Essential The Official African American Thread#2

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Abraham Lincoln Lewis (1865–1947)

was an American businessman. He founded the Afro-American Life Insurance Company in Jacksonville, Florida, and became the state's first African American millionaire. He also founded the National Register-listed community of American Beach, founded as a prestigious vacation spot for blacks during the period of racial segregation.

Along with seven other business associates, Lewis founded the Afro-American Insurance Association in 1901. The company headquarters burned down in the Great Fire of 1901, but Lewis and the others relocated the business to Lewis' home and renamed it the Afro-American Life Insurance Company. During this time Lewis served as treasurer, and he became the president of Afro-American Life in 1919. Eventually the company acquired Chathorn Mutual Life Insurance Company and expanded into Georgia.

Lewis helped to found both the Negro Business League and the National Negro Insurance Association. He was a heavy contributor to black colleges such as Jacksonville's Edward Waters College as well as Bethune-Cookman College.

Due to the Jim Crow laws of the day, blacks were not allowed to enjoy many basic recreational amenities. A.L. Lewis realized the need for African Americans to have recreational activities for their families, so he founded the Lincoln Golf and Country Club, which featured a clubhouse and facilities. In 1935, Lewis purchased 200 acres (0.81 km2) of Nassau County beachfront land along the Atlantic Ocean. Blacks were not permitted on most beaches in Jacksonville, and it was Lewis' dream to create a community where African Americans could visit and own reasonably-priced homes along the ocean. This community, which he named American Beach, was a thriving vacation spot throughout the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Summers at American Beach were known for being jammed with families, churches and children. The beach included hotels, restaurants and nightclubs as well as homes and other businesses.

A.L. Lewis died in 1947 and was interred in the family crypt in a historic black Jacksonville cemetery. The grave is along the road with a plaque marker placed by the city inscribed with his biography. There is a street as well as a youth center named in his honor. Lewis married Mary Kingsley Sammis, the great granddaughter of Zephaniah Kingsley, a slaveowner and trader, and his wife and former slave Anna Magjigine Jai, whose homestead on Fort George Island is preserved as Kingsley Plantation.[1]

In recognizing the 2016 Harambee Celebration awardees, we remember and pay homage to Florida’s first Black millionaire, Abraham Lincoln Lewis.

Abraham Lincoln Lewis was born on March 29, 1865 in Madison, West Florida. Although he grew to be a very successful man, Lewis had a difficult start. Lewis was the son of Robert Lewis, a South Carolina blacksmith who was a slave on one of the many plantations in Madison. Both of Lewis’ parents struggled throughout their lives and did not know how to read or write, which was a result of a law that made it a crime to teach slaves to read. However, when the slaves were freed, things began to change. The couple named their son Abraham Lincoln in gratitude for the president who set them free; Lincoln never used this name and instead chose to be called A.L. Lewis. Rising above from the hardships, Lewis dedicated his life to overcome and compensate for the segregation imposed on blacks. Lewis joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1884 and served in several capacities as a member. He worked diligently in a Masonic Order and through his business acumen, the Masonic Temple of greater Jacksonville was built in the early 1900’s.

In early 1901, Lewis, along with Reverend E.J. Gregg, E.W. Latson, A.W. Price, Dr. Arthur W. Smith, J.F. Valentine and Reverend J. Melton Waldron, founded Florida’s first insurance company, the African American Industrial Benefit Association, later renamed Afro-American Life Insurance Company. Afro-American Life Insurance Company was founded to provide affordable health insurance and death benefits to Florida’s black residents. In May of 1901, the great Jacksonville Fire destroyed the first office of the insurance company just two months after it opened. As a result, the office moved to the home of Lewis, who served as the treasurer of at that time. Lewis became president of Afro-American Life Insurance Company in 1919 and expanded the to have locations throughout Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas. In the 1920s, Lewis began providing mortgages for individual homes. After 80 years of serving black southerners, the company closed its doors in 1987. Although most noted for the Afro, A.L. Lewis started Florida´s first black-owned and operated bottling company and assisted Booker T. Washington in establishing the national Negro Business League. Among his achievements with the insurance company, Lewis was a humanitarian, donating to public and private schools across the country to fund the education of the black youth. In 1926, Lewis also founded the Lincoln Golf and Country Club in Jacksonville. Celebrities from around the country came to the club to play and dine.

In 1935 the Pension Bureau, a pioneering subset of the Afro-American Life Insurance Company, bought 33 acres of shorefront property on Amelia Island which was located in Nassau County, FL. Lewis, the invited company employees to make use of the beach, and hosted company outings there. The Pension Bureau also had the land subdivided, and offered parcels for sale to company executives and shareowners, and to community leaders. Two later land acquisitions expanded the community’s size to 216 acres. In 1940, with many building lots unsold, the Afro offered them for sale to the wider black community. After World War II, home construction took off. American Beach also included hotels, restaurants and nightclubs in addition to homes.

Lewis accomplished much throughout his life and became Florida’s first black millionaire and one of the wealthiest men in the south, sharing his wealth with historical black colleges and the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He also served on the Board of Trustees of Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida, for over twenty years. Lewis was married to his wife, Mary Frances Sammis, from 1865 to 1923, and together they had one son, James Henry Lewis. After Sammis’ death in 1923, Lewis remarried in 1925 to a woman named Elzona Nobileo. They remained married until Lewis’ death in 1947. Lewis is interred in a nationally historic mausoleum, which became a part of the federal registry in 1997.

Entrepreneur, Founder, Leader, Visionary, Philanthropist. We salute you and your legacy, Abraham Lincoln Lewis!

American Beach is a historic beach community in northeastern Florida popular with African-American vacationers. It is located north of Jacksonville on Amelia Island in Nassau County. During the time of segregation and the Jim Crow era, African Americans were not allowed to swim at most beaches in Jacksonville, and several black-only areas were created. American Beach was the largest and most popular, and was a community established by Abraham Lincoln Lewis, Florida's first black millionaire and president of the Afro-American Life Insurance Company.[3] It contains American Beach Historic District, a historic district which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

American Beach was founded in 1935 by Florida's first black millionaire, Abraham Lincoln Lewis, and his Afro-American Life Insurance Company.[4] The plan was for his employees to have a place to vacation and own homes for their families by the shore.[3] Throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, summers at American Beach were busy with families, churches and children. It was a place where African Americans could enjoy "Recreation and Relaxation Without Humiliation". The beach included hotels, restaurants, and nightclubs as well as homes and other businesses.[5]

American Beach played host to numerous celebrities during this period, including: folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, singer Billie Daniels, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, Billy Eckstein, Hank Aaron, Joe Louis, actor Ossie Davis, and Sherman Hemsley . James Brown was actually turned away from performing outside Evans' Rendezvous, a nightclub on the beach. In 1964, American Beach was hit hard by Hurricane Dora, and many homes and buildings were destroyed. The passage of the Civil Rights Act that same year desegregated the beaches of Florida, and American Beach became a less and less popular vacation destination as more African American Jacksonvillians turned to locations nearer their homes.[6]

A.L. Lewis' great-granddaughter MaVynee Betsch, known to locals as the Beach Lady, returned to American Beach in 1977 to fight for its preservation. For years, she planted trees along Lewis street, offered historical tours of the beach, and fought to raise public awareness of the beach and its struggle until her death September 2005. She wanted to make American Beach a monument to black Americans' determination to overcome the obstacles of the Jim Crow era. As of January 2001, American Beach is listed as a historic site by the National Register of Historic Places.

 

[Black Haven]

Vivienne Malone Mayes

Born: February 10, 1932
Died: June 9, 1995

Birthplace: Waco, Texas

Fisk University, 1952; Fisk University, 1954

PhD (1966) : University of Texas - Austin,
Area: Summability; thesis: A Structure Problem in Asymptotic Analysis; Advisor: Don Edmonson

Vivienne Malone Mayes earned the B.A. (1952) and M.A .(1954) in Mathematics at Fisk University. One of her teachers at Fisk was Dr. Evelyn Boyd Granville one of the first two African-American women to receive the Ph. D. in Mathematics. Her intense struggle to overcome racism in order to study mathematics at the University of Texas is told below. Vivienne Malone Mayes is the fifth African-American woman to receive a Ph. D. in Mathematics (University of Texas-Austin). She was the first black to serve on the executive committee of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and served on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Mathematicians (NAM).

In 1966, Dr. Mayes became the first Black faculty member at Baylor University, the institution which had rejected her, with an explicit anti-black policy, as a student only five years previously. There she spent the rest of her teaching career, retiring because of ill-health in 1994. Vivienne Malone Mayes died June 9, 1995. Memorials can be sent to the Vivienne Lucille Malone-Mayes Scholarship Fund, c/o LaNelle McNamara, 501 Franklin Avenue, Suite 501, Waco, Texas 76701.

Her dedication to the community at large was just as great. We mention below her anti-racist picketing; her articles situate her academic struggles within the broader anti-racist movement. She served on the Board of Directors for Goodwill Industries, the Board of Directors for Family Counseling and Children, the Texas State Advisory Council for Construction of Community Mental Health Centers, and the Board of Directors of Cerebral Palsy.

Dr. Evelyn Boyd Granville, the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in Mathematics. She also made friends with a younger student, Gloria Conyers Hewitt who became the fourth woman to earn a Ph.D. in Mathematics

She chaired the math department at Paul Quinn College, operated by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, for seven years and at Bishop College for one year before deciding to take math courses in graduate school to "refresh herself." Her application was rejected at Baylor and she said she still has the letter she received that spelled out the university's segregation policy. "It was a blessing, really," she said. "If they'd accepted me at Baylor, I would have just taken a few courses and not pursued a doctorate." Baylor does not offer a doctorate in mathematics.

The University of Texas, already required by federal law to desegregate, had to admit her. So she took summer courses at the University of Texas. "The first summer gave me the courage to continue full time, especially after I succeeded," she said.

and became inspired to pursue a doctorate. After attending UT one summer and seeing others pursuing doctorates, she began to consider the idea. It was a lonely and stressful time for her.

In graduate school she was very much alone, though she was a grader for an undergraduate course taken by Raymond Johnson. In her first class, she was the only Black, the only woman. Her classmates ignored her completely, even terminating conversations if she came within earshot. She was denied a teaching assistantship, although she was an experienced (13 years) and excellent teacher. She wrote further:"I could not join my advisor and other classmates to discuss mathematics over coffee at Hilsberg's cafe.... Hilsberg's would not serve Blacks. Occasionally, I could get snatches of their conversation as they crossed our picket line outside the cafe." She could not enroll in professor R.L. Moore class as he explicitly stated that he did not teach Blacks. Overlooking all this, one of her professors, complaining against the civil rights demonstrations, said to her: "If all those out there were like you, hard-working and studious, we wouldn't have any problems." Her reply: "If it hadn't been for those hell-raisers out there, you wouldn't even know me." [see the web page R. L. Moore - racist mathematician exemplified]

Vivienne had ability in abundance, but it took enormous courage and determination, as well, to succeed. Writing (1988) in the AWM Newsletter, speaking for all, she was to observe that "it took a faith in scholarship almost beyond measure to endure the stress of earning a Ph. D. degree as a black, female graduate student." But earn it she did, drawing on her vast reserves of courage and determination as well as on her undoubted abilities.

Vivienne Malone's Ph.D. thesis, supervised by Dr. Don Edmonson, was entitled "A structure problem in asymptotic analysis." Part of this work was published in the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, v. 22 (1969) under a different title. (Later her research interests shifted to summability theory in which she published jointly with Dr. B. E. Rhoades.).

Dr. Mayes' struggle did not end after the Ph.D. She was hired at Baylor University in 1966, and for years after, it took Federal invesigators to assure the Baylor U did not discrimnate against her. They stopped during the years of the Ronald Reagan presidency when funds for such investigations were cut. In 1971, the Baylor Student Congress elected Mayes Outstanding Faculty Memeber of the Year. Vivienne Malone Mayes - Mathematicians of the African Diaspora

 

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Joe Robert Cole

Joe Robert Cole is an American film director, screenwriter, film editor, actor, television writer and television producer. He is best known for his Emmy Award-nominated and Writers Guild of America Award-winning work on the first season of the true crime anthology television series American Crime Story, entitled The People v. O. J. Simpson, and for co-writing the film Black Panther.

 

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George Lisle Liele, or Leile, or George Sharp (1750–1820)

was an African American and emancipated slave who became the founding pastor of First Bryan Baptist Church and First African Baptist Church, in Savannah, Georgia (USA). He became the first American missionary, leaving in 1782 for Jamaica; this is thirty years before Adoniram Judson left for Burma. He became the first Baptist missionary in Jamaica.

Liele was born into slavery in Virginia in 1752, but was taken to Georgia.

As an adult he was converted by Rev. Matthew Moore of Burke County, Georgia, in 1777, and continued to worship in this white church for four years until Savannah was evacuated by forces loyal to Britain. His master Henry Sharp was a deacon in Rev. Moore's church and encouraged him in his preaching to other slaves.[1]

Liele was freed by his master Henry Sharp, also a Baptist and Loyalist, before the American Revolution began. Sharp died in battle as a Tory major on March 1, 1779. Liele went to Savannah, Georgia, where he helped organize an early Baptist congregation.

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America’s First Missionary

When I think about the first missionaries from America I think of Adoniram & Ann Judson who were sent out in 1812. Yet some of the earliest known missionaries are actually David George, Moses Baker, Prince Williams, and George Liele. They were all African Americans who were part of the slave-trade before the United States of America became a nation. George Liele is considered to be America’s first missionary. He chose to leave America in 1782 to start a church in Kingston, Jamaica. This was ten years before William Carey left England for India, and twenty years before Adoniram Judson left America for Burma.

George Liele is an unknown hero in missionary history, due to the fact that little is written about him. Little is written about any African American Missionaries. George was born in 1750 in Burke County, Virginia to slave parents, Liele and Nancy. They worked for the family of Henry Sharpe. Henry Sharpe was a British Loyalist who served as a British officer during the war and as a faithful deacon of Buckhead Creek Baptist Church. George knew little of his parents other than the fact that many people, both white and black, told him that his father was the only black person that knew the Lord. It was in 1773, while listening to his pastor Matthew Moore preach that George recalls “saw my condemnation in my own heart, and I found no way wherein I could escape the damnation of hell, only through the merits of my dying Lord and Savior Jesus Christ…” After being baptized George began to discover his compassion for other black slaves. He began to read hymns, encourage other blacks on his plantation to sing, and explain to them the meaning of each hymn. Buckhead Creek Baptist Church, convinced of George’s ministerial gifting and interest in God’s Word, licensed him to preach. In order to encourage and empower George to use his new found gift more freely, Henry Sharpe granted him his freedom from slavery.

Silver Bluff Black Baptist Congregation, Silver Bluff, South Carolina
During the next two years prior to the beginning of the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), George Liele gathered a group of new black believers to hear his preaching in Silver Bluff, South Carolina. George preached for two years in the slave quarters of plantations near Silver Bluff that gave birth to a new church congregation. This small congregation of new African American believers located near Gaulphin’s Mill in Aiken County, just twelve miles from Augusta, Georgia, is considered to be the first black church gathered in America. George Liele was the first appointed elder and preacher of the church that attracted 30 members during the first few years. David George was one of the first eight slaves who was baptized and became a member of the growing church. Andrew Bryan and George Liele’s wife, Hannah, also came to know Christ through Liele’s preaching at Silver Bluff. Andrew Bryan later would become both a leader and preacher in this growing congregation of black Baptists. The Silver Bluff congregation eventually moved south to Savannah, Georgia with the movements of the British army.

First African Baptist Church, Savannah, Georgia
After George’s master Henry Sharpe’s death in the war in 1778, George and his family moved to British occupied Savannah to avoid re-enslavement. It was in Savannah that George Liele, along side David George and Andrew Bryan, built a lasting congregation of black Baptists both slave and free. Their place of worship was initially a barn that was given to them by Jonathan Bryan, the master of Andrew Bryan. The fruit of Liele’s ministry was being multiplied through Andrew Bryan as an upcoming leader in the church. On January 20th, 1788, this black congregation was officially constituted a Baptist Church by Abraham Marshall under the pastor of Andrew Bryan. The church was initially named the First Bryan Baptist Church with a total of eighty members that grew to two hundred and fifty by 1792. In 1794, the church built a frame structure on land they had purchased the year before. By 1802 the church had grown to over 700 members, changed its name to the First African Baptist Church, started the Second African Baptist Church, and in 1803 started the Ogeechee (Third) Baptist Church. George Liele’s legacy continued to grow the first black church united with the white church of Savannah to form the Savannah Association in 1802.

First African Baptist Church, Kingston, Jamaica
Near the end of the Revolutionary War, Henry Sharpe’s children attempted to re-enslave Liele and eventually had him jailed. Yet, Liele was able to recapture his freedom by producing “free papers”. Hundreds of blacks left Savannah in 1782, including George Liele, his wife Hannah and their four children left America and sailed for Jamaica. Liele had befriended a British Colonel who advised him to leave the country with him. After borrowing $700 for passage for him and his family from Colonel Kirkland, Liele left America as an indentured servant on a ship of evacuated British troops headed for Kingston, Jamaica. After Liele completed his employment with the Colonel for a period of two years, he was given a certificate of freedom. As a freeman, he began to grow in his compassion for the slaves of Jamaica. After studying their problems, he began to preach to them in private homes and racecourses. It is from these meetings that Liele started a church in Jamaica with four African American believers including his wife, Moses Baker and George Gibbs. It was through George’s relationship with Moses Baker that God provided funding from Great Britain and the expansion of his ministry in Kingston. Despite growing persecution from the whites in Kingston Liele built a church building on his personal land. In 1789, his congregation built a house of worship on a piece of land containing three acres purchased for $775. Liele asked other churches in England to financially support this endeavor. Most of the church members were slaves, and therefore the finances of the church were minimal. In order to support his family, Liele did variety of jobs including farming and driving a team of horses and wagons to carry goods from place to place. By 1791 the new church, comprised of mostly blacks and a few whites grew to over 350 members. Because most of the people in his church could not read, each month he would read aloud a covenant that kept the commandments of God on their mind. He also used a church bell to call the members together and give notice to slave owners that they were meeting. George also had a vision to start a school for black children. Liele employed a teacher to teach children of both free parents and slaves. As his influence and church grew, so did the persecution. Sometime before 1802, George was thrown into prison, separated from his family, and put in chains with irons on his hands and feet. Then in 1805 Jamaica enacted a law forbidding preaching to slaves. During the years of 1802 to 1834 numerous instances of brutality, sexual abuse, and murder of Christians were reported. It was not until 1838 that all slavery was eradicated from Jamaica. Still, by 1814 it was reported that there were 8,000 Baptists in Jamaica including mostly black slaves and some whites. Between 1814 and 1832 the Baptist Missionary Society sent white English missionaries: William Knibb, Thomas Burchell, and James Phillipo to help organize the Jamaica mission and saw new believers grow from 8,000 to 20,000. Because of the influence of George Liele, the Englishmen William Knibb and Thomas Burchell returned to England to campaign to end slavery in Jamaica. Although William Wilberforce had successfully convinced the English parliament to abolish the slave trade in 1807, they did not outlaw slavery itself. It was not until 1833 that Parliament passed a law requiring all slaves in the entire British Commonwealth to be given there freedom. The last day of slavery for the British Empire was set to be July 31st 1838. Liele did not live to see that day, as he died in 1828, but his influence continued to empower freedom.

His Legacy of Mobilization
George Liele, born a slave, ordained in a white church in Georgia, gathered the first black congregation, and became the first black Baptist in America. Liele while not being supported by a church or mission agency, also became the first Protestant missionary to go out from America to establish a foreign mission. This unknown hero without formal education, who learned to read the Bible and became a preacher and missionary shared the gospel with thousands, baptized hundreds and discipled many who became preachers, missionaries, and world leaders. One of those disciples was David George, who left Savannah for the Canadian Province of Nova Scotia, and then later to Sierra Leone in Africa, where he started Baptist Churches in both countries. Andrew Bryan also one of his disciples was one of only three black Baptist preachers to stay in Savannah after the British left during the Revolutionary War to lead the First African Baptist Church. This man of mission raised up many courageous servants of the Lord who through their legacy of influence continue to bring freedom to the world.

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cont

The name, William Carey, is well known as he founded the Baptist Missionary Society and preached his inaugural sermon in 1793.

What is not equally well known is that another Baptist, George Liele, began his mission work in Jamaica 10 years earlier.

He arrived in January 1783 with his wife, Hannah, and their four children. At that time, slavery was at its peak and would continue for another 55 years.

Liele referred to himself and fellow Baptists as Ethiopians and established "The Ethiopian Baptist Church" in the capital city of Kingston.

His identity as Ethiopian and the name of his church clearly references Psalm 68:31: "Let bronze be brought from Egypt; let Ethiopia hasten to stretch out its hands to God."

His work as pastor and educator among the people of Jamaica sets him apart as America's first missionary overseas - 33 years before Adoniram Judson sailed for Burma and a decade prior to William Carey departing for India.

Beyond his work in Jamaica, Liele's ministry reached as far afield as Nova Scotia, Canada and Sierra Leone, Africa, through the influence of his protégé, David George - who was first known as David, until he assumed the name "David George" in honor of his friend and mentor.

Liele was a slave of Henry Sharp, a Baptist deacon in Georgia, prior to his mission work in Jamaica.

Sharp granted Liele his freedom so that he could practice his preaching gifts at plantations along the Savannah River.

Boating along the river for about four years, he visited plantations as far north as Silver Bluff, S.C.

It was there that Liele reconnected with a childhood acquaintance, David George.

George Liele and David George helped establish the first Independent Baptist Church around 1773 on a plantation owned by George Galphin.

It was under Liele's preaching that David George was converted, and he became an elder and preacher in this church.

The historical priority of the Silver Bluff church is more clearly understood through comparison to other early black congregations:

● 1794: Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church in Philadelphia

● 1794: St. Thomas Black Episcopal Church in Philadelphia

● 1796: A.M.E. Zion Church in New York City

● 1807: Lombard Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia

Liele was licensed to preach and was ordained to the Christian ministry in 1775 by a white pastor, Matthew Moore, of Buckhead Creek Baptist church in Burke County, Ga.

He was the first ordained black Baptist pastor in the United States and the Caribbean.

Early after his relocation to Jamaica, Liele was imprisoned for preaching on Romans 10:1. The charge brought against him was that "he was exciting the slaves to rebellion."

He developed a pragmatic and contextual approach to the Christian faith. In the American context, his confession of Jesus Christ as savior gained Liele his freedom as well as opportunities to preach. In the Jamaican context, the same faith landed him in jail.

In negotiating with the authorities in Jamaica to secure his release from prison, Liele produced a church covenant titled, "The Covenant of the Anabaptist Church" begun in America, December 1777, and in Jamaica, December 1783.

A full text of the covenant can be found in my book, "Plantation Church: How African American Religion was Born in Caribbean Slavery."

In the context of slavery, Liele and his members understood that everything African was devalued and treated with suspicion. Adopting and embracing this church covenant became an instrument of the church's survival.

John Rippon of the Baptist Missionary Society in London, with whom Liele corresponded while in Jamaica, invited Liele to visit England and work with freed Africans. Liele accepted the invitation and worked there from 1822 to 1828.

There is much we need to learn about Liele's work in England, but I am confident that he faithfully preached the gospel of Christ and sought opportunities to exercise his faith.

His legacy of global mission outreach secures his place in the history of the Christian church and Baptist tradition.

George Liele: Father of Baptist Missions
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Our people are amazing.

 

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Hakeem Muata Oluseyi[1] (born James Edward Plummer, Jr.[2]) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, inventor, educator, science communicator, author, actor, and humanitarian.

Early life and education
Oluseyi was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. After his parents divorced when he was four years old, he and his mother moved to a different state along the southern border of the US every year. He lived in some of the country's toughest neighborhoods including the 9th Ward of New Orleans; Watts, Los Angeles, California; Inglewood, California; South Park, Houston, Texas; and Third Ward, Houston, Texas before settling in rural Mississippi a month before Oluseyi turned 13 years old. He completed middle school and high school in the East Jasper School District graduating as his high school's valedictorian in 1985. Oluseyi served in the U.S. Navy from 1984 to 1986. He credits the Navy with teaching him algebra.[1]

After leaving the Navy with an honorable discharge, Oluseyi enrolled in Tougaloo College where he earned Bachelor of Science degrees in physics and mathematics. He earned MS and Ph.D. degrees in physics from Stanford University[3] under the mentorship of the late Professor Arthur B. C. Walker Jr. from whom he learned experimental space research. Under Walker's tutelage, Oluseyi helped to design, build, calibrate, and launch the Multi-Spectral Solar Telescope Array, which pioneered normal incidence extreme ultraviolet and soft x-ray imaging of the Sun's transition region and corona.

Career
Since 2007, he has been a professor of Physics & Space Sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology. His academic rank is Distinguished Research Professor.[3] He is temporarily stationed at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC where he is the Space Sciences Education Manager for NASA's Science Mission Directorate via the Intergovernmental Personnel Act Mobility Program.[3]

His best known scientific contributions are research on the transfer of mass and energy through the Sun's atmosphere, the development of space-borne observatories for studying astrophysical plasmas and dark energy, and the development of transformative technologies in ultraviolet optics,[4][5][6][7] detectors,[8][9][10][11] computer chips,[12][13][14][15] and ion propulsion.[16]

Oluseyi appears as a commentator and scientific authority on Science Channel television shows including How the Universe Works, Outrageous Acts of Science, and Strip the Cosmos.[17] He lent his voice and scientific expertise to the award-winning science education video game ExoTrex: A Space Science Adventure Game in collaboration with Dig-It! Games.[18]

He co-authored the children's popular science book Discovery Spaceopedia: The Complete Guide to Everything Space.[19]

Hakeem Oluseyi is not your average astrophysicist. From rural Mississippi, he took a circuitous route to a career in science, with a detour through Silicon Valley. With eight patents under his belt, he moved from the tech world to a life of research, teaching, and the global support of young scientists. He speaks about his inspiring journey and his cutting-edge work on computer, telescope, and in-space propulsion technology.

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Rise of a gangsta nerd: Fellows Friday with Hakeem Oluseyi

Astrophysicist, educator, and humanitarian Hakeem Oluseyi trounced race and class to become an important contributor to computer technology and space research. Back on Earth, he’s doing all he can to give young and underfunded scientists a chance to reach for the stars.
Yours is an extraordinary story. You grew up impoverished — moving frequently from city to city across the South — and then became a successful astrophysicist and science educator and advocate. Are you tired of telling the story of your background?

Well, it is an important part of what I’m doing now. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Right now I have a research group of over 20 students and very few of them are from similar a background to myself — but I have a special place in my heart for people like me.

Childhood was just rough, difficult. I felt like I was running the gauntlet. I had a mother who worked all the time, always gone. And I just felt like there was always a predator at my heels. She’d leave two dollars for me to go buy myself dinner, and I’d walk to the corner store and buy a can of pork and beans.

My response to this was: I wanted to be bad. I wanted to outgangster the next gangster. KRS-One, the rapper, Boogie Down Productions? He has a song I love that goes, “Where I’m from, if you’re soft you’re lost, cuz to stay on course means to roll with force.” And that’s how I was. You’ve got to intimidate this next dude before he intimidates you. Otherwise you’re going to be the victim. So by the time I was a teenager I was carrying a gun, I was involved in all these crazy things. I carried protection because I lived in a violent world. But the other side of this story is that I was also really interested in physics — it’s what I did for fun. In my own communities, I was seen as some kind of weirdo nerd kind of guy. A cool nerd. A gangsta nerd.

As I became a young man, my mother saw the handwriting on the wall, and one of the things she did was she moved me out of the inner city. Because we’d lived in New Orleans, Houston, inner city areas. She finally moved me to rural Mississippi where my dad was from.



The Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, La Serena, Chile. Photo: Patrick Champney
And there, at Tougaloo College, you had a breakthrough.

Yes.These three grad students from MIT and Harvard came to Tougaloo, where I was one of two physics students in 1986. They were all black physics students from the Cambridge area – and each of them thought they were the only one! They came to realize that kids from certain communities just have no idea that physics as a career exists. They decided they’d start the National Council of Black Physics Students, to help the most down-and-out kids in the country. So where did they go? Mississippi. They showed up on our campus.

Because of them, I ended up meeting recruiters from Stanford University that ended up accepting me to Stanford for grad school. In all of Stanford’s history, at that time, there were only two black professors in all of the six schools of natural sciences and mathematics. One was my PhD advisor, Art Walker, who was also the PhD advisor of Sally Ride. Just being in his presence showed me a different model of how I could be.

But when I first got there, I was still doing the same things. Right next door was East Palo Alto, which in that particular year was the murder capital of the country for per capita murders. I was involved in drugs and these sorts of things. And I was hanging out in the hood. It was all bad. I had this one particularly horrific night. I told Art what I had been up to, and Art looks at me and he goes, “Well, you’re not going to do these things anymore, are you?”

Why would you do that? You were at Stanford.

When I got to Stanford I quickly realized that class was more important than race in this particular environment. And I pretty much felt rejected and dejected. I did face some initial hostility. Not only that, I was faced with a type of failure that I had never seen before academically. My first reaction was: “Let me go home. Let me go to where it’s familiar to me.” The first thing you’re going to do is run to the ghetto. If you’re from the hood and you end up in a Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, you don’t want to be around those people.

Those are the “bad” guys, where you’re from. And they treat you like you’re the bad guy in their world. I remember, after my first week — I was married at the time — I came home and said to my wife: “You know, I really cannot see myself being around these people every day, but I can see myself being out on the corner every day. That’s a big problem.” How can I become what it is I want to become, when on the one hand the image that I have of myself is inappropriate, and on the other hand, the way that society is made up is something that scares me? Can I fit in? And it’s tough. I kind of struggle with it even to this day, but not to that extent, of course. And it never happens among international groups of people.

But in the end, Art’s support changed it for me. It was like two different lives. I ended up changing my name from James Edward Plummer to reflect how my life had changed so drastically. I wanted my middle name to reflect how I am. So my middle name is Muata and it means “He seeks the truth.” I wanted my first name to reflect what I want to become. My first name Hakeem means “wisdom.” And my last name is from the West African Yoruba people, and it means “God has done this.”



Speaking at Specialist South Africa tour.

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Rise of a gangsta nerd: Fellows Friday with Hakeem Oluseyi

 

[K.O.N.Y]

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Rise of a gangsta nerd: Fellows Friday with Hakeem Oluseyi





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Rise of a gangsta nerd: Fellows Friday with Hakeem Oluseyi

i fux with breh heavy

This whole time i thought he was nigerian or something