Successful black people and how they got that way

George Washington Carver- Today, he could have been elected President of this here United States of America, and worked for peanuts!



http://george-washington-carver.com/

 

A good topic. I don't remember his name, but there was a military officer (Black) who was going about the USA recruiting young Black men for college. He said there was no excuse. Earn a scholarship or join the services and get your college. The world is yours through education. I think he would be a successful Black man, in my opinion.

Cheers,

Jim

 

Jim1999! I saw a news story on that guy and he was incredible. Didn't put up with any excuses at all! VERY inspiring! I'll ask hubby if he remembers the guys name and if so, I'll let post it later.


Diane

 

Armstrong, Louis
Daniel Louis Armstrong (August 4, 1901 - July 6, 1971) was a great jazz trumpet player, composer, and singer. He was nicknamed Satchmo because some people said that his mouth was like a satchel. Armstrong was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and soon became a well-known cornet player in clubs and on riverboats along the Mississippi River. He became world famous for his incredible musical talent, especially his improvised solos. Armstrong also sang "scat," a style in which nonsense words are used in a song. Armstrong was featured in many recordings, television shows, and movies. Armstrong celebrated his birthday on July 4.

Bruce, Louis
Blanche Kelso Bruce (March 1, 1841-1898) was the first African-American who served a full term in the U.S. Senate. Senator Bruce was born a slave on the Farmville Plantation, Virginia. He was educated by his owner's son, and he later went to Oberlin Colllege (in Ohio). Bruce was a Republican senator representing Mississippi; he served from March 5, 1875 until March 3, 1881. During his term, Bruce fought for the rights of minority groups, including African-Americans, Native Americans, and Asian immigrants. After his term as senator, Bruce was appointed registrar of the treasury. He rejected an offer of a ministerial appointment to Brazil because slavery was still legal there.

Bluford, Guion
Dr. Guion Stewart Bluford Jr. (November 22, 1942-) was the first African-American in space. A NASA astronaut, he flew aboard the Challenger Space Shuttle mission STS-8 as a mission specialist. The flight lasted from August 30, 1983, until September 5, 1983. Dr. Bluford is an aerospace engineer with a Ph.D from the Air Force Institute of Technology. He is also a colonel in the US Air Force. He later flew on other space missions, including STS-61A (in 1985), STS-39 (in 1991), and STS-53 (in 1992). In total, Bluford logged over 688 hours in space. Dr. Bluford became a NASA astronaut in August 1979. Dr. Bluford is married and has two children.

Carver, George Washington
George Washington Carver (1865?-1943) was an American scientist, educator, humanitarian, and former slave. Carver developed hundreds of products from peanuts, sweet potatoes, pecans, and soybeans; his discoveries greatly improved the agricultural output and the health of Southern farmers. Before this, the only main crop in the South was cotton. The products that Carver invented included a rubber substitute, adhesives, foodstuffs, dyes, pigments, and many other products.

Douglas, Aaron
Aaron Douglas (May 26, 1899 - February 3, 1979) was an African-American artist who was associated with the Harlem Renaissance art movement. Douglas was born in Topeka, Kansas, and studied art at the University of Nebraska. He later moved to Harlem, New York, and soon became a preeminent artist. Douglas did many paintings, woodcut prints, murals, and book and magazine illustrations.

Douglass, Frederick
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey Douglass (Feb. 7, 1817-Feb. 20, 1895) was an abolitionist, orator and writer who fought against slavery and for women's rights. Douglass was the first African-American citizen appointed to high ranks in the U.S. government.

Drew, Charles R.
Dr. Charles Richard Drew (1904-1950) was an American medical doctor and surgeon who started the idea of a blood bank and a system for the long-term preservation of blood plasma (he found that plasma kept longer than whole blood). His ideas revolutionized the medical profession and have saved many, many lives.

Dubois, W.E.B.
William Edward Burghardt DuBois (February 23, 1868 - August 27, 1963) was a writer, historian, leader and one of the founders of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). DuBois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He was a gifted student who became a reporter for the New York Globe when he was 15 years old. He later attended Fisk University, then transferred to Harvard University; he was the first black to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University. DuBois became a teacher and later studied the state of black people in the USA and around the world; he wrote many books.

Du Sable, Jean-Baptiste-Point
Jean-Baptist-Point Du Sable (1750?-1818) was a Haitian-French pioneer and trader; he founded the settlement that would later become Chicago.

Estevanico
Estevanico (pronounced es-tay-vahn-EE-co), also called Estevan, Esteban, Estebanico, Black Stephen, and Stephen the Moor (1500?-1539) was a Muslim slave from northern Africa (Azamor, Morocco) who was one of the early explorers of the Southwestern United States.

Goode, Sarah S.
Sarah E. Goode was a business woman and inventor. Goode invented the folding cabinet bed, a space-saver that folded up against the wall into a cabinet. When folded up, it could be used as a desk, complete with compartments for stationery and writing supplies. Goode owned a furniture store in Chicago, Illinois, and invented the bed for people living in small apartments. Goode's patent was the first one obtained by an African-American woman inventor (patent #322,177, approved on July 14, 1885)

Henson, Matthew A.
Matthew Alexander Henson (Aug. 8, 1866 - March 9, 1955) was an American explorer and one of the first people to visit the North Pole. He was on most of Robert E. Peary's expeditions, including the 1909 trip to the North Pole.

Jemison, Mae C.
Mae C. Jemison (October 17, 1956 - ) was the first African-American woman in space. Dr. Jemison is a medical doctor and a surgeon, with engineering experience. She flew on the space shuttle Endeavor (STS-47, Spacelab-J) as the Mission Specialist; the mission lifted off on September 12, 1992 and landed on September 20, 1992.

Johnson, William Henry
William Henry Johnson (1901- 1970) was an African-American artist who was associated with the Harlem Renaissance art movement. Johnson was born in Florence, South Carolina, but as a teenager, went to study at the National Academy of Design in New York. He painted in France from 1926 to 1930. When he returned to the USA, he opened a studio in Harlem. Johnson had his first solo art exhibition in New York in 1941. Johnson's vibrant paintings represent many subjects, ranginf from scenes from everyday life to historical commemoratives of African-Americans, like Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver, and Matthew Henson.

Joplin, Scott
Scott Joplin (1868-1917) was a great composer and pianist. As a boy in Texarkana, Texas, Joplin taught himslef to play the piano. He played and composed ragtime music, a lively, unique genre. He composed over 60 pieces (most for piano), including the "Maple Leaf Rag" and "The Entertainer," which are still popular today. Joplin also wrote two operas.

Jordan, Barbara
Barbara Jordan (Feb. 21, 1936-Jan. 17, 1996) was the first black U.S. congresswoman from the deep South; she served Texas for six years in the US House of Representatives. Jordan was a powerful orator who fought for civil rights and the rights of the poor.

Lawrence, Jacob
Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) was an African-American artist who was associated with the Harlem Renaissance art movement. Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, but at 13 years old, moved to New York City, New York, where he studied art. He soon became successful, both artistically and commercially. Lawrence often painted scenes of ordinary life in vibrant colors and with a startling angularity. In 1946, Lawrence said of his philosophy of art, "My belief is that it is most important for an artist to develop an approach and philosophy about life - if he has developed this philosophy he does not put paint on canvas, he puts himself on canvas." Lawrence painted Dominoes in 1958.

Marshall, Thurgood
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 - Jan. 24, 1993) was the first African-American justice of the US Supreme Court. Marshall was on the team of lawyers in the historic Supreme Court trial concerning school desegregation, Brown v. Board of Education (1954). As a result of this trial, the "separate but equal" doctrine in public education was overthrown. After a successful career as a lawyer and judge fighting for civil rights and women's rights, Marshall was appointed to the high court in 1967 (by President Lyndon Baines Johnson). On the high court, Marshall continued his fight for human rights until he retired on June 27, 1991.

McCoy, Elijah
Elijah McCoy (1843 or 1844-1929) was a mechanical engineer and inventor. McCoy's high-quality industrial inventions (especially his steam engine lubricator) were the basis for the expression "the real McCoy," meaning the real, authentic, or high-quality thing.

Morgan, Garrett
Garrett Augustus Morgan (March 4, 1877 - August 27, 1963), was an African-American inventor and businessman. He was the first person to patent a traffic signal. He also developed the gas mask (and many other inventions). Morgan used his gas mask (patent No. 1,090,936, 1914) to rescue miners who were trapped underground in a noxious mine. Soon after, Morgan was asked to produce gas masks for the US Army.

Owens, Jesse
Jesse Owens (Sept. 12, 1913 - Mar. 31, 1980) was one of the world's greatest track and field athletes. At the 1936 Berlin Olympic games, Jesse Owens won 4 gold medals (in the 100 meter, 200 meter, 400 meter relay and the long jump) , set two Olympic records, and tied another. This humiliated Hitler and was an affront to his racial theories - Hitler had assumed that the "Aryans" (the Germanic race) would easily win. A year earlier, as an Ohio State University student, Owens set new world records in the 220 yard dash, the 200 yard hurdles, and the long jump (and equaled the record in the 100 yard) at the National Collegiate Track and Field Meet (on May 25, 1935).

Parks, Gordon
Gordon Parks (Nov. 30, 1912- ) is a photographer, writer, film director, composer, and musician. His works document the 20th century and have been seen by millions of people around the world. Parks was the youngest of 15 children, born to impoverished parents in Kansas. Parks was the first African-American photographer to work at Life magazine and Vogue magazine. He wrote 12 books, produced many documentaries and Hollywood films (including Shaft), produced, directed, and scored a major Hollywood film (The Learning Tree, 1960), wrote a ballet about Martin Luther King (called Martin), and composed other music (including a symphony, a concerto, blues and other popular songs).

Parks, Rosa
Rosa Parks (February 4, 1913 - ) is a pivotal figure in the fight for civil rights. On December 1, 1955, a Montgomery, Alabama, bus driver ordered Mrs. Parks to give up her seat to a white man. When she refused, she was fined and arrested. This incident prompted a city-wide bus boycott, which eventually resulted in a Supreme Court ruling that segregation on city buses is unconstitutional.

Rillieux, Norbert
Norbert Rillieux (March 17, 1806-October 8, 1894) was an African-American inventor and engineer who invented a device that revolutionized sugar processing. Rillieux's multiple effect vacuum sugar evaporator (patented in 1864) made the processing of sugar more efficient, faster, and much safer. The resulting sugar was also superior. His apparatus was eventually adopted by sugar processing plants all around the world.

Robinson, Jackie
Jack (Jackie) Roosevelt Robinson (January 31, 1912 - October 24, 1972) was the first black man allowed to play major league baseball.
On April 11, 1947, Robinson played his first major league baseball game (he played for the New York Dodgers in an exhibition game against the New York Yankees). Robinson played with the Dodgers for 10 years. He played in six World Series and was the first African-American in the Baseball Hall of Fame (in 1962).

Scott, Dred
Dred Scott (1795-1858) was a a slave who sued for his freedom in court, since he had been taken to a "free" state (Wisconsin). He lost his case in St. Louis, Missouri, but won it on appeal. His case was again appealed and Scott lost. The results of his court case led to major political upheavals in the USA and eventually, the Civil War.

Truth, Sojourner
Sojourner Truth (1797?-1883) was an American preacher who dedicated her life to fighting for for civil and human rights. She was born a slave in New York State, but was freed in 1827. After becoming a preacher, she campaigned for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights. During the US Civil War, she helped black Union soldiers obtain supplies and also worked as a counselor for the National Freedon Relief Association.

Tubman, Harriet
Harriet Tubman (1820 - 1913) escaped slavery in Maryland in 1849 and traveled north. Mrs. Tubman devoted her life to fighting slavery and championing the rights of women. She then helped hundreds of other slaves flee to the north to freedom via the Underground Railroad. Mrs. Tubman helped John Brown recruit soldiers for his raid on Harpers Ferry (1859). She spied for the Union during the US Civil War (in South Carolina). After the war, she lived in Auburn, New York, and founded the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged Negroes.

Walker, Madame C. J.
Madame C. J. Walker (December 23, 1867 - May 25, 1919) was an inventor, businesswoman and self-made millionaire. Sarah Breedlove McWilliams C. J. Walker was an African-American who developed many beauty and hair care products that were extremely popular. Madame Walker started her cosmetics business in 1905. Her first product was a scalp treatment that used petroleum and a hot comb. Sarah later invented a system for straightening hair. She added Madame to her name and began selling her new "Walker System" door-to-door. Walker soon added a hair-growing ointment and other cosmetic products to her line. The products were very successful and she soon had many saleswomen, called "Walker Agents," who sold her products door to door.

Walker, Maggie Lena
Maggie Lena Walker (July 15, 1867-December 15, 1934) was the first woman in the USA to become a local bank president. Throughout her life, Walker worked for civil rights and other humanitarian causes. Maggie Mitchell was born in Richmond, Virginia, to former slaves. In 1886, Maggie married Armstead Walker, Jr. She worked first as a teacher, and then as an agent for the Woman's Union Insurance Company, quickly rising to become the executive secretary/treasurer of the company. She founded the newspaper, the St. Luke Herald, in 1902. In 1903, she started the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank and was its president. In 1929, at the start of the economic depression, her bank bought all the local black-owned banks in town and renamed itself the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company.

Washington, Booker T.
Booker Taliafero Washington (April 15?, 1856 - Nov. 15, 1915) was an orator, civil rights activist, professor, writer, and poet. He was born a slave in Virginia, but was freed by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (when it went into effect in the South, in 1865). Washington dedicated his life to education as a means of obtaining equality. He founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, and the National Negro Business League.

 

Do they have to be famous? If not, I pick my brother!
He joined the army after high school, went to college a while, and now owns his own home and business, set up with his own money. Growing up for the most influential parts of his life in the back backwoods of Pennsylvania where there just weren't any other blacks and where prejudice runs deep would technically have given him every disadvantage and cause to seek assistance from the government as a minority in all he did, but that didn't happen.
Gina

 

JOHN JASPER: The Unmatched Negro Philosopher and Preacher.



JOHN JASPER, the negro preacher of Richmond, Virginia, stands preëminent among the preachers of the negro race in the South.

He was for fifty years a slave, and a preacher during twenty-five years of his slavery, and distinctly of the old plantation type.

Freedom came full-handed to him, but it did not in any notable degree change him in his style, language, or manner of preaching. He was the ante bellum preacher until eighty-nine years of age, when he preached his last sermon on "Regeneration," and with quiet dignity laid off his mortal coil and entered the world invisible.

He was the last of his type, and we shall not look upon his like again. It has been my cherished purpose for some time to embalm the memory of this extraordinary genius in some form that would preserve it from oblivion. I would give to the American people a picture of the God-made preacher who was great in his bondage and became immortal in his freedom.

SOURCE

 

Dr. Ben Carson has dedicated his life to inspiring others to excel by using their God-given talents. He was born in Detroit, Michigan where his childhood journey was filled with poverty. He struggled with poor grades and a violent temper. After his mother, who only had a third-grade education, challenged him to strive for excellence, Ben rose from the bottom to the top of his class. His achievements earned him academic scholarships to college and medical school.
Today, Dr. Carson is director of pediatric neurosurgery at The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, MORE STORY

 

I would pick Collin Powell as a very successful black man. I suspect he got that way by working hard and making an effort to get along with people. He seems to be a good diplomat.

 

Actually, the three politicans that most impress me at present are all black, Koffi Anan, Nelson Mandella, and Colin Powell. Don't agree with all they say or stand for, but am much impressed by their behaviour, dignity, and presentation.
Regards
Bob

 

Want it be nice if someday we don't have threads like this. Race will be unimportant as far as abilities goes and we all can live together as believers in Christ. Oh that will be HEAVEN!!!

 

Jailminister, your right, but threads like this will exsist as long as there are those who believe people of other races not their own are less then they are, or less capable. In that case threads like this one are needed.
I guess we'll have to wait till we get to heaven.

 

AMEN Jailminister to that! Donna you hit that right on the head!!!

 

an old and dear friend of mine from college:
Judge Ray Jones
http://www.cobar.org/static/judges/COArdjones.htm

 

A friend of mine whose name will remain unsaid. He was a long-distance runner, and a very good one. His father split when he was very, very young. Mom was undereducated, and was unable to find a decent paying job in the city in which I lived. There were three children, of which my friend was the youngest. They were on food stamps by necessity - a government handout to which Joseph is apparently opposed. They were needed for survival. They lived in government housing.

Through hard work, combined with the assistance of the government, my friend, who was black, was able to live. And then able to succeed.

What is missed in the debate is what would happen if this government assistance were to disappear. Families and children would starve. Are blacks fully capable of making their own way? Many are. Many are not. For every black person that is successful on their own, there is another who is able to just survive because of what is given to them by the government. And let us not forget that all races and cultures are represented on the welfare rolls. Not everyone is a slacker who just chooses not to work. Most people on welfare that I personally know work a full-time job and sacrifice to provide for their family. They just work in a system where what they make isn't enough to make ends meet.

All you have to do is go to a large city and examine the difference in the inner-city, predominantly black schools, and the suburbian, mostly white schools to see an incredible difference in the quality of education that is being provided. I do not know how anyone who takes a look at what is happening in our country can say that there is an equal playing field. There simply isn't.

Because of these differences in education that are there whether a person wants to believe it or not, it is necessary and productive for colleges and universities to actively seek out and search for qualified minority candidates. I, for one, went to a school that was 90% white. I would have much rather had more cultural diversity, as I gained so much from those who were of a different color.

 

Condi Rice and J.C. Watts are two African-Americans I admire.

I first saw Mr. Watts give a rebuttal speech after one of Clinton's State of the Union speeches. I was very impressed. He recently left Congress and returned to Oklahoma. I believe if he returns to public office that one day J.C. Watts will be president, maybe 2012. He is an interview :

J.C. Watts interview

 

During the Civil War, Frederick Douglas did this. He continually recruited black soldiers, even though the issue of equal pay had not yet been resolved (he was working oon that issue as well).

Other than that, there are a lot of successful black individuals:

Famous Amos (and we're all a lot better off because of him!!)
Bryant Gumbel
Herman Cain (founder of Godfather's pizza)
Michael Jackson (oh, wait, you said famous BLACK people.... my bad!!)