Kennedy telling the world that American will be on the moon by the end of the decade and we were on July 20, 1969. This morning let me tell you the story of the first Black man to take a walk in space. Enjoy!

Remember – “To be considered a part of the NASA team was one of the most thrilling events of my life” – Bernard A. Harris Jr.

Today in our History – June 26, 1956 – Bernard Anthony Harris Jr. is born and will grow up loving space exploration.

Bernard Anthony Harris Jr.in Temple, Texas is a former NASA astronaut.

On February 9, 1995, Harris became the first African American to perform an extra-vehicular activity (spacewalk), during the second of his two Space Shuttle flights.
Harris first became interested in being an astronaut watching the Apollo 11 mission on TV in 1969. Selected by NASA in January 1990, Harris became an astronaut in July 1991, and qualified for assignment as a mission specialist on future Space Shuttle flight crews.

He served as the crew representative for Shuttle Software in the Astronaut Office Operations Development Branch. Harris was assigned as a mission specialist on STS-55, Spacelab D-2, in August 1991. He flew on board Columbia for ten days, (26 April 1993 – 6 May 1993); on the mission the Shuttle reached one year of accumulated flight time. Harris was part of the payload crew of Spacelab D-2, conducting a variety of research in physical and life sciences. During this flight, Harris logged over 239 hours and 4,164,183 miles in space.

His second mission was as the Payload Commander on STS-63 ( February 2, 1995 – February 11, 1995), the first flight of the new joint Russian-American Space Program. Mission highlights included the first rendezvous (but not docking) with the Russian space station Mir and retrieval of Spartan 204 satellite. During the flight, Harris became the first African-American to walk in space, while fellow astronaut Michael Foale became the first British-born spacewalker. (It was also on this flight that Eileen Collins became the first female Shuttle pilot.) On this mission, Harris logged 198 hours, 29 minutes in space, completed 129 orbits, and traveled over 2.9 million miles.

Harris left NASA in April 1996, but has continued research.[citation needed] He served as Vice President of SPACEHAB, Inc., and innovative space commercialization company, where he directed the company’s space science business. He also served as Vice President of Business Development for Space Media, Inc., an Informatics company, establishing an e-commerce initiative that is now part of the United Nations’ education program.

In the late 1990s , Harris served as a member of the Board of Regents of the Texas Tech University System.
In 1998, he founded The Harris Foundation, a Houston, Texas-based non-profit organization, whose stated mission is “to invest in community-based initiatives to support education, health and wealth. THF supports programs that empower individuals, in particular minorities and other economically and/or socially disadvantaged, to recognize their potential and pursue their dreams.”

In 2008, he appeared in Microsoft’s “I’m a P.C.” ad campaign. Harris also gave a keynote speech at the Exxon Mobil Texas State Science and Engineering Fair.

In 2009, he was elected Vice President of the American Telemedicine Association. He was elected President of the American Telemedicine Association in 2011, serving for a one-year term that ended in 2012.

In 2010, he was part of the Dream Tour where he travelled to over 30 schools around the country.

Currently, Dr. Harris is President and Chief Executive Officer of Vesalius Ventures, Inc., a venture capital accelerator, that invests in early-stage companies in Medical Informatics and Technology. Reserch more about Blacks in the space program with NASA and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

24Jun

June 24 1970- Philadelphia International Records Was Created

GM – FBF – In my continuing celabration to Black Music Month. I have shown you the best recording companies that Memphis (STAX) and Chicago (CHESS) had to bring to our black music culture, now it is time for me to come home to the Deleware Valley where I was born and raised with the music that I grew up with THE SOUND OF PHILADELPHIA. Enjoy!

Remember – Dick Clark (American Bandstand), Jerry Blavat (The Geator with the Heater) and The Discophonic Scene along with WDAS – FM’s Jimmy Bishop, Butterball and still today Patty Jackson. Don’t forget that Trenton’s own Instant Funk was dicoverd by Philly’s own Walter “Bunny” Sigler.

Today in our History – June 24, 1970 – Philadelphia International Records was created – A term with varied meanings in popular music, “soul” broadly describes African American music characterized by emotional urgency and racial consciousness. More specifically, a soul style of black music emerged from rhythm and blues and gospel in the late 1950s and became popular with both black and white audiences through the 1970s. Different cities had distinct styles of soul, often associated with local record companies—Stax in Memphis, Motown in Detroit. In Philadelphia, soul was defined by Philadelphia International Records, a very successful label whose unique style of 1970s soul became known worldwide as the “Sound of Philadelphia.”
Philadelphia had especially vibrant scenes in rhythm and blues and gospel music in the mid-twentieth century. Taking elements from each, local artists began shaping the city’s version of the emerging soul style in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Gospel was a particularly strong influence; essentially, soul was the adaptation of the gospel style to songs with secular rather than sacred lyrics. Solomon Burke, who began preaching and singing gospel in Philadelphia in his pre-adolescent years, made a series of recordings for Atlantic Records in New York in the early 1960s that were fundamental in defining the new style. These records were among the first to be categorized as “soul” music, and Burke was later dubbed the “King of Rock and Soul.” Other Philadelphia-area singers with strong gospel roots who had soul hits in the early to mid-1960s included Garnet Mimms, Howard Tate, and Lorraine Ellison.

While these early artists came from Philadelphia, they recorded in New York City. The larger Philadelphia record companies were more focused on rock and roll and white pop music at this time. Some of the city’s smaller labels recorded local artists in the soul style, however, including two black-owned companies that were especially important in the evolution of Philadelphia soul: Harthon and Arctic. Singer Weldon McDougal, organist Luther Randolph, and guitarist Johnny Stiles created Harthon Records in the early 1960s. Prominent Philadelphia DJ Jimmy Bishop joined Harthon briefly but broke away in 1964 to form his own label, Arctic Records, taking many Harthon artists with him.

Harthon and Arctic each had a series of minor and regional hits in the 1960s, and Arctic had a huge hit with “Yes, I’m Ready,” a ballad by local singer Barbara Mason that reached the Top Ten in the national pop charts in 1965. Most Arctic artists were black, but the label also recorded the Temptones, a white group featuring singer Daryl Hohl. Hohl later changed his last name to Hall and with fellow Temple University student John Oates formed Hall and Oates, one of the most successful of the “blue-eyed soul” groups, as white soul music came to be known.

Philadelphia’s biggest record company at this time was Cameo Parkway Records, a hit-making juggernaut whose artists were in the pop charts throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s. Although Cameo Parkway had had hits with African American artists such as Chubby Checker, the Orlons, and Dee Dee Sharp, almost of all of its production staff and studio musicians were white and it had mostly ignored soul. That changed in 1964 when president Bernie Lowe, seeing the rise of Motown, asked a young black musician on his staff, Thom Bell, to form a rhythm section and begin producing soul music for the label. One of the groups Bell worked with at Cameo Parkway, and later at another local label, Philly Groove Records, was the Delfonics, one of the first groups identified specifically with the Philadelphia soul sound. Bell later shaped the sound of two other quintessential Philadelphia soul groups, the Stylistics and the Spinners. (The Spinners were from Detroit, but their biggest hits were recorded in Philadelphia.)

Small labels such as Harthon and Arctic were incubators for the burgeoning Philly soul style of the 1960s, serving as training grounds for the young songwriters, arrangers, singers, and studio musicians who later created the Sound of Philadelphia. Among this group were two individuals who, along with Thom Bell, emerged as the chief architects of that sound: singer Kenny Gamble and pianist Leon Huff.
Gamble and Huff had been hustling around the Philadelphia music scene since the late 1950s. In the mid-1960s they began writing songs together and then moved into producing records, using Philadelphia musicians and arrangers with whom they had worked over the years. After achieving success in the late 1960s with artists such as the Intruders, Soul Survivors, and Jerry Butler, Gamble and Huff secured a distribution deal with CBS Records and formed Philadelphia International Records in 1971.

Th e company located its headquarters in the former Cameo Parkway building on South Broad Street, which Cameo Parkway abandoned when it ceased operations in the late 1960s. While Philadelphia International made some recordings there, they recorded primarily at Sigma Sound Studios on north Twelfth Street, established in 1968 by former Cameo Parkway recording engineer Joe Tarsia. As Philadelphia International’s chief studio, Sigma Sound became a hit factory, with Tarsia serving as an important sonic architect of the Sound of Philadelphia.

Philadelphia International became one of the nation’s most successful record companies in the 1970s, producing a long string of hits with local artists such as Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Teddy Pendergrass, Billy Paul, and Patti LaBelle, as well as out-of-towners such as the O’Jays, Jackson Five, and Lou Rawls who came to Philadelphia to capture the label’s magic. With songwriter/producers Gamble and Huff at the helm, Thom Bell playing a key songwriting and producing role, and a core group of some thirty regular studio musicians and arrangers, Philadelphia International Records was the undisputed leader in soul music in the 1970s.

The studio musicians had a few hit records themselves, under the band name “MFSB” (short for Mother-Father-Sister-Brother). The biggest was “TSOP” (The Sound of Philadelphia), released in 1974. “TSOP” was the theme song for the popular black TV dance show “Soul Train” and became an anthem of Philadelphia soul. With its pulsing rhythm over lush strings and slick brass, it was a typical sophisticated Philadelphia International production. The label was also known for songs featuring socially conscious lyrics with messages of unity and love.
By the early 1980s, soul had run its course as a popular style. Radio, long the lifeblood of soul, had become very restricted in its programming and no longer served as an effective outlet for the music, while other black styles had gained in popularity, including funk, disco, and a new form of urban music that was coming into prominence, rap. Philadelphia International Records, the last of the great soul labels, went into decline in the early 1980s, signaling the end of the soul music era. Research more about black artist and music and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

22Jun

June 22 1893- Thomas W. Stewart

GM – FBF- Today I want to tell you about a man who invented many things to help Americans and the people of the world but this Invention is still needed today in homes, businesses and any building that has a hard service. Enjoy!

Remember – ” I like things to be clean and sanitized as much as possable and I think you do too.” – Thomas W. Stewart

Today in our History – June 22, 1893

Thomas W. Stewart, an African-American inventor from Kalamazoo, Michigan, patented a new type of mop (U.S. patent #499,402) on June 22, 1893. Thanks to his invention of a clamping device that could wring water out of the mop by using a lever, floor cleaning was not nearly the chore it once was.

Throughout much of history, floors were made out of packed dirt or plaster. These were kept clean with simple brooms, made from straw, twigs, corn husks, or horse hair. But some kind of wet cleaning method was needed to care for the slate, stone, or marble floors that were a feature of the homes of the aristocracy and, later, the middle classes. The word mop goes back probably as far as the late 15th century, when it was spelled mappe in Old English. These devices were likely nothing more than bundles of rags or coarse yarns attached to a long wooden pole.

Thomas W. Stewart, one of the first African-American inventors to be awarded a patent, lived his whole life trying to make people’s everyday lives easier. In order to save time and ensure a more healthy environment in the home, he came up with two improvements to the mop. He first designed a mop head that could be removed by unscrewing it from the base of the mop handle, allowing users to clean the head or discard it when it wore out. Next, he designed a lever attached to the mop head, which, when pulled, would wring water from the head without users getting their hands wet.

Stewart described the mechanics in his abstract:

1. A mop-stick, comprising a stick proper, provided with the T-head having the grooved ends, forming one portion of the clamp, the rod having a straight portion forming the other part of the clamp and from thence converging rearwardly to the sides of the stick, a lever to which the free ends of said rod are pivoted, a ring loose on the stick, to which the forked ends of the lever are pivoted, and a spring between said ring and the T-head; substantially as set forth.

2. The combination of a mopstick provided with a T-head, forming one part of the clamp, a moveable rod forming the other part of the clamp, a lever to which the free ends of said rod are pivoted, said lever being fulcrum-ed to a moveable support on the stick, and a spring exerting a resistance against the lever when the latter is thrown back; substantially as set forth. Research more about black inventions and inventors 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!

09Jun

June 9 1891- George Washington Johnson

GM – FBF – Black Music Month was initiated by President Jimmy Carter who, on June 7, 1979, decreed that June would be the month of black music. So today I will tell you the story of the first black man to be recorded in America. I know that some of you never knew this. Make it a champion day!

Remember – In his 2016 proclamation, President Obama noted that African-American music and musicians have helped the country “to dance, to express our faith through song, to march against injustice, and to defend our country’s enduring promise of freedom and opportunity for all.”

Today in our History – June 9, 1891 – George Washington Johnson, sings for Thomas A. Edison in his West Orange, N.J. laboratory.

Johnson was born in Virginia, either in Fluvanna County or near Wheatland in Loudoun County. His father may have been a slave; if so, he was likely freed in 1853. From an early age, Johnson was raised near Wheatland as the companion and servant of a prosperous white farmer’s son. During his time with this family, he developed his musical ability and even learned to read and write, which was unusual for a black child in Virginia before the American Civil War. Johnson later worked as a laborer, and in his late twenties he moved to New York City. By the late 1870s he was making his living as a street entertainer in New York, specializing in whistling popular tunes.

Some time between January and May 1890, Johnson was recruited by two different regional phonograph distributors who were looking for recording artists for their coin-operated machines. Charles Marshall of the New York Phonograph Company and Victor Emerson of the New Jersey Phonograph Company both heard Johnson performing in Manhattan, probably at the ferry terminals on the Hudson River. Both of them invited Johnson to record his loud raggy whistling on wax phonograph cylinders for a fee of twenty cents per two-minute performance. Although Johnson could whistle all the tunes of the day, one of his first recordings for both companies was a popular vaudeville novelty song called “The Whistling Coon”. Johnson sang as well as whistled, and also was able to give a boisterous laugh in musical pitch. From this he developed the second performance that made him famous, “The Laughing Song”. Although he recorded other material, including whistling the song “Listen to the Mockingbird” and some short minstrel show performances done with other performers, it was these two songs that Johnson would perform and record over and over for years.

In the earliest days of the recording industry, every record was a “master”. A singer with a strong voice could make three or four usable recordings at once, with as many machines running simultaneously with their recording horns pointed towards the singer’s mouth. Johnson would sometimes sing the same song over and over again in the recording studio fifty or more times a day.

By 1895, Johnson’s two tunes “The Whistling Coon” and “The Laughing Song” were the best-selling recordings in the United States. The total sales of his wax cylinders between 1890 and 1895 have been estimated at 25,000 to 50,000, each one recorded individually by Johnson. Remarkably, the New Jersey record company marketed Johnson as a black man, during an era when much of American life was strongly segregated by race. “The Whistling Coon” was characterized by a light-hearted tune and lyrics which would be unacceptable today, in which a Black man is compared to a baboon.

Johnson continued recording for the New York and New Jersey companies, and in 1891 also started recording for their parent company, the North American Phonograph Company. On June 9, 1891, Johnson traveled to sing for a few recording sessions held at Thomas Edison’s laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. Johnson also made appearances on Vaudeville. His repertory on stage was pretty much limited to his two famous songs, but this was sufficient to get him bookings on bills.

In 1894, Johnson began recording with Len Spencer, a Vaudeville star of the era, and the two would remain friends until the end of Johnson’s life. In 1895, Johnson made his first recordings on the new disc technology for Berliner Gramophone. In addition to Berliner, Johnson recorded for Edison Records, Columbia, the Victor Talking Machine Company, the Chicago Talking Machine Company, Bettini and numerous other small cylinder and disc companies through the 1890s and up to 1909 or 1910.

In 1897, Johnson recorded two new songs, “The Laughing Coon” and “The Whistling Girl”. They remained in the Edison and Columbia catalogs for years, although neither was as popular as his two original tunes.By 1905, Johnson’s popularity had declined. New recording technology enabled the pressing of thousands of duplicate records from a single master, and Johnson was no longer needed to record each copy individually. His friend Len Spencer, now a successful artist and booking agent, hired Johnson as an office doorman. Johnson worked for Spencer and lived in his office building for several years, then moved back to Harlem. In 1914, at the age of 67, George W. Johnson died from pneumonia and myocarditis. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York. Research more about the early black singers who were recorded in America 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!

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!

03Jun

June 3 1833- Fourth Black invention In Philadelphia With Sixty Delegates From Eight States

GM – FBF – Today, we examine an orgainization that met annually every first week in June to discuss the state of the Negro Race in America. If you never heard of it – that’s alright let’s learn now. Enjoy!

Remember – Resistance! Resistance! No opressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance. – Henry Highland Garnet

Today in our History – June 3,1833 – Fourth national Black convention met in Philadelphia with sixty-two delegates from eight states. Abraham D. Shadd of Pennsylvania was elected president.

After more than a decade of organized abolition among northern free blacks, a group of prominent free African American men organized the National Negro Convention Movement. The convention movement among northern free blacks symbolized the growth of a black activist network by the mid-nineteenth century. Between its first meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1831 and its last in Syracuse, New York in 1864, the conventions charted important shifts in rhetoric and focus and the development of a black nationalist political consciousness.

The National Convention met a dozen times before the Civil War in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York state. The catalyst for the first meeting in Philadelphia centered upon a proposal by city leaders to oust Cincinnati’s black population as a response to conflict that had emerged over job competition between black and white men. The Cincinnati Riot of 1829 led black leaders to organize throughout the Midwest and Northeast in protest against anti-black violence, discrimination, and slavery.

The first decade of convention meetings revealed growing interracial cooperation between black and white abolitionists. By the late 1840s the gathering were dominated by frustration and disillusionment among many black activists with the “moral suasion” approach of the abolitionist movement which appeared to have little impact on the slave system in the South. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 led to the crystallization of black nationalist consciousness as many African American leaders began to believe the United States would never act justly toward black people. As a result, the Negro conventions at mid-century debated the merits of voluntary African American emigration to places like Canada, Liberia, and the Caribbean versus the solidification of a black nationalist movement in the United States.

During this period convention delegates consistently linked the status of free blacks and slaves in their calls for meetings. In 1855, for example, organizers of the Philadelphia convention wrote that “the elevation of the free man is inseperable (sic) from, and lies at the very threshold of the great work of the slave’s restoration to freedom.”

The majority of delegates to the conventions were men, despite the active participation of free black women in the convention meetings and in the black abolitionist and nationalist movement in general. At the Philadelphia meeting, only two women, Elizabeth Armstrong and Rachel Cliff, served as official delegates.

The Convention Movement died during the Civil War as emancipation came to the four million enslaved people in the South and soon afterwards the promise of citizenship during Reconstruction led, prematurely as it turned out, to the belief that African Americans would fully participate in the nation’s politics. Research more about early black national organizations and share with your babies and 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!