DID YOU KNOW? for March 21 – April 3, 2023

Joy Harjo (May 9, 1951 – present) is the first Native American to be appointed as the United States poet laureate, serving from 2019-2022. Harjo has written nine books of poetry, several plays, children’s books and two memoirs. Harjo is a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. Harjo has received an American Book Award, PEN Center USA literary award, the Wallace Stevens Award for proven mastery in the art of poetry from the Academy of American Poets, Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, and more. In 2019, Harjo was elected a Chancellor the Academy of American Poets. She directs an arts mentorship program for young Mvskoke women and is a founding board member of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.

Learn More….

https://www.joyharjo.com/

DID YOU KNOW? for March 7 – 20, 2023 

Daniel Hale Williams (January 18, 1856 – August 4, 1931) was the first African American physician admitted to the American College of Surgeons. A pioneering heart surgeon, Williams performed the first successful human open-heart surgery in 1893 at Provident Hospital in Chicago, IL. As an advocate to end racial disparities in the medical field, he co-founded the National Medical Association in 1895, a professional organization for black medical practitioners because the all-white American Medical Association did not grant membership to black doctors.

Learn more…

https://www.jsums.edu/gtec/dr-daniel-hale-williams/

DID YOU KNOW? for February 21 – March 6, 2023 

Nancy Grace Roman (May 16, 1925 – December 25, 2018) is known to many as the “Mother of the Hubble” for her foundational role in the observatory’s planning and program structure, paving the way for missions like the Roman Space Telescope (formerly WFIRST). She received her BA degree in Astronomy in 1946 from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, and her PhD from the University of Chicago. As a female in astronomy, Roman faced many challenges throughout her career. From a young age she was discouraged from going into astronomy by those around her, and struggled with its male dominance and the roles perceived as appropriate for women.

Learn more…

https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/aboutNGR.html

DID YOU KNOW? for February 7 – 20, 2023 

Mary Ann Shadd Cary (October 9, 1823 – June 5, 1893) was an African-American anti-slavery activist, an advocate for women's rights, a teacher, and a lawyer. A pioneering journalist, Cary became the first black, female newspaper editor in North America as a publisher of Canada’s first antislavery newspaper, The Provincial Freeman. As a member of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), Cary spoke at the NWSA's 1878 convention. She also served as an advocate for the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.

Learn more...

https://www.nps.gov/people/mary-ann-shadd-cary.htm

DID YOU KNOW? for January 24 – February 6, 2023

Benjamin Oliver Davis Jr. (December 18, 1912 – July 4, 2002) a United States Air Force (USAF) general and commander of the World War II Tuskegee Airmen, was the first African-American brigadier general in the USAF. During World War II, he was commander of the 99th Fighter Squadron which escorted bombers on air combat missions over Europe. Davis flew sixty missions in P-39, Curtiss P-40, P-47 and P-51 Mustang fighters. Davis followed in his father's footsteps in breaking racial barriers, as Benjamin O. Davis Sr. was the first black brigadier general in the United States Army.

Learn more…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_O_Davis_Jr

DID YOU KNOW? for January 3 – 16 2023: 

DID YOU KNOW…Freedom House Ambulance Service, formed in 1967 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was the first emergency medical service in the United States staffed by paramedics who had received medical training. They served the predominantly black Hill District of Pittsburgh, and the majority of the staff were African-American. Formed with partial funding from President Johnson’s War on Poverty, Freedom House Ambulance Service established new national and international standards in emergency medical care. They operated until 1975 when the city took over providing emergency ambulance service.

In an agreement with the City of Pittsburgh, staff from Freedom House Ambulance Service were supposed to maintain their jobs and ambulance teams with the new city agency, however that didn’t happen. Within the first year fifty-per-cent of the former Freedom House Ambulance staffers were no longer employed with the city's emergency services.

Learn more….

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/20/1124008613/how-working-class-black-men-in-pittsburgh-pioneered-emergency-medicine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_House_Ambulance_Service

DID YOU KNOW? for December 20, 2022 – January 2, 2023: 

DID YOU KNOW…Maria W. Stewart (1803 – December 17, 1879) is known as America’s first black woman political writer.  She was a Connecticut (free-born) African-American teacher, journalist, lecturer, evangelist, abolitionist, and women's rights activist. Stewart was a pioneer by her speaking to mixed audiences of men and women, white and black. She was also a trail-blazer as the first African-American woman to make public lectures, and to lecture about women's rights, and publicly speak against slavery. 

In an 1831 speech, Stewart exhorted her audience to action in saying,“O, ye daughters of Africa, awake! awake! arise! no longer sleep nor slumber, but distinguish yourselves. Show forth to the world that ye are endowed with noble and exalted faculties.” This quote from her has been used as a call-to-action by generations since, and often appears in reproductions of Stewart's writings and speeches.

Learn more…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_W._Stewart

DID YOU KNOW? for December 6 – December 19, 2022: 

DID YOU KNOW…Fifty years ago, psychiatrist John E. Fryer, M.D. electrified his colleagues by telling the 1972 convention of the American Psychiatric Association that he was homosexual. Fryer's announcement came at a time when homosexuality was classified as a mental illness.  He wore a head-to-toe disguise, altered his voice, and used the name Dr. Anonymous when making his announcement. It was a dramatic moment in the gay rights movement, and is credited with leading the psychiatric community to no longer classify homosexuality as a mental disorder as of 1973, which led to insurance companies, the US government, and other institutions following suit.

No gay American psychiatrist had risked speaking publicly before Dr. Fryer's May 1972 appearance. Though he received a standing ovation that day as Dr. Anonymous, the next year Fryer was fired from his job at Friends Hospital for being gay.

Dr. John Fryer died in February of 2003 at the age of 65. In 2005 the American Psychiatric Association established an annual award in Fryer’s name, honoring individuals who contribute to improving the mental health of sexual minorities.

Learn more…

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/-homosexual-psychiatrist-dr-anonymous-changed-history-rcna26836

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Fryer

DID YOU KNOW? for November 22 – December 5, 2022: 

DID YOU KNOW…Two Kenyan inventors, David Gathu and Moses Kinyua, have created the world’s first bio-robotic arm operated by brain signals. While each dropped out of college due to financial constraints, it did not stop them from learning or inventing. 

In 2020, during the Covid-19 epidemic, as they were trying to develop tools to safely decontaminate surfaces in public areas, they came up with an electronic prosthetic arm-type device. When Kenyans adopted other ways to handle decontamination, Gathu and Kinyua were able to repurpose their invention as a device to help the disabled with the revolutionary feature of control via the wearer’s brain signals.

Learn more….
https://www.worldrecordacademy.org/medical/first-bio-robotic-arm-controlled-by-brain-signals-world-record-set-by-david-gathu-and-moses-kinyua-211155

DID YOU KNOW? for November 8 – 21, 2022: 

DID YOU KNOW…An African American dentist, Dr. George F Grant, was the inventor of the wooden golf tee.  On Dec. 12, 1899, Boston dentist George F. Grant received a U.S. patent No. 638,920, the world’s first patent for ‘a wooden spike with a flexible rubber peg for the ball’ – a golf tee! Before this time, golfers carried small buckets of sand for pinching a mound of damp sand to elevate a golf ball on the tee box.  

By 1899 Dr. Grant was working at Harvard Dental School and recognized internationally in dentistry circles as an inventor of inserts for patients with cleft palates. While living in the Boston area he became an avid golfer. Though Dr. Grant never pursued large-scale manufacturing or sales of his golf tee invention, he did have them produced in small batches and regularly gave them away to friends and golf partners.

Learn more.....

https://www.pga.com/archive/pga-of-america/golf-buzz/how-dr-george-f-grant-went-african-american-dentist-golf-tee-inventor