Black History Slideshow

1. Black History Month
Heroes and Heroines

2. The Carter G. Woodson monument, erected in
commemoration of this great scholar, stands
today on Hal Greer Boulevard in Huntington.

3. Carter Godwin Woodson
December 9, 1875 - April 4, 1950

4. Carter G. Woodson
Founder of Black History Week,
the precursor to Black History Month.

5. Freedom Fighters
Harriet Tubman
Nat Turner
Denmark Vessey
David Walker
Sojourner Truth
Frederick Douglass
Booker T. Washington
Marcus Garvey

6. Crispus Attucks
Of mixed African and American Indian ancestry, Attucks
was the slave of William Brown of Framingham, Mass.
Attucks escaped around 1750 to work on whaling ships.
On March 5, 1770, Boston patriot Samuel Adams
convinced sailors and dockworkers to protest the presence
of British troops. Attucks was a leader of the 50 men in the
protest, shouting “Don't be afraid,” as they advanced on the
British. The soldiers fired on the protestors, killing Attucks
and four others in what became known as the Boston
Massacre.

7. James Armistead
An African American slave in Virginia, Armistead sought
and received permission from his master, William
Armistead, to enlist under Gen. Marquis de Lafayette, a
French officer who joined George Washington's army
during the American Revolution.
As a double agent, Armistead was able to move freely
between both camps. He provided Lafayette with critical
information that enabled the general to intercept
Cornwallis's much-needed naval support and ultimately
defeat Cornwallis at Yorktown in Oct. 1781, the decisive
battle that ended the Revolution.

8. Dred Scott
In 1846, Dred Scott and his wife Harriet filed suit for their
freedom in the St. Louis Circuit Court. This suit began an
eleven-year legal fight that ended in the U.S. Supreme
Court, which issued a landmark decision declaring that
Scott remain a slave. This decision contributed to rising
tensions between the free and slave states just before the
American Civil War.

9. Mary McLeod Bethune
Founder of Bethune-Cookman College in Florida in
1904, advisor to President Roosevelt, and founder of
the National Council of Negro Women, Bethune is
known as a social reformer and educator.

10. W.E.B Dubois
William Edward Burghardt DuBois, to his admirers, was
by spirited devotion and scholarly dedication, an attacker
of injustice and a defender of freedom.
A harbinger of Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism, he
died in self-imposed exile in his home away from home
with his ancestors of a glorious past—Africa.
There were very few scholars who concerned themselves
with honest study of the black man and he sought to fill
this immense void.

11. A. Philip Randolph
Black labor movement leader, founder of the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and later a key
figure in the civil rights movement, Asa Philip
Randolph believed that the key to black progress
rested in the black working class. Thus, throughout
most of his life he worked to help the black working
class and sought to end discrimination.
1889–1979

12. Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was one of the foremost leaders of the
abolitionist movement, which fought to end slavery within
the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War. He
became recognized as one of America's first great black
speakers. He won world fame when his autobiography was
publicized in 1845. Two years later he began publishing an
antislavery paper called the North Star.
Douglass served as an adviser to President Abraham
Lincoln during the Civil War and fought for the adoption
of constitutional amendments that guaranteed voting rights
and other civil liberties for blacks. Douglass provided a
powerful voice for human rights during this period of
American history and is still revered today for his
contributions against racial injustice.

13. Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey is best remembered as a pivotal figure
in the struggle for racial equality throughout the
world. He founded the UNIA (Universal Negro
Improvement Association) and championed the 'back
to Africa' movement of the 1920s. His legacy makes
him an inspirational figure for many civil rights
leaders and politicians today, and in his lifetime he
was hailed as a prophet and redeemer by black people
everywhere.

14. Dr. Ernest Everett Just
Ernest Just of Charleston, South Carolina was a zoologist,
biologist, and research scientist in the field of physical
chemistry.
According to "African Americans in the Sciences" Ernest
Just was involved with "research on egg fertilization,
experimental parthenogenesis, hydration, cell division,
dehydration in living cells, the effects of ultraviolet rays
in increasing chromosome numbers in animals and in the
altering the organization of the egg with special reference
to polarity."
(1883-1941)

15. Daniel Hale Williams
Daniel Hale Williams organized the Provident
Hospital, the first black hospital in the United
States. In 1893, Williams performed the first
successful closure of a wound of the heart and
pericardium.

16. Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was the major
African-American spokesman in the eyes of white
America. Born a slave in Virginia, Washington
was educated at Hampton Institute, Norfolk,
Virginia. He began to work at the Tuskegee
Institute in 1881 and built it into a center of
learning and industrial and agricultural training.
Booker Taliaferro Washington

17. Adam Clayton Powell Jr
1908–72, American politician and clergyman, b. New
Haven, Conn. In 1937 he became pastor of the
Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City, and he
soon became known as a militant black leader. He was
elected to the city council of New York in 1941, and
was elected for the first time to the U.S. Congress in
1945. Although a Democrat, he campaigned for
President Eisenhower in 1956.

18. Ralph Bunche
After serving in the U.S. War Department and State Department
during World War II, Bunche was active in the preliminary
planning of the United Nations. He joined the permanent U.N.
Secretariat in New York in 1947.
The next year he was unexpectedly thrust into the role of
brokering a truce between warring Arabs and Jews in the Middle
East when the chief mediator was assassinated. For his success in
negotiating a peaceful settlement, Bunche received the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1950.

19. Ella Baker
Ella Baker was a founding member of the Young Negroes
Cooperative League, whose members pooled funds to buy
products and services at reduced cost.
In 1957 Baker and several Southern black ministers and
activists established the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, a major force in organizing the civil rights
movement. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. served as the
group's first president and Baker as the director. She
mainly worked behind the scenes, while King assumed the
role as spokesman.

20. The Little Rock Nine
The Little Rock Nine, as they later came to be called,
were the first black teenagers to attend all-white
Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in
1957.
These remarkable young African-American students
challenged segregation in the deep South and won.
Although Brown v. Board of Education outlawed
segregation in schools, many racist school systems
defied the law by intimidating and threatening black
students—Central High School was a notorious
example.

21. Daisy Bates
Civil rights leader whose tireless efforts led to the
desegregation of Little Rock, Arkansas' Central High
School. She guided nine students in their 1957
crusade to enroll in the white school. The students'
initial effort was rebuffed, and the governor, Orval
Faubus called in the National Guard to stop the
students at the door.

22. Fannie Lou Hamer
Her career as a civil rights activist started in 1962,
when she helped the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee to organize a voter registration drive in
Ruleville, Miss., which challenged the state's laws that
were designed to deny blacks the right to vote.
She lost her job on the plantation as a result of her
efforts and assumed the position as a field secretary
for the SNCC.

23. Malcolm X
1925–65, militant black leader in the United States,
also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, b. Malcolm
Little in Omaha, Neb. He was introduced to the Black
Muslims while serving a prison term and became a
Muslim minister upon his release in 1952. He quickly
became very prominent in the movement with a
following perhaps equaling that of its leader, Elijah
Muhammad.

24. Barbara Jordan
She ran for a seat in the Texas House of
Representatives in 1962 and 1964, but lost both
times.... however, she made history when she was
elected to the newly drawn Texas Senate seat in 1966,
thereby becoming the first Black to serve in that body
since 1883. She was an oddity at that time, as the first
Black woman in that state's legislature. Barbara
Jordan was the first Black woman to serve in the U.S.
Congress from the South.

25. Colin Luther Powell
Powell, Colin Luther, 1937–, U.S. army general and
government official, b. New York City, grad., City College
(B.S., 1958); George Washington Univ. (M.A., 1969). The
son of Jamaican immigrants, Powell was the first African
American and the youngest person to chair (1989–93) the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first African American to
serve (2001–5) as secretary of state.
He entered the U.S. army (1958) as a commissioned officer
and served two tours of duty (1962–63, 1968–69) during
the Vietnam War.

26. Carol Moseley Braun
Moseley-Braun made history in 1992 when she was
elected to the U.S. Senate, becoming the first black
woman to do so. She upset two-term incumbent Alan
Dixon in the Democratic primary and went on to
defeat Republican candidate Richard Williamson.
As a senator, she sponsored several progressive
education bills and championed strong gun control
laws. She was a candidate for the Democratic
nomination for president in 2004

27. Music
• Charlie Christian
• Louis Armstrong
• Jimi Hendrix
• Robert Johnson
• Muddy Waters
• Blind Tom Wiggins
• B.B. King
• Elmore James
• Bessy Smith
• Billy Holiday
• Ella Fitzgerald
• Marion Anderson
• Leontyne Price
• Ray Charles

28. Marian Anderson
An African-American contralto (same range as
alto), best remembered for her performance on
Easter Sunday, 1939 on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial in Washington D.C. On January 7,
1955, Anderson broke the color barrier by
becoming the first African-American to perform
with the New York Metropolitan Opera.

29. Louis Armstrong
Nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American
jazz trumpeter, singer, and an influential figure in
jazz music.
Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz,
shifting the focus of the music from collective
improvisation to solo performance. With his
instantly recognizable gravelly voice, Armstrong
was also an influential singer, demonstrating great
dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and
melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was
also skilled at scat singing (vocalizing using
sounds and syllables instead of actual lyrics).

30. Billie Holiday
The future "Lady Day" first heard the music of Louis
Armstrong and Bessie Smith on a Victrola at Alice Dean's,
the Baltimore "house of ill repute" where she ran errands
and scrubbed floors as a young girl.
She made her singing debut in obscure Harlem nightclubs
(borrowing her professional name from screen star Billie
Dove), then toured with Count Basie and Artie Shaw before
going solo. Benny Goodman dragged the frightened singer to
her first studio session. Between 1933 and 1944, she recorded
over 200 "sides," but she never received royalties for any of
them.

31. Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris (born May 13, 1950, as
Stevland Hardaway Judkins), known by his stage
name Stevie Wonder, is an American musician,
singer, songwriter, record producer, and multi-
instrumentalist. A child prodigy, he has become one
of the most creative and loved musical performers
of the late 20th century. Wonder signed with
Motown's Tamla label at the age of 11and
continues to perform and record for Motown as of
the early 2010s. He has been blind since shortly

32. Actors and Actresses
• Ira Frederick Aldridge
• George Walker
• Dewey "Pigmeat"
Markham
• Cab Calloway
• Scatman Crothers
• Ossie Davis
• Dorothy Dandridge
• Esther Rolle
• Ira Frederick Aldridge
• Ruby Dee
• Sidney Poitier
• Cicely Tyson
• Cleavon Little
• Denzel Washington
• Halle Berry
• Audra McDonald
• Morgan Freeman

33. Dorothy Dandridge
(November 9, 1922 – September 8, 1965)
Dorothy was an African-American film and theatre
actress, singer and dancer. She is perhaps best
known for being the first black actress to be
nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress
for her performance in the 1954 film Carmen Jones.

34. Denzel Washington
Washington has received two Golden Globe awards,
a Tony Award, and two Academy Awards: Best
Supporting Actor for the historical drama-war
film Glory (1989) and Best Actor for his role as a
corrupt cop in the crime thriller Training Day (2001).

35. Bessie Coleman
The world's first licensed black pilot. Bessie Coleman
was born in Texas in 1892. During World War I, she
read about the air war in Europe.
She became interested in flying and became
convinced she should be up there, not just reading
about it. She started looking for a flying school but
what she didn't realize was that she had two strikes
against her: She was a woman and she was black.

36. Great Inventors
Marjorie Stewart Joyner
Madame CJ Walker
Dr. Patricia Bath
George Washington Carver
Benjamin Banneker
Elijah McCoy
Lewis Latimer

37. "Black minds have been inventors,
engineers and master-builders since
antiquity. We must maintain the
time-honored tradition in
preparation for the 21st century and
beyond." - B.L. Crudup, P.E.

38. Jan Matzeliger
Lasting Machine
Jan worked on his "lasting machine" for ten
years secretly. His machine could produce
between 150 and 700 pairs of shoes a day.
Even the best Laster could only produce 50
shoes a day. He brought affordable shoes and
better jobs to those in the industry through his
inventions.

39. Benjamin Banneker
In the Stevie Wonder song "Black Man," the
Motown marvel sings of Benjamin Banneker:
"first clock to be made in America was created by
a black man." Though the song is a fitting salute
to a great inventor (and African Americans in
general), it only touches on the genius of
Benjamin Banneker and the many hats he wore –
as a farmer, mathematician, astronomer, author
and land surveyor.

40. Lewis Latimer:
Latimer's Bulb
Latimer, with Joseph V. Nichols, came up
with both idea to use carbon filaments and
the process for manufacturing the carbon
filaments.

41. Garrett A. Morgan
Many of the world's most famous inventors only
produced one major invention that garnered
recognition and cemented their prominent status.
But Garret Augustus Morgan, one of the country's
most successful African-American inventors,
created two – the gas mask and the traffic signal.

42. Madame C. J. Walker
First African American Millionaire.
"I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of
the South. From there I was promoted to the
washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook
kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into
the business of manufacturing hair goods and
preparations....I have built my own factory on my
own ground“.

43. Dr. Charles Richard Drew
Developer of the modern blood bank
It's impossible to determine how many
hundreds of thousands of people would have
lost their lives without the contributions of
African-American inventor Dr. Charles Drew.
This physician, researcher and surgeon
revolutionized the understanding of blood
plasma – leading to the invention of blood
banks.

44. Thomas L. Jennings
Thomas L. Jennings was the first African
American to receive a patent, on March 3,
1821 (U.S. patent3306x). Jennings' patent was
for a dry-cleaning process called "dry
scouring". The first money he earned from his
patent was spent on the legal fees (my polite
way of saying enough money to purchase)
necessary to liberate his family out of slavery
and support the abolitionist cause.

45. Elijah McCoy
Ever heard the expression is that the "real
McCoy?" If you have, you've been talking
about Elijah McCoy without even knowing it.
Elijah McCoy, prolific inventor, helped trains
and all things with engines, move more
smoothly and safely.
By the end of his life he had received 57
different patents.

46. George Washington Carver is perhaps to this
day the nation's best known African American
scientist. In the period between 1890 and 1910,
the cotton crop had been devastated by the Bo
weevil. Carver advised to cultivate peanuts
instead. Before long, he developed more than
300 different products that could be made from
the peanut. Everything from milk to printer's
ink.
George Washington Carver

47. Granville T. Woods
By the time he died, Woods had received more
than sixty patents and had beaten the mighty
Thomas Edison and won.
The information he learned from books and
from working in the railroad business led to his
most important invention, which he called the
"Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph."

48. Ernest Just
Dr. Ernest Just was a pioneer in the fields of
biology and chemistry at a time when it was
extremely difficult for African Americans to get a
scientific education. Ernest Just was the first
person to unlock the secrets of cell function and
structure.

49. Marjorie Stewart Joyner
Marjorie Joyner invented a permanent wave
machine that would allow a hairdo to stay set
for days, although she never received any
money for her invention. She co-founded, with
Mary Bethune Mcleod, the United Beauty
School Owners and Teachers Association in
1945.

50. Percy Julian
Dr. Julian was an internationally acclaimed
synthetic organic chemist. Only the third African
American to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry, he
specialized in the field of natural products
chemistry, the identification of active chemical
components of extracts from plants and the
synthesis of those components in the laboratory
from smaller molecules. This technology is very
important for medicines, food products, paper,
paints, and fire-fighting foams, among other things.

51. Invented a sugar processing
evaporator and an improved sugar
refining process that safely saved
time and money in the making of
sugar from sugar beets or sugar
cane.
NorbertRillieux

52. John Henry Thompson
Thompson wanted to bridge the gap between art and
technology. Four years later as a chief scientist at
Macromedia™, he was able to make progress towards
this goal. He developed a number of products, many of
them based on his most famous invention, Lingo
programming: a scripting language that helps render
visuals in computer programs. Thompson used Lingo in
one of his better-known computer inventions,
Macromedia™ Director. Macromedia™ Director is able
to incorporate different graphic formats (such as BMP,
AVI, JPEG, QuickTime, PNG, RealVideo and vector
graphics) to create multi-media content and applications,
thus combining computer programming language with
visual art.

53. Frederick McKinley Jones
Anytime you see a truck on the highway
transporting refrigerated or frozen food, you're
seeing the work of Frederick McKinley Jones. One
of the most prolific Black inventors ever, Jones
patented more than 60 inventions in his lifetime.
While more than 40 of those patents were in the
field of refrigeration, Jones is most famous for
inventing an automatic refrigeration system for
long haul trucks and railroad cars.

54. Every time a person crunches into a potato chip, he
or she is enjoying the delicious taste of one of the
world's most famous snacks – a treat that might not
exist without the contribution of black inventor
George Crum. The son of an African-American
father and a Native American mother, Crum was
working as the chef in the summer of 1853 when he
incidentally invented the chip. It all began when a
patron who ordered a plate of French-fried potatoes
sent them back to Crum's kitchen because he felt they
were too thick and soft.

55. Otis Boykin
Look around the house today and you'll see a variety of
devices that utilize components made by Boykin –
including computers, radios and TV sets. Boykin's
inventions are all the more impressive when one considers
he was an African American in a time of segregation and
the field of electronics was not as well-established as it is
today.
All in all, he earned 11 patents and invented 28 different
electronic devices. Some of his lesser known inventions
include a burglar-proof cash register and a chemical air
filter – both of which were never produced.

56. Lonnie G. Johnson
Lonnie George Johnson is an American inventor and
engineer who holds more than 80 patents. Johnson is
most known for inventing the Super Soaker water
gun, which has ranked among the world's top 20
best-selling toys every year since its release.

57. Dr. Patricia Bath
As a noted Ophthalmologist and famous black
inventor, Dr. Patricia Bath has dedicated her life to
the treatment and prevention of visual impairments.
Her personal belief that everyone has the "Right to
Sight" led to her invention in 1985 of a specialized
tool and procedure for the removal of cataracts. With
the Laserphaco Probe and procedure, Dr. Bath
increased the accuracy and results of cataract
surgery, which had previously been performed
manually with a mechanical grinder.

58. Dr. Mark Dean
Dr. Mark Dean started working at IBM in 1980 and was
instrumental in the invention of the Personal Computer
(PC). He holds three of IBM's original nine PC patents
and currently holds more than 20 total patents. The
famous African-American inventor never thought the
work he was doing would end up being so useful to the
world, but he has helped IBM make instrumental changes
in areas ranging from the research and application of
systems technology circuits to operating environments.
One of his most recent computer inventions occurred
while leading the team that produced the 1-Gigahertz
chip, which contains one million transistors and has
nearly limitless potential.

59. Politics and Activism

60. Shirley Chisholm
In 1968, After finishing her term in the
legislature, Chisholm campaigned to represent
New York's Twelfth Congressional District.
Her campaign slogan was "Fighting Shirley
Chisholm--Unbought and Unbossed." She
won the election and became the first African
American woman elected to Congress.

61. Thirman Milner
Thirman Milner, the first African American
mayor of Hartford elected 1981-1987 and in New
England. Born in Hartford in 1934, Mr. Milner
was attending New York University when he
heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speak. After
hearing and meeting Dr. King, young Thirman
decided to become a civil rights activist.

62. Elizabeth Horton Sheff
Community leader and activists, Elizabeth Horton
Sheff spearheaded the case, United States Sheff vs.
O’Neill – a landmark civil rights lawsuit that seeks
to prepare all children to live and prosper in a
growing racial/ethnic, economically globally
connected world. This effort produced the many
magnet schools that now exist in the State of
Connecticut, as well as other educational reforms.

63. Hiram Revels
Born a free black, Revels worked as a barber and
as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal
Church. During the Civil War he helped recruit
two regiments of African American troops in
Maryland and served as the chaplain of a black
regiment.
After the war, he was elected an alderman (1868).
In 1870, Revels was elected as the first African
American member of the United States Senate.

64. President Barack H. Obama