The Official Black History Thread!!!! (GREAT READ)

Almost that time again.

I know she's already mentioned in this thread but she deserves her own post

Bessie Coleman Mon 28 Jan 2013 by abagond Bessie Coleman on a 1995 American postage stamp. I used to use this stamp all the time! Bessie Coleman (1892-1926) was the first Black American female pilot ever. Her mother was born a slave and could not read. Her father was a black Choctaw Indian. Bessie was the tenth of 13 children (four died young). They had a house on their own little piece of land in Waxahachie, Texas. She loved to read. Her mother saved money to rent books from the travelling library that came by twice a year. She read the Bible, Booker T. Washington, Paul Laurence Dunbar and “Uncle Tim’s Cabin” (she did not want to wind up like Uncle Tom or Topsy!). Most of all she loved the Book of Psalms. She read the Bible to her mother. She was good with numbers. So, even though she was too much of a daydreamer to be good at picking cotton, she could make sure the foreman did not underpay her family. She saved money for her education by washing clothes for rich white women across town. Despite that she had in effect only six years of schooling. She went north to Chicago to live with her older brothers. She lived on the South Side and became a manicurist. When her brothers came home from fighting in France in the First World War they told her about the fighter planes! They said even French women flew planes! From that moment she gave up being a manicurist and started becoming a pilot. No one in America would teach her how to fly – some because she was a woman, some because she was black. Blacks and women were seen as lacking the brains and courage it took to fly. So she saved her money and learned French. In 1920, with the help of a black newspaperman and a black banker, she went to France to learn how to fly. By 1922 she was one of the best pilots in the world. Her flying was a thing of beauty and daring. “Bessie Coleman with major swag” – that is what I entered into Google Images to find this picture Swoon! Once back in America she wanted to open a black flying school. She raised money by giving talks at theatres, schools and churches but, most of all, by giving air shows. Back then air shows were for whites only, but she would only fly if blacks could come too – even when she did air shows across the Jim Crow South. Unlike Amelia Earhart, she had to use second-hand planes. In 1923 her engine failed. The crash could be heard miles away. But she lived. A few months later she could walk again and was back in the air. On April 30th 1926 during a practice flight she did not have her seat belt on when the engine failed and the plane spun out of control. She fell 600 metres to her death. In Chicago 10,000 came to her funeral. People were crying. Her friend and hero Ida B. Wells was there. Every year on April 30th black pilots fly over her grave in Chicago and drop flowers.

Once there was a woman whose cells were immortal. What does this mean? Today, these cells have multiplied in laboratories worldwide to the point that, if you were to weigh all the cells that currently exist, they’d weigh about 50 million metric tons—about as much as 100 Empire State Buildings. So who was this woman, and why are scientists keeping her cells supplied with fresh nutrients so they can live on?

The woman was Henrietta Lacks, and her immortal cells—dubbed "HeLa"—have been essential in many of the great scientific discoveries of our time: curing polio; gene mapping; learning how cells work; developing drugs to treat cancer, herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, Parkinson’s disease, AIDS … and the list goes on and on (and on). If it deals with the human body and has been studied by scientists, odds are those scientists needed and used Lacks' cells somewhere along the way. HeLa cells were even sent up to space on an unmanned satellite to determine whether or not human tissue could survive in zero gravity.

Lacks was an impoverished black woman who died on October 4, 1951 of cervical cancer at just 31 years old. During her cancer treatment, a doctor at Johns Hopkins took a sample of her tumor without her knowledge or consent and sent it over to a colleague of his, Dr. George Gey, who had been trying for 20 years, unsuccessfully, to grow human tissues from cultures. A lab assistant there, Mary Kubicek, discovered that Henrietta’s cells, unlike normal human cells, could live and replicate outside the body.

Go to just about any cell culture lab in the world and you’ll find billions of HeLa cells stored there. In contrast to normal human cells, which will die after a few replications, Lacks' cells can live and replicate just fine outside of the human body (which is also unique among humans). Give her cells the nutrients they need to survive, and they will apparently live and replicate along forever, almost 60 years and counting since the first culture was taken. They can be frozen for literally decades and, when thawed, they'll go right on replicating.

Before her cells were discovered and widely cultured, it was nearly impossible for scientists to reliably experiment on human cells and get meaningful results. Cell cultures that scientists were studying would weaken and die very quickly outside the human body. Lacks' cells gave scientists, for the first time, a “standard” that they could use to test things on. HeLa cells can survive being shipped in the mail just fine, so scientists across the globe can use the same standard to test against.

Lacks died of uremic poisoning, in the segregated hospital ward for blacks, about 8 months after being diagnosed with cervical cancer, never knowing that her cells would become one of the most vital tools in modern medicine and would spawn a multi-billion dollar industry. She was survived by her husband and five children; the family lived in poverty for most of their lives, and didn't find out about the fate of Lacks' incredible cells until years later.

Edited by Ladybird0724 - Jan 29 2013 at 5:40pm

The Greensboro 4

On February 1, 1960, At 4:30PM, Four Freshmen From North Carolina A&T    -- Ezell Blair, Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil And Franklin McCain, Sat Down At The Lunch Counter Of The Local F. W. Woolworth Store  At 132 South Elm Street In Greensboro, North Carolina, And Ordered Coffee And Cherry Pie. This Bold Act Defied The Jim Crow Laws That Permitted Blacks To Shop In The Store But Not Eat A Meal There. After Being Refused Service, The Young Men Began Reading Their Textbooks, Sending The Message That They Were Not Leaving Until They Were Served Or The Store Closed.

The "Greensboro 4," As They Were Called, Returned The Next Morning With More A&T Students. On Wednesday 70 Students Joined The Protest, Including Women From Nearby Bennett College And Some White Students From Other Local Schools. By This Time The Greensboro Sit-In Had Become A National News Story.

On Thursday, 150 A&T Students Moved Down The Street And Staged A Similar Sit-In In The S. H. Kress & Co. Store. Other Demonstrations Began Taking Place Throughout The South.

The Greensboro Sit-In Is Credited With Re-Igniting The Civil Rights Movement In America -- Transforming The Older Generation's "Don't-Rock The-Boat" Tactics To A More Militant, Protest-Based Platform.




Edited by PurpleHaze - Feb 01 2013 at 12:08pm

It should be stickied but the admins keep removing it. Shouldn't be a February thing either. Black history is history.