Essential The Official African American Thread#2

[IllmaticDelta]

Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green

Hadiyah-Nicole Green is an American medical physicist known for her development of a novel cancer treatment using laser-activated nanoparticles.[1][2

Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green is a multi-disciplinary physicist and the recipient of a $1.1 million research award that she will use to study her unique LANT (laser-activated nano-therapy) multi-cancer treatment. In trials with mice, this method targeted cancer cells and was able to spare healthy surrounding cells with great success. Her treatment does not bring with it the difficult side effects that come with many traditional cancer treatments such as radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery which, as you’ll learn below, is a very important factor to Green. Green believes this LANT will evolve into an effective outpatient treatment for many types of cancer.

Green’s Research

Green’s LANT system which she spent seven years developing at UAB is a three-part targeting, imaging, and treatment process. In her own explanation, this system

enables the combination of tumor receptor site targeting, targeted nanoparticle delivery, fluorescent imaging, and laser-activated nanoparticle therapy that results in marked tumor regression in mice.

During the treatment, FDA approved nano-particles cause the cancer cells to fluoresce when viewed with imaging equipment. A laser then activates and heats the nanoparticles, creating a thermal death for the cancer cells. The laser and nanoparticles are both harmless when not combined, which Green explains boosts the treatment’s ability to target cancer cells and avoid healthy cells.

While the use of lasers and nanoparticles in cancer treatment has been previously studied, Green’s successful nanoparticle delivery and live-animal tumor reduction rates stand out. Her report shares that mice showed “~100% tumor regression (shrinkage) over 15 days after one laser-activated nano-therapy treatment.” The visible absence of the mouse tumor after 15 days was confirmed by a board certified pathologist. Her summary report has an inspiring title: “Shining Light on a Big Problem with a Really Small Solution.” She shares in the Al.com article that, "As a physicist, I've created a physical treatment that is not specific to the biology of the cancer. It's a platform technology.”

What’s Next for Green?

Green hopes and plans that within about three to five years, her unique LANT process will be a proven photo-nano-therapy treatment for many types of cancers, including cervical, bladder, breast, ovarian, skin, colorectal, prostate, and pancreatic. It is intended to be used as both an initial and adjuvant therapy and as a more affordable, minimally invasive outpatient treatment with minimal side effects.

 

[Black Lightning]

Dehart Hubbard becomes the first African-American to win an olympic gold medal in an individual event (long jump), 1924.

 

[Black Lightning]

Halen Williams, the first dark-skinned African-American model to be featured in mainstream advertising campaigns.

 

[Black Lightning]

May 2,1964…Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee were kidnapped and murdered by the KKK in Meadville, MS. Two months later (July) their bodies were found during a search for civil rights workers (Micheal Schwerner and Andrew Goodman). At that time no legal action was taken but twenty years later (2004) a Canadian flimaker, David Ridgen discovered a clip of the bodies being recovered, and then legal action was taken (conviction of murder and arrest)

 

[Rhapture]

Halen Williams, the first dark-skinned African-American model to be featured in mainstream advertising campaigns.

Beautiful, Cynthia Bailey kinda favors her a lil bit.

 

[Black Lightning]

On this day in 1976 Clifford Alexander, Jr. was confirmed as the first African American Secretary of the Army

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Halen Williams, the first dark-skinned African-American model to be featured in mainstream advertising campaigns.

my paternal grandfather knew her.....he passed down to my mother, a bunch of personally autographed pictures of her

 

[Black Lightning]

Solomon Carter Fuller

Not only the first African American psychiatrist, he was a major contributor to the clinical knowledge of Alzheimer’s disease. His work was ground-breaking. He studied the brains of Alzheimer’s patients and documented the physical changes that take place in the brain under the disease.

 

[Black Lightning]

Born into slavery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on February 14, 1760, Richard Allen went on to become an educator, writer, minister and founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Benjamin Chew, a Quaker lawyer, owned the Allen family, which included Richard’s parents and three other children. Chew eventually sold the Allen family to Stokeley Sturgis, a Delaware planter.

At age 17 Allen was converted to Methodism by an itinerant preacher. Allen’s master, Stokeley Sturgis, was said to have been influenced by Allen to become a Methodist as well. After his conversion, Sturgis offered his slaves the opportunity to buy their way out of slavery. In 1783, by working at odd jobs for five years, Allen managed to purchase his freedom for $2,000. In the meantime, Allen began to preach in Methodist churches and meetings in the Baltimore area. Through his Methodist connections Allen was invited to return to Philadelphia in 1786. Upon arriving in the city he joined St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church, where he became active in teaching and preaching.

As the number of African Americans attending St. George’s increased, racial tensions mounted. Allen preached at 5:00 a.m. in special services on Sunday mornings to approximately 50 African American Methodists. When they attended the regular morning service, segregated seating was instituted. With this segregation Allen became convinced that a separate church was necessary for the black congregants. In 1787 Allen and a number of other African American Methodists walked out and formed a separate church that would become Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first Methodist church in the United States specifically for African Americans. Seven years later, on July 29, 1794, Bethel was dedicated by Bishop Francis Asbury. Richard Allen served Bethel Church as its pastor, and he was ordained a deacon by Asbury in 1799.

Other African American Methodist churches were formed in New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. On April 9, 1816, after two decades of conflict with white Methodism, Allen and other African American Methodist preachers hosted a meeting in Philadelphia to bring these churches together and to form a new denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). Allen was elected bishop, and with his consecration became the first African American bishop in the United States. By the time Allen died at his home on March 26, 1831, the AME church was well-established in the United States and supported missions in several countries overseas.

Allen cared passionately about education and opened a day school for African American children. He abhorred slavery, worked actively for abolition, and maintained his home as a stop on the Underground Railroad. He was committed to self-determination for African Americans in the United States, and eventually opposed all colonization plans for African Americans in other countries. - See more at: Allen, Richard (1760-1831) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed

 

[Black Lightning]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

The founders of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. were no ordinary achievers. Given racial attitudes in 1906, their accomplishments were monumental. As founder Henry Arthur Callis euphemistically stated—because the half-dozen African American students at Cornell University during the school year 1904-05 did not return to campus the following year, the incoming students in 1905-06, in founding Alpha Phi Alpha, were determined to bind themselves together to ensure that each would survive in the racially hostile environment. In coming together with this simple act, they preceded by decades the emergence of such on-campus programs as affirmative action, upward bound and remedial assistance. The students set outstanding examples of scholarship, leadership and success--preceding the efforts even of the NAACP and similar civil rights organizations.

They are most humbly referred to as the "Jewels" of the fraternity. Given the time period of the fraternity's foundation, it is important to note the significance of their accomplishment. These men were able to successfully create a fraternity that strived for the growth and betterment of not just the African-American race, but all mankind.

On December 4, 1906, seven undergraduate students at Cornell University, “The Seven Jewels,” organized Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the first intercollegiate fraternity among African American men. With the Great Sphinx of Giza as its symbol, and the motto “First of All, Servants of All, We Shall Transcend All,” Alpha Phi Alpha dedicated itself to defend the rights and to promote the responsibilities of African Americans. The founders of Alpha Phi Alpha sought to combine social purpose with social action, to be more than a social organization. Throughout its history, Alpha Phi Alpha has promoted knowledge and achievement.

Alpha Phi Alpha (ΑΦΑ) is the first African-American, intercollegiate Greek-lettered fraternity. It was initially a literary and social studies club organized by Charles Cardoza Poindexter in the 1905–1906 school year at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York. The group later evolved into a fraternity with a founding date of December 4, 1906, at Cornell. The individuals recognized by the fraternity as founders are known as the Seven Jewels. It employs an icon from ancient Egypt, the Great Sphinx of Giza, as its symbol. Its aims are "manly deeds, scholarship, and love for all mankind," and its motto is First of All, Servants of All, We Shall Transcend All. Its archives are preserved at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center.

Chapters were chartered at Howard University and Virginia Union University in 1907. The fraternity has over 290,000 members and has been open to men of all races since 1940. Currently, there are more than 730 active chapters in the Americas, Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and Asia.

Alpha Phi Alpha is a social organization with a service organization mission and provided leadership and service during the Great Depression, World Wars, and Civil Rights movement. It addresses social issues such as apartheid, AIDS, urban housing, and other economic, cultural, and political issues of interest to people of color. The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial and World Policy Council are programs of Alpha Phi Alpha. It also conducts philanthropic programming initiatives with the March of Dimes, Head Start, the Boy Scouts of America, and Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

Members of Alpha Phi Alpha include Jamaican Prime Minister Norman Manley, Nobel Prize winner Martin Luther King, Jr., Olympian Jesse Owens, Justice Thurgood Marshall, United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young, singer Lionel Richie and Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African American Men, was founded at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York by seven college men who recognized the need for a strong bond of brotherhood among African descendants in this country. The visionary founders, known as the “Jewels” of the fraternity, are Henry Arthur Callis, Charles Henry Chapman, Eugene Kinckle Jones, George Biddle Kelley, Nathaniel Allison Murray, Robert Harold Ogle, and Vertner Woodson Tandy.

The fraternity initially served as a study and support group for minority students who faced racial prejudice, both educationally and socially, at Cornell. The Jewel founders and early leaders of the fraternity succeeded in laying a firm foundation for Alpha Phi Alpha's principles of scholarship, fellowship, good character, and the uplifting of humanity.

Alpha Phi Alpha chapters were established at other colleges and universities, many of them historically black institutions, soon after the founding at Cornell. The first alumni chapter was established in 1911. While continuing to stress academic excellence among its members, Alpha also recognized the need to help correct the educational, economic, political, and social injustices faced by African Americans. Alpha Phi Alpha has long stood at the forefront of the African-American community's fight for civil rights through leaders such as W.E.B. DuBois, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Edward Brooke, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Andrew Young, William Gray, Paul Robeson, and many others.

 

[Rhapture]

The First Black Watch Night service
The First Black Watch Night Service Occurs in America | African American Registry
Date:
Wed, 1862-12-31
*On This date in 1862 the first Watch Night Services were celebrated in Back communities in America.

The Watch Night service can be traced back to gatherings also known as “Freedom’s Eve.” On that night, Black slaves and free blacks came together in churches and private homes all across the nation awaiting news that the Emancipation Proclamation actually had become law. Lincoln had used the occasion of the Union victory at Antietam to issue a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves in the rebellious states after January 1, 1863.

He justified his decision as a wartime measure, and did not go so far as to free the slaves in the border states loyal to the Union. At the stroke of midnight, all slaves in the Confederate States were declared legally free. When the news was received, there were prayers, shouts and songs of joy as many people fell to their knees and thanked God. Still, the Emancipation Proclamation deprived the Confederacy of the bulk of its labor forces and put international public opinion strongly on the Union side. Some 186,000 black soldiers would join the Union Army by the time the war ended in 1865, and 38,000 lost their lives.

Blacks have gathered in churches annually on New Year’s Eve ever since, praising God for bringing us safely through another year. It’s been over a century since the first Freedom’s Eve and tradition still brings us together at this time every year to celebrate “how we got over.” This celebration takes many African American decendants of slaves into a new year with praise and worship. The service usually begins anywhere from 7 p.m. To 10 p.m. And ends at midnight with the entrance of the New Year. Some people come to church first, before going out to celebrate, for others, church is the only New Year’s Eve event.

There have been instances where clergy in mainline denominations questioned the propriety of linking religious services with a secular holiday like New Year’s Eve. However, there is a reason for the importance of New Year’s Eve services in the Black experience in America.

Reference:
The African American Desk Reference
Schomburg Center for research in Black Culture
Copyright 1999 The Stonesong Press Inc. and
The New York Public Library, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Pub.
ISBN 0-471-23924-

Related videos:
Watch Night Service, Rev. Dennis Ogelsby


Pastor, activist and educator Rev. Dennis Ogelsby shares a brief statement on the history of the Watch Night service in African America.

 

[Whogivesafuck]

Sadie Tanner Moseell Alexander
was the first African-American woman to receive a PH.D. in economics in the United States (1921), and the first woman to receive a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She was the first African-American woman to practice law in Pennsylvania

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Paul Revere Williams

, FAIA (February 18, 1894 – January 23, 1980) was an American architect based in Los Angeles, California. He practiced largely in Southern California and designed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Lon Chaney, Barbara Stanwyck and Charles Correll. He also designed many public and private buildings.[1][2]

A Trailblazing Black Architect Who Helped Shape L.A.

Paul Revere Williams began designing homes and commercial buildings in the early 1920s. By the time he died in 1980, he had created some 2,500 buildings, most of them in and around Los Angeles, but also around the globe. And he did it as a pioneer: Paul Williams was African-American. He was the first black architect to become a member of the American Institute of Architects in 1923, and in 1957 he was inducted as the AIA's first black fellow.

His granddaughter, Karen E. Hudson, has been chronicling Williams' life and work for the past two decades. Her latest book, Paul R. Williams: Classic Hollywood Style, focuses on some of the homes of his celebrity clients. They feature many characteristics that were innovative when he used them in the 1920s through the '70s and are considered common practice now — like the patio as an extension of the house, and hidden, retractable screens.

When Paul Williams began his career, he could find no black architects to be his role models or mentors. Born in downtown Los Angeles in 1894, Williams became orphaned before he turned 4 when his parents, Chester and Lila, died of tuberculosis. A family friend raised him and told him he was so bright, he could do anything he wanted. And what he wanted was to design homes for families — perhaps because he lost his own so early in his life. Despite warnings from those who thought he was being impractical ("Your own people can't afford you, and white clients won't hire you," was one such warning), Williams became an architect.

Architect Paul Williams (in a photo thought to be from the 1940s or '50s) developed the ability to sketch buildings upside down to accommodate white clients who might not want to sit next to him.


His work has come to signify glamorous Southern California to the rest of the country — and to the world. One of his hallmarks — a luxuriantly curving staircase — has captivated many a potential owner. Retired financial services magnate Peter Mullin remembers how he felt when he saw his 1925 Colonial, the first one Williams built in L.A.'s posh Brentwood neighborhood.

"The first time I saw it, I didn't think I could afford the house, but if I could afford the staircase, I wanted to take it with me!" Mullin laughs. He bought the house — once inhabited by producer Ingwald Preminger, brother of director Otto — and has enjoyed it for 35 years.

"Every now and then, I think about leaving," Mullin admits. "Then I look around ... and I can't. I just love this place."

That sentiment may explain why Williams' homes don't come on the market very often.

Bret Parsons is head of the architectural division of John Aaroe Group, a Beverly Hills real estate brokerage handling multimillion-dollar properties. He says when Williams homes come up for sale, real estate agents scramble to get the listing. "They're gobbled up in seconds," he says. "They're an absolute pedigree for someone to have in their arsenal."

Parsons says Williams homes posses grace, design and elegant proportions, which attracted people with money and taste.

Several of them were celebrities from Hollywood's heyday. Williams built an elegant bachelor pad for Frank Sinatra when the singer was between marriages. Lucille Ball and husband Desi Arnaz were clients. So was Cary Grant. Danny Thomas was both client and friend — Williams designed St. Jude Children's Hospital in Memphis gratis, as a favor to Thomas (and made Thomas promise not to tell, so he wasn't deluged with similar requests). In recent years, Denzel Washington, Ellen DeGeneres and Andy Garcia all have lived in Williams homes.

At the Beverly Hills Hotel, Williams designed the iconic Polo Lounge, the Crescent Wing and the Pink Palace's signature loopy signage. He also chose the colors — pink and green — that would signify the ultimate in service to its pampered guests for a century.

Paul R. Williams, in full Paul Revere Williams (born February 18, 1894, Los Angeles, California, U.S.—died January 23, 1980, Los Angeles), American architect noted for his mastery of a variety of styles and building types and for his influence on the architectural landscape of southern California. In more than 3,000 buildings over the course of five decades, mostly in and around Los Angeles, he introduced a sense of casual elegance that came to define the region’s architecture. His work became so popular with Hollywood royalty that he was known as the “architect to the stars.”

Paul R. Williams | American architect


Architecture of Paul Revere Williams, born 120 years ago, still 'remarkable'

T
his year marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of L.A. architect Paul Revere Williams. If you don't recognize the name, you know the work: The spider-like LAX Theme Building, Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills and significant parts of the Beverly Hills Hotel, including the Polo Lounge, are but a few of the 3,000 buildings Williams produced in his prolific 50-year career.

Williams was known as the architect to the stars in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, designing some of the grandest houses in town in an array of revival styles. His mastery of so many idioms and his willingness to give clients the look they wanted set him apart from L.A.'s Midcentury Modernists. But each Williams house bears his unique stamp of gentility: opulence with restraint, sophistication and warmth.

"His sense of scale and proportion is remarkable," says architectural historian Eleanor Schrader, who has spoken often in support of granting historic status to Williams houses. "There are always these beautiful sweeping staircases in the entry, and then every other room is so livable, the flow from room to room is wonderful. Everything is meant to fit together. That's why it is such a tragedy when any of these are lost or remodeled beyond what he would have envisioned."

At the moment, in fact, preservationists and neighbors are battling new owners bucking to demolish two Williams creations, one on Brentwood's Oakmont Drive and one on Beverly Hills' Mountain Drive, to build grander structures. With his houses in great demand now and their prices shooting up, Williams and his architectural gifts are firmly in the spotlight.

Architecture of Paul Revere Williams, born 120 years ago, still 'remarkable'

 

[Black Lightning]

Francis Cook was elected president of the New York State Hi-Y Cabinet. He was the first African American in the State of New York to have been thus honored. Further, Cook was the first African American in the United States to have headed a state cabinet of Hi-Y.

As president, Cook led the 10,000 New York State Hi-Y members. Part of Francis Cook’s support came from friends whom he made when he represented Rockland County at a bills conference held at Albany in the fall of 1948, when he succeeded in getting four bills drawn up by Rockland County Hi-Y members accepted for presentation at the state assembly, an excellent average since Rockland County sent up only five. Of the 250 bills sent from all over the state presented to bills committee only 50 were accepted.

Cook went on to be elected Senior Class President (1950) at Nyack High School.

After graduating from Nyack High School, Francis Cook attended Champlain College in Plattsburgh and then Ohio State. Cook was also an accomplished pianist, organist and vocalist performing recitals in and around the Hudson Valley.