BlackFacts.com: Learn/Teach/Create Black History

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 17.

Patricia Bath patented an apparatus that removes cataracts.

She was an American ophthalmologist, inventor, and academic. 

Bath also became the first woman member of the Jules Stein Eye Institute, the first woman to lead a post-graduate training program in ophthalmology, and the first woman elected to the honorary staff of the UCLA Medical Center, amongst other achievements. 

Holder of five patents, she also founded the non-profit American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in Washington, D.C.

Bath was named head of the ophthalmology residency training program at Drew-UCLA in 1983. She was the first woman in the country to hold such a position.

In 1988 Bath became the first Black female doctor to earn a medical patent. Her technique of using lasers to remove cataracts has improved or restored the vision of millions of patients around the world.

In 1993 she was named Howard University Pioneer in Academic Medicine. That year Bath retired from the UCLA Medical Center and was the first woman elected to the center’s honorary medical staff.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 16.

Janet Jackson was born.

She is an American singer and actress, one of the most popular recording artists of the 1980s and ’90s. 

The youngest of nine siblings in Motown’s famed Jackson family, Janet Jackson parlayed her family’s success into an independent career that spanned recordings, television, and film.

In her early career, Jackson credited her brothers Michael and Jermaine Jackson as musical influences.

She began her career with the variety television series "The Jacksons" in 1976 and went on

to appear in other TV shows throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, including "Good Times", "Diff'rent Strokes", and "Fame". 

In 1982, she became a pop icon following the release of her third and fourth studio albums Control (1986) and Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989).  Having sold over 100 million records, Jackson is one of the world's best-selling music artists of all time. 

Jackson has also been recognized for playing a pivotal role in crossing racial boundaries in the recording industry.

She has been cited as an inspiration among numerous performers. Jackson was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 15.

Camilla Williams became the first black woman to act in a leading role in a major American opera company.

She trained at Virginia State College, now Virginia State University, and received her bachelor's degree in music education. Beginning in 1944, Williams performed on the coast-to-coast RCA radio network.

A noted concert artist, Williams toured throughout the United States, Latin America, fourteen African countries, as well as numerous countries in Asia.

A lifetime member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), she performed in her hometown of Danville, Virginia in 1963, to raise funds to free jailed civil rights demonstrators.

She also sang the national anthem before 200,000 people at the 1963 civil rights march on Washington, immediately before Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Williams retired from opera in 1970 and began teaching voice at Bronx College, Brooklyn College, and Queens College, all in New York City.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 14.

Clara Stanton Jones was born.

She was the first African-American president of the American Library Association and the first African American and the first woman to serve as director of a major library system in America, as director of the Detroit Public Library.

Jones obtained a well-rounded education even though the St. Louis public school system was completely segregated. She grew up in an entirely African-American world, with black role models and mentors.  

She began working in libraries the same year she completed her degree in Library Science.  

At the beginning of 1938, she worked in libraries at Dillard University in New Orleans and Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  

Jones spent the remainder of her library career at the Detroit Public Library, retiring in 1978 as the director.  

With a focus on community, she worked to desegregate libraries, library services, and overall library culture by encouraging the American Library Association to pass the “Resolution on Racism and Sexism Awareness.”

In 1978, she was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. She was a member of the Public Library Association, American Civil Liberties Union, National Council of Negro Women, and more.  

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 13.

Stevie Wonder was born.

He is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, a child prodigy who developed into one of the most creative musical figures of the late 20th century.

Blind from birth and raised in inner-city Detroit, he was a skilled musician by age eight and made his recording debut at age 12.

Although still only in his mid-20s, Wonder appeared to have mastered virtually every idiom of African-American popular music and to have synthesized them all into a language of his own.

The best of his work formed a vital link between the classic rhythm-and-blues and 

soul performers of the 1950s and ’60s and their less commercially constrained successors.

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, and in 1999 he was awarded the Polar Music Prize for lifetime achievement by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. 

In 2005 he received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement. Four years later he was awarded the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song from the Library of Congress, and he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 12.

Ving Rhames was born.

He is an American actor, best known for his starring role as Luther Stickell in the "Mission: Impossible" film series and his supporting role as gang kingpin Marsellus Wallace in "Pulp Fiction".

He was born and raised in Harlem, New York City. He was named after NBC journalist Irving R. Levine.

He entered New York's High School of Performing Arts, where he developed his love of acting. After high school, he studied drama at SUNY Purchase, where fellow acting student Stanley Tucci gave him his nickname "Ving".  

Some of his works are "Jacob's Ladder", "Striptease", "Con Air", "Out of Sight", "Entrapment", "Bringing Out the Dead" and "Dawn of the Dead". He voiced Cobra Bubbles in the animated film "Lilo & Stitch".

Rhames won a Golden Globe in 1998 for Best Actor. At the ceremony, he gave his award to fellow nominee Jack Lemmon. Lemmon was clearly touched by the gesture as was the celebrity audience who gave Lemmon a standing ovation.  

Lemmon, who tried unsuccessfully to give the award back to Rhames, said it was "one of the nicest, sweetest moments I've ever known in my life."  

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 11.

William Grant Still was born.

He was the first African American to conduct a professional symphony orchestra in the United States. Though a prolific composer of operas, ballets, symphonies, and other works, he was best known for his Afro-American Symphony (1931).

He first studied composition at Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio, then under the conservative George Whitefield Chadwick at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. 

Still’s concern with the position of African Americans in U.S. society is reflected in many of his works, notably the Afro-American Symphony; the ballets Sahdji (1930), and Lenox Avenue (1937); and the operas The Troubled Island and Highway No. 1, U.S.A. 

Often referred to as the "Dean of Afro-American Composers," Still was the first African-American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, the first to have a symphony performed by a leading orchestra......the first to have an opera performed by a major opera company, and the first to have an opera performed on national television.

The recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships and two Harmon Awards, he was also bestowed honorary doctorates from Wilberforce, Oberlin, the University of Arkansas, Bates College, Howard University, and the University of Southern California.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 10.

Nelson Mandela is sworn in as the first black president of South Africa.

In 1944, he joined the African National Congress (ANC), a black political organization dedicated to winning rights for the black majority in white-ruled South Africa.

In 1948, the racist National Party came to power, and apartheid–South Africa’s institutionalized system of white supremacy and racial segregation–became official government policy.

Throughout his 27 years of incarceration, Mandela retained wide support among South Africa’s Black population, and his imprisonment became a cause célèbre among the international community that condemned apartheid.

On February 11, 1990, the South African government under President de Klerk released Mandela from prison.Shortly after his release, Mandela was chosen deputy president of the African National Congress (ANC); he became president of the party in July 1991. 

Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993 for their efforts.

He was the first non-White head of state in South African history, as well as the first to take office following the dismantling of the apartheid system and the introduction of full, multiracial democracy. 

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 9.

Tony Gwynn was born.

He was an American professional baseball right fielder, who played 20 seasons (1982–2001) in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the San Diego Padres, and considered one of the best and most consistent hitters in baseball history. 

Gwynn attended San Diego State University (California) on a basketball scholarship, where he set a school record for assists as the team’s point guard. He also excelled at baseball and was drafted in 1981 by both the San Diego Clippers, of the NBA, and by the San Diego Padres, of Major League Baseball. 

He chose the Padres, and during the 1982 season, he was called up from their minor league team to play. He played his entire career as an outfielder with the Padres.

Gwynn’s career highlights include setting the National League record for most consecutive seasons hitting .300 or better, tying the NL record for most batting titles, and being the 22nd player to reach 3,000 hits. 

He retired from professional baseball at the end of the 2001 season, and in 2002 he became the head baseball coach at San Diego State University.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 8.

Carole Gist was born.

She is an American TV host, model and first African American woman to win the Miss USA title.

Throughout her reign as Miss USA, Gist captivated audiences with her stories of being from a single-parent home where she had a number of siblings and having to overcome numerous financial and social obstacles.

Despite the financial obstacles she faced growing up, the intelligent young woman still graduated, with honors, from The Cass Technical High School in 1987. She went on to earn a bachelor's degree in Marketing Management from Northwood University in Midland, Michigan.

She has spoken of not grasping the enormity of her status of being the first black woman to win the title of Miss USA during the time of her reign. However, she recognizes the importance of her status and she is humbled by the achievement.

After working in hotel management, she married Doreonne Stramler and she became the mother of 2 children.

Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com