Did You Know Fun Facts (1)

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Eugene Jacques Bullard aviatorBorn: Oct. 9, 1894Born in Columbus, Georgia, Bullard moved to France as a young man to escape racism. He joined the French Foreign legion in 1914 at the start of World War I, and became known as the “Black Swallow of Death.” Bullard then joined the French Flying Corps, where he became the first black combat pilot on May 5, 1917. Bullard attempted to join the U.S. military after the United States entered the war, but he was barred because of his race. He served in the French Flying Corps for the remainder of the war, earning the French Legion of Honor, France's highest military honor, and becoming one of France's most decorated war heroes. Died: Oct. 12, 1961 http://www.infoplease.com/

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William Harvey Carney Born: February 9, 1840 William Harvey Carney was an American Civil War soldier and the first African American to earn the Medal of Honor, though he was not presented with the honor until nearly 37 years after his act of bravery. Carney was the 21st African-American to be awarded the Medal, the first recipient having been Robert Blake, in 1864. However, Carney's courageous actions at Fort Wagner preceded those of any other black honoree. Died: December 8, 1908 http://en.wikipedia.org/ http://www.infoplease.com/

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Brigadier General Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr. Born: July 1, 1877 Brigadier General Benjamine Oliver Davis, Sr. was an American general and the father of Benjamin O. Davis Jr. He was the first African-American general in the United States Army. Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., was born in Washington, D.C., on July 1, 1877. His biographer Marvin Fletcher (author of America's First Black General, Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., 1880-1970) has presented evidence of his birth records indicating that he was born in May 1880 and later lied about his age so that he could enlist in the Army without the permission of his parents. It is the earlier date that appears on his grave at Arlington National Cemetery, however. He was a student at Howard University when—as a result of the start of the War with Spain—he entered the military service on July 13, 1898 as a temporary first lieutenant of the 8th United States Volunteer Infantry. He was mustered out on March 6, 1899, and on June 18, 1899, he enlisted as a private in Troop I, U.S. 9th Cavalry Regiment (one of the original Buffalo Soldier regiments), of the Regular Army. He then served as corporal and squadron sergeant major, and on February 2, 1901, he was commissioned a second lieutenant of Cavalry in the Regular Army. Died: November 26, 1970 http://en.wikipedia.org/

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Charles Richard Drew Born: 3 June 1904 Charles Richard Drew was an African American physician and medical researcher. He researched in the field of blood transfusions, developing improved techniques for blood storage, and applied his expert knowledge in developing large-scale blood banks early in World War II, saving thousands of lives of the Allied forces. He protested against the practice of racial segregation in the donation of blood as it lacked scientific foundation, which got him fired. In 1943, Drew's distinction in his profession was recognized when he became the first black surgeon to serve as an examiner on the American Board of Surgery. Died: 1 April 1950 http://en.wikipedia.org/

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Daniel Hale Williams Born: 1858 Daniel Hale Williams was an American surgeon, b. Hollidaysburg, Pa., M.D. Northwestern Univ., 1883. As surgeon of the South Side Dispensary in Chicago (1884–91), he became keenly aware of the lack of facilities for training African Americans like himself as doctors and nurses. As a result he organized the Provident Hospital, the first black hospital in the United States. In 1893, Williams performed the first successful closure of a wound of the heart and pericardium. In the same year President Cleveland appointed him surgeon in chief of Freedmen's Hospital, Washington, D.C., and during his five-year tenure there he reorganized the hospital and provided a training school for African American nurses. From 1899 until his death he was professor of clinical surgery at Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tenn. Died: 1931 http://www.infoplease.com/

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Thomas L. Jennings Born: 1791 Died: 1856 Thomas L. Jennings was a leading abolitionist. He was a free black tradesman who operated a dry-cleaning business in New York City, New York and was the first African American to be granted a patent. Jennings' skills were so accepted that people near and far-off came to him to alter or custom-tailor objects of clothing for them. When he was thirty years old, in 1821, he was granted a patent for a dry cleaning process called "dry scouring." This enabled him to build up his business. The first money Jennings earned was spent on the legal fees to purchase his family out of slavery, and then to support the abolitionist cause. In 1831, Jennings became assistant secretary to the First Annual Convention of the People of Color in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. http://www.infoplease.com/

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http://en.wikipedia.org/ Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr. Born: October 2, 1935 Died: December 8, 1967 Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr. was a United States Air Force officer and the first African-American astronaut. However, he died in a plane crash during a training flight and never made it into space. http://www.infoplease.com/

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Guion “Guy” Bluford, Jr. Born: November 22, 1942 Guion “Guy” Bluford, Jr. is an engineer, retired Colonel from the United States Air Force and a former NASA Astronaut. He participated in four Space Shuttle flights between 1983 and 1992. In 1983, as a member of the crew of the space shuttle Challenger on mission STS-8, Bluford became the first African American in space, and the second person of African ancestry, after the Cuban cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez. http://en.wikipedia.org/

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Mae Carol Jemison Born: October 17, 1956 Mae Carol Jemison is an African American physician and NASA astronaut. She became the first woman of recent African ancestry to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992. http://en.wikipedia.org/

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Frederick Drew Gregory (Colonel, USAF, Ret.) is a former NASA astronaut and former NASA Deputy Administrator. He also served briefly as NASA Acting Administrator in early 2005, covering the period between the departure of Sean O'Keefe and the swearing in of Michael Griffin. When STS-33 launched at night, from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on November 22, 1989, Gregory became the first African-American to command a space flight. http://en.wikipedia.org/

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Alexander Lucius Twilight Born:1795 Born free in Vermont, Alexander Lucius Twilight was the first black to earn a bachelor's degree from an American college or university, at Middlebury College, Vermont. An educator, minister and politician, he was licensed as a Congregational preacher, and worked in ministry and education all his career. In 1829 Twilight became principal of the Orleans County Grammar School. There he designed and built Athenian Hall, the first granite public building in the state. In 1836 he was the first African American elected to public office as a state legislator, serving in the Vermont General Assembly. His house and Athenian Hall are included in the Brownington Village Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Died: 1857 http://en.wikipedia.org/

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Edward Bouchet Born: 1852 Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Edward Bouchet was the first African American to graduate (1874) from Yale College. In 1876, upon receiving his Ph.D. in physics from Yale, he became the first African American to earn a doctorate. Bouchet spent his career teaching college chemistry and physics. Died: 1918 http://en.wikipedia.org/ http://www.infoplease.com/

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Harriet E. Wilson Born: March 15, 1825 Harriet E. Wilson is traditionally considered the first female African-American novelist as well as the first African American of any gender to publish a novel on the North American continent. Her novel Our Nig was published in 1859 and rediscovered in 1982. Died: June 28, 1900 http://en.wikipedia.org/

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Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks Born: 1917 American poet, b. Topeka, Kans. She grew up in the slums of Chicago and lived in that city until her death. Brooks's poems, technically accomplished and written in a variety of forms including quatrains, free verse, ballads, and sonnets, deal with the experience of being black and often of being female in America. She attracted critical attention with her first volume, A Street in Bronzeville (1945). Brooks went on to win the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Annie Allen (1949), becoming the first black woman to win this award. Her verse was collected in The World of Gwendolyn Brooks (1970), which also includes an earlier novelette, Maud Martha (1953). Her work took on a more radical tone beginning with In the Mecca (1968); the subsequent poems in Riot (1970) are written in street dialects. Her other writings include Primer for Blacks (1980) and To Disembark (1981). Died: 2000 http://www.infoplease.com/

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Toni Morrison Born: 1931 American writer, b. Lorain, Ohio, as Chloe Ardelia (later Anthony) Wofford; grad. Howard Univ. (B.A., 1953), Cornell Univ. (M.F.A., 1955). Her fiction is noted for its poetic language, lush detail, emotional intensity, and sensitive observation of American life as viewed from a variety of African-American perspectives. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), is the story of a girl ruined by a racist society and its violence. Song of Solomon (1977; National Book Award) established her as one of America's leading novelists. It concerns a middle-class man who achieves self-knowledge through the discovery of his rural black heritage. Her later fiction includes Beloved (1987; Pulitzer Prize), a powerful account of mother love, murder, and the legacy of slavery; and Jazz (1992), a tale of love and murder set in Harlem in the 1920s. Her other novels are Sula (1973), Tar Baby (1981), Paradise (1997), and Love (2003). Among Morrison's other works are the essay collections Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power and Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (both: 1992); several children's books, including The Big Box (2000), written with her son, Slade; a play, Dreaming Emmett (1986); a song cycle, Honey and Me (1992), written with André Previn; and an opera, Margaret Garner (2003). Awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, she is the first African American to win the coveted prize. Morrison, who was an influential editor at Random House for nearly two decades, has been a professor at Princeton Univ. since 1989 and is the founder (1994) of the Princeton Atelier, a writers' and performers' workshop. http://www.infoplease.com/

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Ralph Johnson Bunche Born: August 7, 1903 Ralph Johnson Bunche was an American political scientist and diplomat who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Palestine. He was the first person of color to be so honored in the history of the Prize. He was involved in the formation and administration of the United Nations. In 1963, he received the Medal of Freedom from President John F. Kennedy. Died: December 9, 1971 http://en.wikipedia.org/

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Thurgood Marshall Born: July 2, 1908 Thurgood Marshall was an American jurist and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. Before becoming a judge, he was a lawyer who was best remembered for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education (Supreme Court ruling that ended school segregation). He was nominated to the court by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967. Died: January 24, 1993 http://en.wikipedia.org/

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Constance Baker Motley Born: September 14, 1921 Died: September 28, 2005 was an African American civil rights activist, lawyer, judge, state senator, and President of Manhattan, New York City. She was born in New Haven, Conn. As a prominent civil rights attorney, Motley won nine of the ten cases she argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, including the 1962 case in which James Meredith won admission to the University of Mississippi. In 1966 she became the first black woman to become a federal judge. http://en.wikipedia.org/ http://www.infoplease.com/

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Dr. William H. Hastie Born: November 17, 1904 Dr. William H. Hastie was both the first African American Governor of the United States Virgin Islands and the first African American judge on a Federal appeals court. He was considered by some as a pioneer of the civil rights movement in the United States. Died: April 14, 1976 http://en.wikipedia.org/

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William "Count" Basie Born: August 21, 1904 Williams “Count” Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Widely regarded as one of the most important jazz bandleaders of his time, Basie led his popular Count Basie Orchestra for almost 50 years. Many notable musicians came to prominence under his direction, including tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison and singers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. Basie's theme songs were "One O'Clock Jump" and "April In Paris". In 1945 he became the first Male Grammy Award Winner. Died: April 26, 1984 http://en.wikipedia.org/ http://www.infoplease.com/

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Ella Jane Fitzgerald Born: April 25, 1917 Died: June 15, 1996 Also known as "Lady Ella", and the "First Lady of Song", Ella Jane Fitzgerald was an American jazz vocalist. With a vocal range spanning three octaves, she was noted for her purity of tone, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. She is widely considered one of the supreme interpreters of the Great American Songbook. Over a recording career that lasted 59 years, she was the winner of 13 Grammy Awards, and was awarded the National Medal of Art by Ronald Reagan and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush. She was the first African American Female Grammy Award Winner. http://en.wikipedia.org/ http://www.infoplease.com/

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Sir Sidney Poitier Born: February 20, 1927 Sir Sidney Poitier is a Bahamian-American actor, film director, author, and diplomat. He broke through as a star in acclaimed performances in American films and plays, which, by consciously defying racial stereotyping, gave a new dramatic credibility for black actors to mainstream film audiences in the Western world. In 1963, Poitier became the first black man to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field. The significance of this achievement was later bolstered in 1967 when he starred in three very well received films—To Sir, with Love; In the Heat of the Night; and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner—making him the top box office star of that year. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Poitier among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking 22nd on the list of 25. Poitier has directed a number of popular movies such as Uptown Saturday Night, and Let's Do It Again (with friend Bill Cosby), and Stir Crazy (starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder). In 2002, 38 years after receiving the Best Actor Award, Poitier was chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Honorary Award, designated "To Sidney Poitier in recognition of his remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being.“ Since 1997 he has been the Bahamian ambassador to Japan. On August 12, 2009, Sidney Poitier was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States of America's highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama. http://en.wikipedia.org/

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Halle Berry Born: August 14, 1966 Halle Berry is an American actress, former fashion model, and beauty queen. Berry received an Emmy, Golden Globe, SAG, and an NAACP Image award for Introducing Dorothy Dandridge and won an Academy Award for Best Actress and was also nominated for a BAFTA Award in 2001 for her performance in Monster's Ball, becoming the first and, as of 2009, only woman of African American descent to have won the award for Best Actress. She is one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood and also a Revlon spokeswoman. She has also been involved in the production side of several of her films. http://en.wikipedia.org/

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Oscar Devereaux Micheaux Born: 2 January 1884 Oscar Devereaux Micheaux was an American author and film director. Although predated by the short lived Lincoln Motion Picture Company that put out smaller films, he is regarded as the first African-American feature filmmaker, and the most prominent producer of race films. Died: 25 March 1951 http://en.wikipedia.org/

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Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks Born: November 30, 1912 Gordon Parks was a groundbreaking American photographer, musician, poet, novelist, journalist, activist and film director. He is best remembered for his photo essays for Life magazine and as the director of the 1971 film Shaft. In 1969, Parks became Hollywood's first major black director with his film adaptation of his autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree. Parks also composed the film's musical score and wrote the screenplay. Died: March 7, 2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/ http://www.infoplease.com/

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Hattie McDaniel Born: June 10, 1895 Hattie McDaniel was an American actress and the first black performer to win an Academy Award. She won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939). McDaniel was also a professional singer-songwriter, comedienne, stage actress, radio performer, and television star. Hattie McDaniel was in fact the first black woman to sing on the radio in America. Over the course of her career, McDaniel appeared in over 300 films, although she only received screen credits for about 80. She gained the respect of the African American show business community with her generosity, elegance, and charm. McDaniel has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood: one for her contributions to radio at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard, and one for motion pictures at 1719 Vine Street. In 1975, she was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and in 2006 became the first black Oscar winner honored with a US postage stamp.[3] Died: October 26, 1952 http://en.wikipedia.org/

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Nathaniel Adams Coles Born: March 17, 1919 Nathaniel Adams Cole, known professionally as Nat "King" Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres. He was the first black American to host a television variety show and has maintained worldwide popularity since his death; he is widely considered one of the most important musical personalities in United States history. Died: February 15, 1965 http://en.wikipedia.org/

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Oprah Gail Winfrey Born: January 29, 1954 Noted as the first black female television host, Oprah Winfrey is an American media personality, Academy Award–nominated actress, television producer, literary critic and magazine publisher, best known for her self-titled, multi-award winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history. She has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century, the most philanthropic African American of all time, and was once the world's only black billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/

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The Brewster Hospital is a historic U.S. hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. It is located at 915 West Monroe Street. On May 13, 1976, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. Brewster Hospital was the only hospital to serve African Americans in Jacksonville from 1901 to 1966. The hospital was founded because the healthcare facilities in Jacksonville and surrounding areas denied treatment to African-Americans until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Faced with competition from previously segregated facilities, Brewster Hospital was closed in 1966. The original Brewster Hospital building was recently moved and is being preserved. Brief Time Line: 1901 - George A. Brewster Hospital and School of Nurse Training, which later became Methodist Hospital, opened to care for victims of the Great Fire of 1901, both white and African American . 1967 - Brewster Hospital moved to Jefferson and Eighth Street, the current location of Shands Jacksonville, and reopened as the not-for-profit Methodist Hospital. 1993 - Methodist Hospital was renamed Methodist Medical Center (MMC). 1999 – University Medical Center and Methodist Medical Center were purchased by Shands HealthCare and merged to become Shands Jacksonville . http://pellajacksonville.com/sitebuilder/images/Brewsters_Hospital_4-229x161.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/ UF & Shands Jacksonville Restored: The Brewster Hospital & School of Nurse Training 1931 The Brewster Hospital and School of Nurse Training ”Brewster Hospital Restoration Kicks Off with a Celebration;” Jacksonville – Where Florida Begins. 2.28.08

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President Barack Hussein Obama II Born: August 4, 1961 Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office, as well as the first born in Hawaii, and the third from Illinois. President Obama previously served as the junior United States Senator from Illinois from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008. President Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. President Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, President Obama ran for United States Senate in 2004. His victory, from a crowded field, in the March 2004 Democratic primary raised his visibility. His prime-time televised keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 made him a rising star nationally in the Democratic Party. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 by the largest margin in the history of Illinois. He began his run for the presidency in February 2007. After a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. On October 9, 2009, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. http://en.wikipedia.org/