✊ Black History Month ✊

[Ziggiy]

is an African American inventor and engineer who holds more than 80 patents.[2]Johnson is most known for inventing the Super Soaker water gun, which has ranked among the world's top 20 best-selling toys every year since its release.[3]

After college, Johnson joined the U.S. Air Force, where he helped develop the stealth bomber program.[5] Later, he worked at NASA on Galileo's mission to Jupiter.[6] More recently, he teamed up with scientists from Tulane University and Tuskegee University to develop a method of transforming heat into electricity with the goal of making green energy more affordable.[6]

Two of Johnson’s companies, Excellatron Solid State and Johnson Electro-Mechanical Systems (JEMS), are developing technology. Excellatron is introducing thin film batteries, a new generation of rechargeable battery technology. JEMS has developed the Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter System (JTEC), listed by Popular Mechanics as one of the top 10 inventions of 2009. JTEC has potential applications in solar power plants and ocean thermal power generation. It converts thermal energy to electrical energy using a non-steam process which works by pushing hydrogen ions through two membranes, with significant advantages over alternative systems. The companies operate a research laboratory in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood of Atlanta.[7]

 

[315]

The Pan-African flag — also known as the UNIA flag, Afro-American flag and Black Liberation Flag — is a tri-color flag consisting of three equal horizontal bands of (from top down) red, black and green. The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) formally adopted it on August 13, 1920 in Article 39 of the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World,[1] during its month-long convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City.[2][3] Variations of the flag can and have been used in various countries and territories in Africa and the Americas to represent Pan-Africanist ideologies. Several Pan-African organizations and movements have often employed the emblematic tri-color scheme in various contexts.

The flag was created in 1920 by members of UNIA in response to the enormously popular 1900 c00n song "Every Race Has a Flag but the c00n,"[4] which has been cited as one of the three songs that "firmly established the termc00n in the American vocabulary". A 1921 report appearing in Africa Times and Orient Review, for which Marcus Garvey had worked, quoted Garvey regarding the importance of the flag:

Show me the race or the nation without a flag, and I will show you a race of people without any pride. Aye! In song and mimicry they have said, "Every race has a flag but the c00n." How true! Aye! But that was said of us four years ago. They can't say it now....

Journalist Charles Mowbray White has asserted that Garvey proposed the colors red, black and green for the following reasons: "Garvey said red because of sympathy for the 'Reds of the world', and the Green their sympathy for the Irish in their fight for freedom, and the Black- [for] the Negro."[5]

The flag later became an African nationalist symbol for the worldwide liberation of people of African origin. As an emblem of Black pride, the flag became popular during the Black Liberation movement of the 1960s. In 1971, the school board of Newark, New Jersey, passed a resolution permitting the flag to be raised in public school classrooms. Four of the board's nine members were not present at the time, and the resolution was introduced by the board's teen member, a mayoral appointee. Fierce controversy ensued, including a court order that the board show cause why they should not be forced to rescind the resolution, and at least two state legislative proposals to ban ethnic or national flags in public classrooms other than the U.S. flag.

In the United States, the flag is presently widely available through flag shops or ethnic specialty stores. It is commonly seen at parades commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, civil rights rallies, and other special events.

 

[The axe murderer]

 

[The M.I.C.]

...

 

[Bunchy Carter]

CALIFORNIA
Frederick C. Branch, 82; First Black Officer in U.S. Marine Corps

April 12, 2005|Myrna Oliver | Times Staff WriteFrederick C. Branch, the first African American commissioned officer of the U.S. Marine Corps, has died. He was 82.

Branch died Sunday in Philadelphia after a short illness, his family said.

One of 20,000 black Marines to serve in World War II, Branch earned his second lieutenant's bars Nov. 10, 1945. The landmark promotion did not come easily.

"For a person of color to aspire to be an officer in the Marine Corps was a danger," Cornell A. Wilson Jr., a Marine Corps general, said last year when Branch was honored at the 95th annual convention of the NAACP in Philadelphia. "We still had Jim Crow laws. We still had unwritten rules and regulations in this country.... He could very well have been lynched or injured in some way."

Born May 31, 1922, in Hamlet, N.C., the fourth of seven sons of a minister, Branch studied at Johnson C. Smith University and had transferred to Temple University in Philadelphia when he was drafted in May of 1943.

The Marine Corps had barred blacks until President Franklin D. Roosevelt forced the opening of ranks with a 1941 executive order. Nevertheless, boot camp remained segregated until 1949. Branch and other black wartime Marines were trained at Montford Point, five miles from the white recruits' training fields at Camp Lejeune, N.C. They became known as the Montford Point Marines.

Branch's first application for Officers Candidate School was rebuffed. "They told me to shut that blankety-blank stuff up about being an officer," he said in a 1995 interview. "You ain't going to be no officer."

Serving in the South Pacific, however, Branch impressed his commanding officer enough to earn his recommendation. In 1944, Branch got his opportunity for officer's training -- with the Navy's V-12 program at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. The only black in a class of 250 future officers, Branch made the dean's list.

With the war ended by the time he was commissioned, Branch went into the Reserves. He completed a degree in physics at Temple and established a science department at Philadelphia's Dobbins High School, where he taught until his retirement in 1988.

Reactivated during the Korean War, he was sent to Camp Pendleton in San Diego County.

The Marine Corps had envisioned black officers for black troops. "As it turned out," Branch told CNN in 1997, "my first command had one Negro and 79 whites."

Discharged in 1952, Branch returned to the Reserves, where he was promoted to captain. But he became disillusioned by continuing covert discrimination and promises of advanced training that never materialized, he told the Raleigh News & Observer in 1999. He resigned in 1955.

The Marine Corps, which in later years came to honor Branch as a pioneer in integration, in 1997 named a training building for him at Marine Officers Candidate School at Quantico, Va. He will be buried at the Quantico base with full military honors.

Widowed in 2000 upon the death of his wife of 55 years, Camilla "Peggy" Robinson, Branch is survived by two brothers, William of New Rochelle, N.Y., and Floyd of Washington, D.C.; and a godson, Joseph Alex Cooper.

 

[Bunchy Carter]

Montford Point Marines (1942-1949)

Montford Point Marines, ca. 1944 Image Ownership: Public Domain


With the beginning of World War II African Americans would get their chance to be in “the toughest outfit going,” the previously all-white Marine Corps. The first recruits reported to Montford Point, a small section of land on Camp Lejeune,North Carolina on August 26, 1942. By October only 600 recruits had begun training although the call was for 1,000 for combat in the 51st and 52nd Composite Defense Battalions.

Initially the recruits were trained by white officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) but citing a desire to have blacks train blacks, the Marines quickly singled out several exceptional black recruits to serve as NCO drill instructors. In January 1943, Edgar R. Huff became the first black NCO as a private first class. In February Gilbert "Hashmark" Johnson, a 19-year veteran of the Army and Navy, became the first Drill Sergeant. By May 1943 all training at Montford Point was done by black sergeants and drill instructors (DIs), with Johnson as chief DI. Both Johnson and Huff would be renowned throughout the entire Marine Corps for their demanding training and exceptional leadership abilities.

The men of the 51st soon distinguished themselves as the finest artillery gunners in the Marine Corps, breaking almost every accuracy record in training. Unfortunately, discrimination towards African American fighting abilities still existed and when shipped to the Pacific, the 51st and 52nd were posted to outlying islands away from the primary action. The only Montfort Marines to see action, and record casualties, were the Ammunition and Depot Companies in Saipan, Guam, andPeleliu. Private Kenneth Tibbs was the first black Marine to lose his life on June 15, 1944.

The Montford Point Marine training facility was abolished in 1949 after President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981 which desegregated the U.S. Armed Forces.

Sources:
Gerald Astor, The Right to Fight: A History of African Americans in the Military (Novato, Ca.: Presidio Press, 1998); Gail Buckley, American Patriots (New York: Random House, 2001); Bernard C. Nalty, The Right to Fight: African-American Marines in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History, The United States Army, 1985).

- See more at: Montford Point Marines (1942-1949) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed

 

[NO-BadAzz]

Is this picture of the young man that was killed at JSU?

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

Is this picture of the young man that was killed at JSU?

yep
James Earl Green
17, a Jim Hill High School student

Phillip Lafayette Gibbs

21-year-old Jackson State student

 

[ridedolo]

i love these pictures.

but please brothers and sister take notice that there's always at least one white person involved in any black movement. idk who this man is, maybe he was part of the press. but still. Cointelpro is real. We really need to stay mindful and keep these obvious guv agents away from us.

 

[BmoreGorilla]

I advise everybody who hasn't heard this album to listen to it. Cube touches on such topics as police brutality, recruitment of blacks into the military, business ownership of foreigners in black neighborhoods, c00ns, STDs, and much more. Dude even predicted the LA uprising since the album was made after Rodney King but before the trial ended.

And for good measure he took out NWA all by himself

 

[↓R↑LYB]

If only Black History wasn't regulated to the shortest month of the year, tho

...but, I always felt proud my BDay coincide with this Real African moment

Thank you Dr. Carter G. Woodson: BLACKEXCELLENCE

It's not regulated to the shortest month of the year.

 

[↓R↑LYB]

why you give this thread 2 stars

My bad, meant to give it 1*

 

[↓R↑LYB]

The Republic of New Africa (RNA) is a black nationalist organization that was created in 1969 on the premise that an independent black republic should be created out of the southern United States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, which were considered “subjugated lands.” The group’s manifesto demanded the United States government pay $400 billion in reparations for the injustices of slavery and segregation. It also argued that African-Americans should be allowed to vote on self-determination, as that opportunity was not provided at the end of slavery when the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution incorporated African-Americans into the United States. The economy of the RNA was to be organized based on ujamaa, Tanzania’s model of cooperative economics and community self-sufficiency. Citizens of the proposed RNA would have limited political rights, unions would be discouraged, freedom of the press would be curtailed, men would be forced to serve in the military, and polygamy would be allowed.

Two brothers, Milton and Richard Henry, who were associates of Malcolm X, formed an organization called the Malcolm X Society, which was devoted to the creation of an independent black nation within the United States. Milton and Richard subsequently changed their names to Gaidi Obadele and Imari Abubakari Obadele, respectively. The brothers organized a meeting of 500 black nationalists in Detroit, Michigan in 1968. Exiled former North Carolina NAACP leader Robert Williams was chose as the first Presideint of the Republic of New Africa. The group wrote a declaration of independence and established the Republic of New Africa. The group anticipated that the U.S. would reject their demands and made plans for armed resistance and a prolonged guerilla war.

Both federal and local governments reacted to the RNA with suspicion, and had violent conflicts with the RNA. The RNA was a target of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) COINTELPRO, its antiradical program of surveillance, disruption, and subversion. Detroit police raided the RNA’s first anniversary conference in 1969 and one police officer was killed during the raid. Three RNA members were acquitted of any crimes in this incident. Police in Jackson, Mississippi raided RNA headquarters, and another police officer was killed. Eleven RNA members, including founder Imari Obadele were arrested and convicted for assault, murder, and sedition. Three other members, while driving to RNA headquarters, killed a police officer in New Mexico who had pulled their car over. They subsequently hijacked a plane and escaped to Cuba.

Soon after Imari Obadele was released from prison he and six others were convicted on federal conspiracy charges. He was released in 1980 and went on to earn a Ph.D. from Temple University in political science and has taught at several colleges and written numerous books and articles on black separatism, which he still advocates.

The RNA’s popularity and influence diminished with most of its leaders in prison, but it still claims a membership of 5,000 to 10,000. Its headquarters have been moved to Washington, DC.

 

[Data-Hawk]

Not sure if this was posted yet.

"Jerry Lawson brought interchangeable video games into people's homes with the invention of the Fairchild Channel F, the precursor to modern video game systems."

http://www.biography.com/people/jerry-lawson-21330375
Black History Month: 12 Facts About Jerry Lawson, Creator Of The Video Game Cartridge

"
"Mark Dean designed the first IBM PC while breaking racial barrier"

"Dr. Mark Dean, an African-American computer scientist and engineer, spent over 30 years at IBM pursuing the Next Big Thing. He was chief engineer of the 12-person team that designed the original IBM PC"

http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/06/mark-dean-pc-pioneer/

 

[Ironman]

Black Excellence To my brothers and sisters we all we got