28 DAYS OF MELANIN: THE BLACK HISTORY MONTH APPRECIATION

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Elbert Frank Cox was First African American to earn a Ph.D in pure mathematics, a field concerned with mathematical theory rather than with practice or application.

He spent most of his life as a professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he was known as an excellent teacher. During his life, he overcame various difficulties which arose because of racism. In his honor, the National Association of Mathematicians established the Cox-Talbot Address, which is annually delivered at the NAM's national meetings. The Elbert F. Cox Scholarship Fund, which is used to help black students pursue studies, is named in his honor as well. In 1917 after graduating, Cox joined the U.S Army in World War I. After he discharged from the Army, he began his career as a high school math tutor.

Lucy Diggs Slowe (July 4, 1885 – October 21, 1937) was one of the original sixteen founders of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, the first sorority founded by African-American women. She was one of the nine original founders of the sorority in 1908 at Howard University. Her legacy of Alpha Kappa Alpha has continued to generate social capital for over 100 years. Transcending the era's limits, Lucy Slowe was a woman of many "firsts".

Slowe was also a tennis champion, winning the national title of the American Tennis Association's first tournament in 1917, the first African-American woman to win a major sports title.

The American Negro Theater (ANT), founded in 1937, was formed in Harlem on June 5, 1940, by writer Abram Hill and actor Frederick O'Neal. The group was founded by the influence of the purposes of the Negro Unit of the Federal Theatre Project in Harlem. It produced 19 plays before closing in 1949. Designed as a community theater group, performances were held in Harlem's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. In 1942, ANT began its Studio Theatre training program for beginning actors. Graduates include Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte.​

 

[Aphrodite]

Traci Bingham, 1st African American woman who was a Baywatch regular.

 

[richaveli83]

Dahomey Amazons

The Amazon army corps, made up of female warriors, is said to have been established by King Agadja (1708-1740). His father, King Houégbadja, had already created a detachment of "elephant huntresses" who were also bodyguards. But Agadja made them into real warriors.

E. Chaudoin in "Three months in captivity in Dahomey" describes them as follows in 1891:
"There they are, 4,000 warriors, the 4,000 black virgins of Dahomey, the monarch's bodyguard, motionless in their war garments, with gun and knife in hand, ready to leap forward at the master's signal.

Old or young, ugly or beautiful, they are wonderful to look at. They are as well built as the male warriors and their attitude is just as disciplined and correct, lined up as though against a rope".

Former Amazons, Postcard c. 1920

According to A. Djivo, in "Guézo, the renovation of Dahomey", some of the women enrolled voluntarily whilst others who had difficult marriages and whose husbands had complained to the king were enrolled forcibly. Military service disciplined them and the strength of character they had shown in marriage could be expressed through military action.

They protected the king on the battlefield and took an active part in the fighting, giving up their life if necessary. Guézo said to them: "When you go to war and if you are taken prisoner you will be sacrificed and your bodies will become food for vultures and hyenas".

They, could neither marry nor have children as long as they were in the army. They were trained for war and, in principle, were dedicated to it for life.

"We are men not women. Those coming back from war without having conquered must die. If we beat a retreat our life is at the king's mercy. Whatever town is to be attacked we must overcome it or we bury ourselves in its ruins. Guézo is the king of kings. As long as he lives we have nothing to fear".

"Guézo has given birth to us again. We are his wives, his daughters, his soldiers. War is our pastime, it clothes and feeds us".

This seasoned army, often drunk with gin, accustomed to suffering and ready to kill without fear for their own lives always fought bravely at the battle-front and urged the troops forward.

In 1894, at the beginning of the war between the troops of General Dodds and the kingdom of Abomey, the army contained about 4,000 amazons divided into three brigades. "They are armed with double-bladed knives and Winchester rifles. These amazons perform wonders of bravery; they come to within 50 feet of our positions to be killed..." (Captain Jouvelet, 1894).

The amazon corps was disbanded by Agoli Agbo, Gbêhanzin's successor, after the defeat of the Abomey kingdom.

 

[Aphrodite]

Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Alicia Keys and Tina Turner have all been paid $1 million dollars per performance to entertain overseas royalty. In some cases, overseas billionaire clients are so anxious to book black superstar talent, along with their astronomical fee, some artists have also received tyc00n cut diamonds, Ferrari’s and Lamborghini’s.

 

[Aphrodite]

Halle Berry is the only African-American actress paid $1 million dollars to make a 3-hour minimum appearance at corporate events. (Photographed by Timothy White)

 

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@Jayne COME THRU MISS JAYNE . Its funny how these coli militants talk black power but are silent but shyt on you. I see you boo

Chief Amina Temitope Ajayi (aka Mama Diaspora) is a US-based Nigerian business consultant who is an accountant by training, a social entrepreneur and an ardent community activist. Temitope Ajayi was the former President of All Nigerian American Congress (ANAC).

Her efforts and continued advocacy on the Nigerian Diaspora issues have earned her in the media the moniker "Mama Diaspora".Chief Ajayi is well known for promoting women empowerment and poverty eradication in Africa through Agri-business. Through the Arkansas-Nigeria investment forum and other bilateral economic forums in the US, Chief Ajayi's tenacity and genuineness have been very instrumental in convincing and attracting a lot of key investors in the agri-business from the USA to Nigeria.

She is the Founder/CEO of the Nigerian American Agricultural Empowerment Program (NAAEP), which engages in the Agricultural empowerment of farmers, women and young Adults in Nigeria in order to increase foods sufficiency and sustainable employment for women and youths in the agricultural sector.[8] NAAEP has been a grassroots organization that trains and empowers farmers in mechanized farming system, while facilitating business loans, accessibility to farm implements, and the harvesting and marketing of their end product both locally and internationally.

In 2010, Chief Ajayi called on the Federal Government of Nigeria to reduce the interest rates on loans to farmers in order to boost the agricultural sector and to alleviate poverty in the country. Chief Temitope Ajayi is an Ambassador of Goodwill for the State of Arkansas and Maryland, USA. Chief Ms. Ajayi was a distinguished delegate at the past 2014 Nigeria's National Conference where she represented the National Council of Women Societies (NCWS) in Nigeria and served in the Confab's Committee on Agriculture.

Chief Temitope Ajayi in her address at the Annual Meeting of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund, informed delegates that “Women are the engine of the private sector, women run the economy of any nation - because they are more into commerce than their male counterpart, the power of any currency is in their ability to meet the demand and supply”.​

@NigerianDonDada @Nigerianwonder @The Wave

 

[richaveli83]

Eugene Bullard

Eugene Bullard was the world's first black combat aviator, flying in French squadrons during World War I (1917-18). Before he became a pilot he served in the French infantry and was awarded the Croix de Guerre.

Born in a three-room house in Columbus, Eugene James (Jacques) Bullard was the seventh child of Josephine Thomas and William O. Bullard. Bullard's parents, married in Stewart County in 1882, had Creek Indian as well as African American ancestry. William Bullard was born into slavery on the property of Wiley Bullard, a planter in Stewart County. In the early 1890s William Bullard moved to Columbus, where he worked for W. C. Bradley, a rising cotton merchant.

The young Bullard attended the Twenty-eighth Street School from 1901 to 1906. Although his education was minimal, he nonetheless learned to read, one of the keys to his later successes. With his older sister and brothers, Bullard absorbed his father's conviction that African Americans must maintain dignity and self-respect in the face of the prejudice of a white majority determined to "keep blacks in their place" at the bottom of society. Shaken by the near lynching of his father in 1903 and seeking adventure in the world beyond Columbus, he ran away from home in 1906.

In Atlanta he joined a group of gypsies (an English clan known by the surname Stanley) and traveled with them throughout rural Georgia, tending and learning to race their horses. The Stanleys brought to his attention that the racial color line did not exist in England. Disheartened that the gypsies were not soon returning home, Bullard left them at their camp in Bronwood in 1909 and found work and patronage with the Zachariah Turner family of Dawson. Friendly and hard working as a stable boy, Bullard won the affection of the Turners, who allowed him to ride as their jockey in horse races at the Terrell County Fair in 1911.

Despite his relationship with the Turners, Bullard was still affronted by racism and he resolved to leave the United States for Great Britain. He did so as a stowaway on a German merchant ship, the Marta Russ, which departed Norfolk, Virginia, on March 4, 1912, bound for Aberdeen, Scotland. In 1912-14, Bullard performed in a vaudeville troupe and earned money as a prizefighter in Great Britain and elsewhere in Western Europe. He appeared in Paris for the first time at a boxing match in November 1913.

At the beginning of World War I, Bullard joined the French army, serving in the Moroccan Division of the 170th Infantry Regiment. The French government awarded him the Croix de Guerre for his bravery at the Battle of Verdun. Twice wounded and declared unfit for infantry service, he requested assignment to flight training. He amassed a distinguished record in the air, flying twenty missions and downing at least one German plane.

Between the world wars he owned and managed nightclubs in the Montmartre section of Paris, where he emerged as a leading personality among such African American entertainers as Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, and Sidney Bechet. In 1923 he married Marcelle Straumann, the daughter of a wealthy Parisian family. The couple had two surviving children, Jacqueline and Lolita, before separating in 1931. In the late 1930s Bullard joined a French government counterintelligence network spying on Germans in Paris. When Nazi Germany conquered France in 1940 Bullard and his daughters escaped to New York City. He worked there in a variety of occupations for the rest of his life.

In 1959 French president Charles de Gaulle made Bullard a knight of the French Legion of Honor, the nation's highest ranking order and decoration. Bullard died on October 12, 1961.

 

[Aphrodite]

Martha Wash: The Most Famous Unknown Singer of the ‘90s

Martha Wash was sitting in a Los Angeles hotel room, furious and confused. It was late 1990 and the singer, relaxing before a show that night, had decided to unwind with some channel surfing. She stumbled upon a new music video by Italian house group Black Box, whose synth lines, horn stabs and pulsating, club-tailored drum patterns had already made them dance music stars. When the song’s vocals kicked in, she was shocked to see French model Katrin Quinol, the ex-girlfriend of founding member Daniele Davoli, bending over and crouching in a unitard, lip-syncing Wash’s vocals to the eventual hit “Everybody Everybody.”

“I said to myself, 'I don’t believe this shyt is happening again,” says the now 60-year-old Wash. “I called my manager and said, 'I just heard myself on TV in a video.’”

“Again” is the operative word, as just a few months prior, Wash heard her ostensible demo vocals being lip-synced by singer Zelma Davis in the video for C+C Music Factory’s monstrous club hit “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now).” A frustrating cultural conundrum had taken effect: Martha Wash’s voice was famous, but she wasn’t.

Wash is very likely the most famous unknown singer of the Nineties; a powerful, gospel-weaned belter who first earned fame as a backup singer for disco king Sylvester before forming the disco-pop duo the Weather Girls and recording the camp classic “It’s Raining Men.” In the early Nineties, however, Wash’s booming, powerhouse vocals could be heard on the world’s most ubiquitous dance songs, from Seduction’s “(You’re My One and Only) True Love” to Black Box’s “Strike It Up” and“Fantasy” to C+C Music Factory’s aforementioned Number One hit. At one point in 1991, Wash battled herself on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs, as “Gonna Make You Sweat” and Black Box’s “I Don’t Know Anybody Else” both bounced around the Top 5 for weeks on end.


“She merged a gospel voice into pop and dance music seamlessly,” says RuPaul, who collaborated with Wash on 1998’s “It’s Raining Men… the Sequel.” “Her voice speaks to both the church and a pop ear and was built to cut through the bass of a dance club. The timbre of her voice is so distinctive and beautiful. A lot of gospel-based singers have come and gone in dance music, but she is the one.”

No less importantly, Wash became an accidental linchpin for artists’ rights. After the singer brought various lawsuits against producers and record labels for proper credit and compensation, federal legislation was created making vocal credit mandatory for all albums and music videos.

 

[richaveli83]

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

President (non-U.S.) (1938-)
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the world's first elected black female president and Africa's first elected female head of state

Synopsis
Born in Liberia in 1938, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was schooled in the United States before serving in the government of her native Liberia. A military coup in 1980 sent her into exile, but she returned in 1985 to speak out against the military regime. She was forced to briefly leave the country again. When she won the 2005 election, Johnson Sirleaf became the first female elected head of state in Africa. In 2011, she was one of a trio of women to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Younger Years
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was born on October 29, 1938, in Monrovia, Liberia. A graduate of the College of West Africa at Monrovia, she went on to receive her bachelor's degree in accounting from the Madison Business College in Madison, Wisconsin, a degree in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Master of Public Administration degree from Harvard University.

Early Political Career
After returning to Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf served as assistant minister of Finance in President William Tolbert's administration. In 1980, Tolbert was overthrown and killed by army sergeant Samuel Doe, who represented the Krahn ethnic group. Johnson Sirleaf went into exile in Nairobi, Kenya, as well as in the United States, where she worked as an executive in the international banking community.

In 1985, Johnson Sirleaf returned to Liberia and ran for a seat in the Senate, but when she spoke out against Doe's military regime, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She served a partial sentence before moving to Washington, D.C. When she returned to her native country for a third time in 1997, it was as an economist, working for the World Bank and Citibank in Africa.

President of Liberia
After supporting Charles Taylor's bloody rebellion against President Samuel Doe in 1990, Johnson Sirleaf ran unsuccessfully against Taylor in the 1997 presidential election. Taylor subsequently charged Johnson Sirleaf with treason. In 2005, after campaigning for the removal of President Taylor, Johnson Sirleaf took over as leader of the Unity Party. That year, promising economic development and an end to corruption and civil war, she was elected to the Liberian presidency. When she was inaugurated in 2006, Johnson Sirleaf, or the "Iron Lady," as she was also known, became the world's first elected black female president and Africa's first elected female head of state.

Despite Charles Taylor's large number of followers in Liberian government, including his son-in-law and estranged wife, President Johnson Sirleaf submitted an official request to Nigeria for Taylor's extradition in 2006. Five years later, she shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize with Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman, awarded "for their nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work."

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has four sons and six grandchildren, some of whom live in Atlanta, Georgia.

 

[m0rninggl0ry]

The national flag of Ghana was designed and adopted in 1957 and was flown until 1962, and then reinstated in 1966. It consists of the Pan-African colours of red, yellow, and green, in horizontal stripes, with a black five-pointed star in the centre of the gold stripe.

PRINCE HALL

Prince Hall (c. 1735–1738—1807) was an African American noted as an abolitionist for his leadership in the free black community in Boston and as the founder of Prince Hall Freemasonry. He lobbied for education rights for black children and was active in the back-to-Africa movement.

Hall tried to gain New England’s enslaved and free blacks a place in Freemasonry, education and the military, which were some of the most crucial spheres of society in his time. Hall is considered the founder of “Black Freemasonry” in the United States, known today as Prince Hall Freemasonry. Hall formed the African Grand Lodge of North America. Prince Hall was unanimously elected its Grand Master and served until his death in 1807.

Steve Gladstone, author of Freedom Trail Boston states that Prince Hall—known for his role in creating Black Freemasonry, championing equal education rights, and fighting slavery—"was one of the most influential free black leaders in the late 1700s."

There is confusion about his year of birth, place of birth, parents, and marriages–at least partly due to the multiple number of "Prince Halls" during this lifetime.

​

 

[Aphrodite]

Natalie Cole says her mother's snobbery isolated her from other Blacks during childhood.

Cole recalled growing up in Los Angeles' exclusive Hancock Park section, where the Coles were the only Black residents. "When I got friendly with the (Black) people who worked for us, my mother was appalled. She wanted us to interact with a different society - outside the house."

The singer also reveals that her mother's family felt that her late father, famed singer Nat King Cole, "was too Black for them."

"For a dark-skinned man such as my father to acquire a light-skinned woman such as my mother was a real important prize," Cole explains.

"Your status moved up. That doesn't mean that her family was all that happy about her marrying my father. He was too Black for them. Her mother was very socially conscious, and she didn't want my mother to get involved with anyone with too many Black characteristics, because then your children would look funny."

Cole adds, "It wasn't just my mother, it's the way many Black people are raised."

 

[richaveli83]

Marie Maynard Daly

Marie Maynard Daly was a pioneer in the study of the effects of cholesterol and sugar on the heart and the first black woman to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States. She was born in 1921, at a time when minority women often were denied educational and employment opportunities, but she didn't allow prejudice to stop her pursuit of the sciences. By 1942, she had earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry with honors from Queens College in New York. She went on to complete a master's degree, also in chemistry, just one year later.

It was while earning her doctoral degree from Columbia University that Daly's research really began to gel. She discovered how internally produced compounds help digestion and spent much of her career as a professor researching cell nuclei. Importantly, she discovered the link between high cholesterol and clogged arteries, which helped advance the study of heart disease. She also studied the effects of sugar on arteries, and cigarette smoking on lung tissue. Daly established a scholarship fund for black students at Queens College in 1988. She died in 2003 [sources: African-American Pioneers in Science, Chemical Heritage Foundation].

 

[Aphrodite]

“How A Homeless Single Mother Became A Millionaire in 18 Months”

After a separation from her husband, Elon Bomani and her newborn son moved into a women's shelter. She says, "I found myself homeless because I had given up my power. I bought into the idea that men were better at math than women even though I had graduated with two degrees. I was programmed that men are supposed to be the providers and handle the checkbooks."

"I went to the library and punched in millionaire and I read every single book on biographies of millionaires, anything dealing with money, stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities trading, e-business, taxes, you name it."

Bomani's first priority was to leave the shelter and move into her own home. Though she had $36 dollars in her checking account, she knew her dream could come true. With the advice of her father, she studied real estate guru Carleton Sheets' "no money down programs." She found a lender that would finance 100 percent of her home loan. She asked the seller to pay closing costs on the $125,000 home and walked away from the closing with a $625 dollar check. Without a job, Bomani says, this was just the beginning of her journey.

"I thought creatively. I rented out my room. By renting out one of my rooms, that gave me half the mortgage, the other half was her (roommate) deposit. "I didn't have to pay my first mortgage until a month and a half later.

With a new wealth consciousness, she recognized the housing market was profitable at the time and then took equity out of her home to invest in other properties. "I did speculative real estate investing. I went to new developments and put a down payment on property to hold it until it closed. The property closed within a year and it had already increased in excess of $100,000. So I invested approximately $20,000 ($5,000 on four properties) using cash advances from credit cards, not even my money. I walked out of the deal with $400,000."

"I accumulated over 16 pieces of real estate property over the course of three years. In doing so, that gave me a net worth of $2 million dollars and I was able to live off the positive cash flow of the real estate.

"Being a millionaire, it's a formula to it. If you study it and practice it, you'll become it."

Today, Bomani owns and operates four companies and has a book out, titled: "Dynamic Diva Dollars."

 

[Yehuda]

Eduardo Mondlane, educator, nationalist, and leader of the Mozambique independence movement, was born on June 20, 1920 in the Gaza District of Southern Mozambique, which at the time was under the colonial rule of the Portuguese. He was the child of a Tsonga chief, the fourth of sixteen sons, and the only one of his family to receive even a primary education.

Mondlane attended a number of mission primary schools and also worked as a shepherd for part of his youth before obtaining a scholarship to attend a Presbyterian secondary school in the Transvaal, South Africa. Mondlane was then admitted into Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, but in 1949, only a year later, he was expelled from South Africa as his nationalistic views came into conflict with the government which had recently embraced apartheid.

Eduardo Mondlane continued his education. In 1950 he was accepted into the University of Lisbon, Portugal but later transferred to Oberlin College, Ohio in the United States. Mondlane obtained a degree in Sociology and Anthropology from Oberlin College, and then completed a Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University in Illinois. [...]

In June 1962 Mondlane left the United States for Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where he helped form, and subsequently became president of FRELIMO, an organization made up of exiled Mozambiquican nationalists. With the backing of the Soviet Union and many African nations, FRELIMO launched a guerrilla war in 1964 against the colonial Portuguese government in order to win Mozambique's independence. With Mondlane as president of FRELIMO, the campaign for independence was also a campaign for a socialist state.

In 1969 Mondlane was killed by a bomb which had been disguised as a notebook and sent to him by unknown assassins. However FRELIMO continued to fight for independence. By the early 1970s it controlled central and northern Mozambique despite being outnumbered by the Portuguese military 7,000 to 60,000. In 1974, following a military coup in Lisbon, Portuguese colonial policy dramatically changed. On June 25, 1975, FRELIMO was given control of Mozambique and the country gained its independence.

Mondlane, Eduardo Chivambo (1920-1969) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed

 

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​

Kashta was a king of the Kushyte Dynasty and the successor of Alara. His nomen k3š-t3 (transcribed as Kashta, possibly pronounced /kuʔʃi-taʔ/) "of the land of Kush" is often translated directly as "The Kushyte"

While Kashta ruled Nubia from Napata, which is 400 km north of Khartoum, the modern capital of Sudan, he also exercised a strong degree of control over Upper Egypt by managing to install his daughter, Amenirdis I, as the presumptive God's Wife of Amun in Thebes in line to succeed the serving Divine Adoratrice of Amun, Shepenupet I, Osorkon III's daughter. This development was "the key moment in the process of the extension of Kushyte power over Egyptian territories" under Kashta's rule since it officially legitimized the Kushyte takeover of the Thebaid region. The Hungarian Kushyte scholar, László Török, notes that there were probably already Kushyte garrisons stationed in Thebes itself during Kashta's reign both to protect this king's authority over Upper Egypt and to thwart a possible future invasion of this region from Lower Egypt.

Török observes that Kashta's appearance as King of Upper and Lower Egypt and peaceful takeover of Upper Egypt is suggested both "by the fact that the descendants of Osorkon III, Takelot III and Rudamun continued to enjoy a high social status in Thebes in the second half of the 8th and in the first half of the 7th century" [BCE] as is shown by their burials in this city as well as the joint activity between the Divine Adoratrice Shepenupet I and the god's Wife of Amun Elect Amenirdis I, Kashta's daughter.

A stela from Kashta's reign has been found in Elephantine (modern day Aswan)--at the local temple dedicated to the god Khnum—which attests to his control of this region. It bears his royal name or prenomen: Nimaatre. Egyptologists today believe that either he or more likely Piye was the Year 12 Nubian king mentioned in a well-known inscription at Wadi Gasus which associates the Adopted god's Adoratice of Amun, Amenirdis, Kashta's daughter together with Year 19 of the serving God's Wife of Amun, Shepenupet.

Kashta's reign length is unknown. Some sources credit Kashta as the founder of the 25th dynasty since he was the first Kushyte king known to have expanded his kingdom's influence into Upper Egypt.

Under Kashta's reign, the native Kushyte population of his kingdom, situated between the third and fourth Cataracts of the Nile, became rapidly 'Egyptianized' and adopted Egyptian traditions, religion and culture.

Kashta's successor was Piye.