Truth,Trails and Tribulations-Honoring Black History!..

Malcolm X was a Strong Black Man in the early stages of his life , he grow up poor and hustled for a living on the mean streets that which he grew up on. Observant of his surroundings he did what he thought he had to do, to survive , but one thing was for sure in Malcolm X- he hated poverty and injustice of his people.. He had a go hard say what he felt type of personality, He spoked the truth about the ills of America and what it’s government is doing to Black people, and how we should unite and stand together as a whole people to support ourselves and each other.. His ideals were for black people to start and do business with each other , that way , we’d support our own communities, our own businesses would benefit our children support our own economies and we would have protected our children’s future.  Malcolm X was the leading voice of the Nation of Islam, but became a radical voice for the Black people of America.This all During the 60’s , when the Civil Rights movement was just beginning, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was making speeches and protesting for Civil Rights all over the south in peaceful turn the other cheek demonstrations.. The Black Panther Party was making stances against the New York Police Department with guns for their beatens and deaths of young black men in the streets of  Brooklyn, Harlem ,and the the Bronx, by white police officers.. Malcolm X and the Nation was calling for the need to use the laws against them for our own protection as our right to do so..”BY Any Means Neccessary” was his moto.. At this time calm was not in the air , all were not at ease America was in chaos.. Racial tension flourished throught the south and throughout America after the shooting death of Medgar Edvers an Civil rights Activist who at the time was speaking on hitting corporate America in the pockets , by the need of African Americans to boycott stores and business in America..  Now exactly 46 years later after Malcolm x’s death.. Look at what is going on in America.. Still his murder is unsolved..

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Malcolm X speaks at a rally in Washington, DC, in 1963. Excerpts of a little-remembered speech he gave in 1961 is set to be aired an event hosted by the Rhode Island Black Heritage Association as part of Black History Month.

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island — The recording was forgotten, and so, too, was the odd twist of history that brought together Malcolm X and a bespectacled Brown University Ivy Leaguer fated to become one of America’s top diplomats.

The audiotape of Malcolm X’s 1961 address in Providence might never have surfaced at all if 22-year-old Brown University student Malcolm Burnley hadn’t stumbled across a reference to it in an old student newspaper. He found the recording of the little-remembered visit gathering dust in the university archives.

“No one had listened to this in 50 years,” Burnley told The Associated Press. “There aren’t many recordings of him before 1962. And this is a unique speech — it’s not like others he had given before.”

Some blacks insist: ‘I’m not African-American’

In the May 11, 1961 speech delivered to a mostly white audience of students and some residents, Malcolm X combines blistering humor and reason to argue that blacks should not look to integrate into white society but instead must forge their own identities and culture.

‘A dead people’ At the time, Malcolm X, 35, was a loyal supporter of the Nation of Islam, a black separatist movement. He would be assassinated four years later after leaving the group and crafting his own more global, spiritual ideology.

The legacy of slavery and racism, he told the crowd of 800, “has made the 20 million black people in this country a dead people. Dead economically, dead mentally, dead spiritually. Dead morally and otherwise. Integration will not bring a man back from the grave.”

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 Video: Shattering the myths on Malcolm X 

BOB MARLEY ONE OF THE TRUE REBELS OF JUSTICE N RIGHTEOUSNESS

Remembering legendary singer Bob Marley

Web buzz builds on the life of the iconic activist on what would have been his 67th birthday.

Reggae’s most transcendent and iconic figure, Bob Marley was the first Jamaican artist to achieve international superstardom, in the process introducing the music of his native island nation to the far-flung corners of the globe. Marley’s music gave voice to the day-to-day struggles of the Jamaican experience, vividly capturing not only the plight of the country’s impoverished and oppressed but also the devout spirituality that remains their source of strength. His songs of faith, devotion, and revolution created a legacy that continues to live on not only through the music of his extended family but also through generations of artists the world over touched by his genius.

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Historical black icons like Frederick Douglas (1818-1895) who published an Abolitionist newspaper called the North Star after escaping slavery himself.   Frederick Douglas became an infamous orator on the abolitionist movement and Douglas even became the president of the Freedmans Savings Bank during Reconstruction.   Frederick Douglas was an important figure in black history and Douglas was a precursor to the black pride movement.

Harriet Tubman (1820-1913) was another influential leader in black history and indeed the black pride movement.   Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery, launching Tubman to one of the most celebrated and influential leaders of the Underground Railroad.   Harriet Tubman was able to help hundreds of African Americans escape the perils of slavery.

The Dredd Scott v. Sanford (1857) decision dealt a blow to abolition and black pride when the US Supreme Court ruled against Dredd Scott, who argued that while traveling with his master had entered free states and was therefore a free man.   The Court ruled that Dredd Scott as an African American was not a citizen, and therefore could not bring a case to the Supreme Court.   In black history, the Dredd Scott decision is a black mark, but a necessary one to bring about the change sought by the black pride movement.

• Harriet Tubman
• Booker T. Washington
• George Washington Carver
• Frederick Douglass
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Nelson Mandela

Madame C.J. Walker

Madam C.J. Walker (December 23, 1867 – May 25, 1919), born Sarah Breedlove, was an African-American businesswoman, hair care entrepreneur and philanthropist. She made her fortune by developing and marketing a hugely successful line of beauty and hair products for black women under the company she founded, Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company.

Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915. Representative of the last generation of black American leaders born in slavery, he spoke on behalf of the large majority of blacks who lived in the South but had lost their ability to vote through disfranchisement by southern legislatures. While his opponents called his powerful network of supporters the “Tuskegee Machine,” Washington maintained power because of his ability to gain support of numerous groups: influential whites; the black business, educational and religious communities nationwide; financial donations from philanthropists, and his accommodation to the political realities of the age of Jim Crow segregation.^[1]

Booker T. Washington

Born	Booker Taliaferro Washington

   In 1837 George and Emillia McCoy, who were slaves in Kentucky, escaped to Canada by using an Underground Railroad route that ran along the Indiana and Ohio border. George enlisted in the Army and served honorably in the 1837 Rebel War. The Canadian government gave him 160 acres of farmland near Colchester, Ontario, Canada (on Lake Erie) upon discharge.

Elijah McCoy (1843–1929) invented an oil-dripping cup for trains.

A son, Elijah McCoy, was born on May 2, 1843 (or 1844, depending on the source). He attended public school until the age of 15. As a child, Elijah showed great interest in the mechanical devices and tools used on his family’s farm. His parents were able to save enough money to send Elijah to school in Edinburgh Scotland to learn mechanical engineering in 1859/1860.

Granville T. Woods (1856-1910) is known to many as “The Black Edison,” because  both were great inventors who came from disadvantaged childhoods. But unlike  Edison, Woods was considered fortunate to receive an education to help him on  the road to his inventions. In the late nineteenth century few African-American  children ever saw the inside of a classroom. Woods further educated himself by working in railroad machine shops and steel mills, and by reading about electricity. He often had friends check out library books for him, since African-Americans were excluded from many libraries at the time. Woods managed to scrape together enough knowledge of electrical engineering to invent “telegraphony,” a process that was later purchased by Alexander Graham Bell’s company.

Lewis Latimer (1848–1928) invented an important part of the light bulb — the carbon filamentLewis Howard Latimer was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on September 4, 1848, six years after his parents, George and Rebecca Latimer, had run away from slavery in Virginia. They were determined to be free and that their children be born on free soil. Because of his light complexion, George was able to pose as a plantation owner with the darker-skinned Rebecca as his slave. Shortly after arriving in Boston, Massachusetts, he was recognized as a fugitive and jailed while his wife was taken to a safe hiding place. The arrest was protested vigorously by the community. Frederick Douglass, a former slave who had escaped to Massachusetts several years earlier, and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison spoke forcefully against the arrest. There was a trial, and the attempts to recapture George and return him to Virginia caused considerable agitation in Boston. When the trial judge ruled that Latimer still belonged to his Virginia owner, an African-American minister paid $400 for his release. Although free, George was still extremely poor, working as a barber, paper-hanger and in other odd jobs to support his wife, three sons, and one daughter.

 Because of repeated incidents of firefighters being overcome by smoke when attempting to put out fires in his hometown of Cleveland, Garrett Morgan wanted to do something to help.

In 1914, Morgan obtained a patent for his safety hood — a breathing device consisting of a canvas hood placed over the head. A double tube extended from the hood and merged into a single tube at the back. The open end held a sponge soaked with water to filter out smoke and to cool incoming air.

 

Jan Ernst Matzeliger (1852–1889) invented a shoemaking machine that increased shoemaking speed by 900%!

Jan Ernst Matzeliger (1852-1889) was born in Paramaribo, Surinam (Dutch Guiana), South America. His father was a Dutch engineer who married a native Black Surinamese woman. At the age of ten, young Jan worked in the machine shops supervised by his father, where his talents and mechanical aptitude was nurtured. In 1871, at the age of 19, he sailed the world and settled in Philadelphia 2 years later.

Hearing about the rapid growth of the shoe industry in Massachusetts, Matzeliger went to Lynn in 1877 in search of a better job. Since he seas a Black foreigner who spoke very little English. he had trouble finding employment. A determined young man, he quickly learned the English language.

He eventually landed a job as an apprentice in a shoe factory operating various shoe making machinery during time when most white people would look down on him because of his Black ancestry, he did manage to make a few friends in town. He was a devout Christian, teaching Sunday School at The North Congregational Church, one of the few churches in the area that would accept Blacks.

In the early days of shoe making, shoes were made mainly by hand. For proper fit, the customer’s feet had to be duplicated in size and form by creating a stone or wooden mold called a “last” from which the shoes were sized and shaped. Since the greatest difficulty in shoe making was the actual assembly of the soles to the upper shoe, it required great skill to tack and sew the two components together. It was thought that such intricate work could only be done by skilled human hands. As a result, shoe lasters held great power over the shoe industry. They would hold work stop-pages without regard for their fellow workers’ desires, resulting in long periods of unemployment for them

George Washington Carver (1860–1943) developed peanut butter and 400 plant productsGeorge Washington Carver was born in 1860 in Diamond Grove, Missouri and despite early difficulties would rise to become one of the most celebrated and respected scientists in United States history. His important discoveries and methods enabled farmers through the south and midwest to become profitable and prosperous.

In 1887 Carver was accepted into Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa where he became well respected for his artistic talent (in later days his art would be included in the spectacular World’s Columbian Exposition Art Exhibit.) Carver’s interests, however, lay more in science and he transferred from Simpson to Iowa Agricultural College (which is now known as Iowa State University.) He distinguished himself so much that upon graduation he was offered a position on the school’s faculty, the first Black accorded the honor. Carver was allowed great freedom in working in agriculture and botany in the University’s greenhouses. In 1895, Carver co-authored a series of papers on the prevention and cures for fungus diseases affecting cherry plants.