Black History Month

[Debbie]

Besides February being a multitude of things, it is also Black History Month. I am also a little late in starting this.

I thought we all might like to add someone who has inspired us or has been known to inspire in general on this thread in honor of Black History Month.



1861-1943

George Washington Carver was renowned for developing innovative uses for a variety of agricultural crops such as peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes. His developments are credited with revolutionizing the agricultural economy of the South. For most of his career he taught and conducted research at the Tuskegee Institute, (Now Tuskegee University) in Tuskegee, Ala.

In 1914, at a time when the boll weevil had almost ruined cotton growers, Carver revealed his experiments to the public, and increasing numbers of the South's farmers began to turn to peanuts, sweet potatoes, and their derivatives for income. Much exhausted land was renewed, and the South became a major new supplier of agricultural products. When Carver arrived at Tuskegee in 1896, the peanut had not even been recognized as a crop, but within the next half century it became one of the six leading crops throughout the United States and, in the South, the second cash crop (after cotton) by 1940. In 1942 the U.S. government allotted 5,000,000 acres of peanuts to farmers. Carver's efforts had finally helped liberate the South from its excessive dependence on cotton.

Among Carver's many honors were his election to Britain's Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (London) in 1916 and his receipt of the Spingarn Medal in 1923. Late in his career he declined an invitation to work for Thomas A. Edison at a salary of more than $100,000 a year. Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Franklin D. Roosevelt visited him, and his friends included Henry Ford and Mohandas K. Gandhi. Foreign governments requested his counsel on agricultural matters: Joseph Stalin, for example, in 1931 invited him to superintend cotton plantations in southern Russia and to make a tour of the Soviet Union, but Carver refused.

Carver was evidently uninterested in the role his image played in the racial politics of the time. His great desire in later life was simply to serve humanity; and his work, which began for the sake of the poorest of the black sharecroppers, paved the way for a better life for the entire South. His efforts brought about a significant advance in agricultural training in an era when agriculture was the largest single occupation of Americans, and he extended Tuskegee's influence throughout the South by encouraging improved farm methods, crop diversification, and soil conservation. Carver eventually died on Jan. 5, 1943, in Tuskegee, Ala.

[journeygal]

Cool thread Deb!

James Cornish was dying. He had been carried into the emergency ward at Provident Hospital on Chicago's South Side, bleeding from a knife wound in his chest.

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams called for six of his fellow black physicians to help him get the dying man into an operating room. Carefully making an incision in his patient's chest, Williams exposed the man's still-beating heart and his near-fatal wound.

Williams and his surgeons sewed up the ragged gash located to the right of the heart, and, saying a prayer, sutured the chest incision, ending the world's first open heart surgery. The year was 1893.

The patient, scarred but healed, walked out of Provident Hospital one month later.

Just two years before, Williams had founded Provident Hospital and its Training School for Nurses to provide medical education and a place to practice medicine for black nurses and doctors.

After performing his historic open heart surgery, Williams was appointed surgeon-in-chief of Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C., by President Grover Cleveland. He reorganized the hospital with his revolutionary idea of creating separate medical departments to treat specific ailments: surgical, gynecological, obstetrical, dermatological, urinary and throat and chest. At Freedmen's, Williams also opened another training school for black nursing students.

Williams accomplished all of this after experiencing a difficult childhood. Born in Hollidaysburg, Pa., he was just 11 years old when his father died. Shortly afterward, his mother sent him to apprentice with a cobbler, then abandoned him.

He supported himself later as a roustabout, or transient laborer, on a Great Lakes steamer ship, then as a barber. He was managing a barber shop when he apprenticed himself to Wisconsin's surgeon general, Dr. Henry Palmer, who became Williams' mentor as he earned his medical degree.

[Mich]

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. She grew up in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. She is an author, poet, historian, songwriter, playwright, dancer, stage and screen producer, director, performer, singer, and civil rights activist. She is best known for her autobiographical books: All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), The Heart of a Woman (1981), Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), Gather Together in My Name (1974), and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), which was nominated for the National Book Award. Among her volumes of poetry are A Brave and Startling Truth (Random House, 1995), The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994), Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993), Now Sheba Sings the Song (1987), I Shall Not Be Moved (1990), Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? (1983), Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well (1975), and Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971), which was nominated for the Pulitzer prize.

In 1959, at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou became the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. From 1961 to 1962 she was associate editor of The Arab Observer in Cairo, Egypt, the only English-language news weekly in the Middle East, and from 1964 to 1966 she was feature editor of the African Review in Accra, Ghana. She returned to the U.S. in 1974 and was appointed by Gerald Ford to the Bicentennial Commission and later by Jimmy Carter to the Commission for International Woman of the Year. She accepted a lifetime appointment in 1981 as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 1993, Angelou wrote and delivered a poem, "On The Pulse of the Morning," at the inauguration for President Bill Clinton at his request.

The first black woman director in Hollywood, Angelou has written, produced, directed, and starred in productions for stage, film, and television. In 1971, she wrote the original screenplay and musical score for the film Georgia, Georgia, and was both author and executive producer of a five-part television miniseries "Three Way Choice." She has also written and produced several prize-winning documentaries, including "Afro-Americans in the Arts," a PBS special for which she received the Golden Eagle Award. Maya Angelou was twice nominated for a Tony award for acting: once for her Broadway debut in Look Away (1973), and again for her performance in Roots (1977).

A Poem by Maya Angelou

Recovery

A Last love,
proper in conclusion,
should snip the wings
forbidding further flight.
But I, now,
reft of that confusion,
am lifted up
and speeding toward the light.

Great Thread!
Hugs
Michelle