BlackFacts.com: Learn/Teach/Create Black History

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 7.

J. R. Winters received a patent for the fire escape ladder.

He was born in Leesburg, Virginia to an African-American brickmaker and a Shawnee Indian mother, who was the daughter of a noted herbalist and medical practitioner.

In 1830, at the age of 14, he relocated to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. During this time that Winters lived in Chambersburg, a city known for Quaker abolitionist activity, he was active in the Underground Railroad. 

In the 1870s as buildings became taller, Winters noticed that firemen had to take ladders off of their horse-drawn wagons to climb to windows, rescue people, and spray water on fires.

The ladders had to be foldable or collapsible so that fire wagons could turn corners in narrow streets and alleys. He built a fire wagon made with a mounted ladder that could be folded and received a patent for it on May 7, 1878.

Three years later in 1882 Winters received a patent for a fire escape ladder that could be attached to buildings. While all of his inventions saved lives and made firefighting and building escape easier, Winters reportedly received much praise but little money for his inventions.

In 2005, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission erected a historical marker honoring Winters at 130 North Second Street.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 6.

President Eisenhower signed civil rights act.

(On September 4, 1957, nine African American students were due to enter the school, a previously all-white institution. These students were blocked by 270 National Guard troops who had been ordered there by State Governor, Orval Faubus. )

(Media filmed the students being turned away and being verbally abused by students and adults of Little Rock. Shocked by these images which had been aired across the nation, President Eisenhower issued 10,000 paratroopers to escort the black students into their new school.)

The significance of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 was that it acknowledged there was an issue with racial discrimination within the United States.

It established Federal inspection of local voter registration polls by appointed referees to oversee southern elections and ensure that African Americans were permitted to vote.  

Penalties for anyone who obstructed someone’s attempt to register to vote or vote.

It extended the life of the Civil Rights Commission which was previously limited to two years. The Commission would oversee voter registration and practices.

Prosecution for interfering with court orders regarding school desegregation.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 addressed desegregation in schools, discrimination in the workplace and public facilities.

(Although this Act failed to enforce the law it showed the federal government’s commitment to work with civil rights organizations to end discrimination and segregation.)

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 5.

Adam Clayton Powell Sr. was born.

He was an American pastor who developed the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, 

New York as the largest Protestant congregation in the country, with 10,000 members.

He was a founder of the National Urban League, active in the NAACP and several fraternal organizations, and served as trustee of several historically black colleges and schools.

Powell was ordained a Baptist minister in 1892; he served at churches in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New Haven, Connecticut between 1892 and 1908.

From 1908 until 1936, he served as pastor of the century-old Abyssinian Baptist Church.

During the Great Depression, Powell waged successful campaigns to feed the poor and to create better employment opportunities and city services for African Americans.

Powell's son, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., succeeded his father as pastor at the church in 1937 after working with him for several years as an assistant.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 4.

Kimora Lee Simmons was born.

She is an American entrepreneur, fashion designer, TV personality, author, philanthropist and model.

Kimora was born of African American and Japanese heritage. She attended public school, but when she grew to 5-foot, 8-inches by the time she was ten years old, she became the easy target of schoolyard taunts and teasing.

Hoping to boost her confidence, Simmons's mother enrolled her daughter in a modeling class when she was eleven years old. Two years later, at the age of thirteen, Simmons was awarded an exclusive modeling contract with Chanel.

In 1998, Simmons' then husband, music mogul and entrepreneur, Russell Simmons, was at the helm of "Phat Farm", an urban menswear brand. Simmons created a parallel women’s brand, "Baby Phat by Kimora Lee Simmons", under the umbrella of "Phat Fashions".

She has also been featured in rap music videos and had her own reality show called “Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane”. 

She established the Kimora Lee Simmons Scholarship Fund at her high school alma mater in St. Louis to provide college tuition support for academically successful girls with financial needs.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 3.

Sugar Ray Robinson was born.

He was an American professional boxer, considered by many authorities to have been the best fighter in history.

Robinson originally aspired to be a doctor, but after dropping out of High School he switched his goal to boxing.

He made his professional debut on October 4, 1940, winning by a second-round stoppage over Joe Echevarria and fought five more times in the same year, winning each time, with four wins coming by way of knockout.

Robinson won 40 consecutive professional fights before losing to Jake LaMotta in one of their six battles. On December 20, 1946, he won the welterweight championship by defeating Tommy Bell on a 15-round decision.

He was six times a world champion: once as a welterweight (147 pounds), from 1946 to 1951, and five times as a middleweight (160 pounds), between 1951 and 1960. 

In his later years, Robinson worked in show business, even doing some television acting. The work greatly helped salvage his finances and was the reason he eventually settled in Southern California with his second wife, Millie.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 2.

First game of the Negro National Baseball League.

The first viable Black league was formed in 1920 under the leadership of Rube Foster, manager of the Chicago American Giants. He had been Negro baseball’s best pitcher in the early years of the 20th century and then its best-known manager and promoter. 

Foster wanted black players to be ready when integration finally came. 

He routinely spoke to players, telling them to always play at the highest level of excellence.

The first game of this new league was held on May 2, 1920, in Indiana.  It was between Foster’s team, the American Giants, and the Indianapolis ABCs. 

Negro Leagues baseball became the largest black-owned organization in America, and the 

league did its part to aid a community living with segregation. Owners raised money to support anti-lynching campaigns, the United Negro College Fund, and the NAACP.

In 1947, the color barrier was broken when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers.Within five years, more than 150 Negro Leagues players joined Major League teams. 

Without its greatest stars, and struggling with low attendance, the era of Negro Leagues baseball came to a close.

Most importantly, the creation of the Negro Leagues proved that Black players could play on even terms with their white counterparts  – and draw just as much interest from baseball fans.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 1st.

Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize.

She graduated from Wilson Junior College in Chicago in 1936. Her early verses appeared in the Chicago Defender, a newspaper written primarily for that city’s African American community. 

Brooks published her first poem, "Eventide", in a children's magazine, American Childhood, when she was 13 years old. By the age of 16, she had already written and published approximately 75 poems. 

Her characters were often drawn from the inner city life that Brooks knew well. She said, 

"I lived in a small second-floor apartment at the corner, and I could look first on one side and then the other. There was my material."

Annie Allen (1949), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, is a loosely connected series of poems related to an African American girl’s growing up in Chicago. 

Her autobiographical "Report From Part One", including reminiscences, interviews, photographs and vignettes, came out in 1972, and "Report From Part Two" was published in 1995, when she was almost 80.

She was considered one of America’s leading black writers. She was praised for her use of language and the way people identified with her writing.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 30.

Michelle Howard was born.

She was the first African American woman to command a United States Navy ship. She also became the highest-ranking woman in the United States Armed Forces history.

During high school Howard applied to the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, and upon entering the academy in 1978, she became one of only seven black women in the school’s class of 1,363 students.  

She became the first African American woman to lead a U.S. Navy battle group when in 2009 she took command of Expeditionary Strike Group Two.

On July 1, 2014, Howard became the first woman promoted to the rank of four-star admiral in the U.S. Navy. That day she was also appointed the 38th vice-chief of naval operations.

Among Howard’s recognitions are the NAACP Image Award (2013), Women of Color STEM Career Achievement Award (2008), and the USO Military Woman of the Year (2011).

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 29.

Duke Ellington was born.

One of the originators of big-band jazz, Ellington led his band for more than half a century, composed thousands of scores, and created one of the most distinctive ensemble sounds in all of Western music.

Born in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem.

He selected his musicians for their expressive individuality and several members of his ensemble including trumpeter Cootie Williams and clarinetist Barney Bigard, amongst others, were themselves, important jazz artists.

Scores of his originals became jazz standards, and he ranked with the other masters of the Great American Songbook such as George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin.

His gift of melody and his mastery of sonic textures, rhythms, and compositional forms translated his often subtle, sometimes complex perceptions into a body of music unequaled in jazz history.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 28.

Samuel Lee Gravely Jr. became the first Black Admiral in the U.S. Navy.

He attended Virginia Union University but left before graduating to join the Naval Reserve in 1942.

He was commissioned in 1944 and served during World War II onboard USS PC-1264. After the war, Gravely had a brief stint in the civilian world before he was recalled to active duty in 1949. 

Gravely was recalled to active duty in 1949 and worked as a recruiter in Washington, D.C. before holding both shore and sea assignments during the Korean War.

In 1962 he became the first black officer to command a United States warship when he was named skipper of the destroyer Falgout, which patrolled the so-called Pacific Barrier between the Aleutian and Midway Islands.

For his final tour of duty, beginning in 1978, up until his retirement in 1980, Vice Admiral Gravely served as Director of the Defense Communications Agency. 

Gravely's military decorations include the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal, Meritorious Service Medal and Navy Commendation Medal.

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