Black History : Today In Black History

[cherryblossom]

Robert Keith McFerrin Sr. (March 19, 1921 – November 24, 2006) was an American operatic baritone and the first African-American man to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. His voice was described by critic Albert Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times as "a baritone of beautiful quality, even in all registers, and with a top that partakes of something of a tenor's ringing brilliance." He was the father of Grammy Award-winning vocalist Robert McFerrin, Jr., better known as Bobby McFerrin.

.... on January 27, 1955..., McFerrin became the first black man to sing at the Metropolitan Opera. Rarely stated in the great publicity surrounding Marian Anderson's accomplishment is the fact that McFerrin was already engaged to make his debut when Anderson received her contract. With his Rigoletto in 1956 McFerrin became the first African-American in history to sing a title role at the Met.[11] In addition, McFerrin was the first African-American to sing at both the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera. He achieved the same distinction with his Rigoletto in Naples at the San Carlo Opera in 1956..

....McFerrin went to California in 1958 to work on the Otto Preminger movie, Porgy and Bess. The casting plans for this production of theGeorge Gershwin opera slated Sidney Poitier as Porgy. Poitier was to act the role onscreen and lip-synch the musical numbers. McFerrin was engaged to provide Porgy's singing voice. The McFerrins settled in Hollywood that year so that McFerrin could begin working with Sidney Poitier.When the movie was released in 1959, the New York Times stated that, like Poitier's acting, McFerrin's singing was "as sensitive and strong as one could wish." The soundtrack was released as an LP.....

....cont....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McFerrin

 

[Kemetstry]

Lonnie G. Johnson changed childhoods forever when he invented the super soaker water gun. As a Tuskegee graduate who joined the Airforce and was assigned to Strategic Air Command, Johnson worked on the stealth bomber program. He also worked on the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Cassini mission to Saturn. While working on an enviro-friendly heat pump, he invented the super soaker, and later started Johnson Research & Development and acquired some 100 patents.



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[Kemetstry]

Today in Black History:
Today marks the death of this great man death. This iconic civil rights activist infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan posing as a white man to... investigate the lynching of Africans in the United States. His action directly led to decreasing of such acts of terrorism.
Walter White was one of the outstanding civil rights leaders in America between 1920 and 1955. He joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1918 and almost immediately became its chief investigator of lynching. Because of his blue eyes and blonde hair, he could easily pass for Caucasian. But instead, he chose to go through life as a black man.
" I am not white. There is nothing within my mind and heart which tempts me to think I am." Walter Francis White ( July 1, 1893 - March 21, 1955).
Salute Sir thank you for your service. ~M~
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_people_white.html




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[Kemetstry]

Percy Lavon Julian 115th Birthday
Percy Lavon Julian (April 11, 1899 – April 19, 1975) was a U.S. research chemist and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants.[1] He was the first to synthesize the natural product physostigmine, and a pioneer in the industrial large-scale chemical synthesis of the human hormones progesterone and testosterone from plant sterols such as stigmasterol and sitosterol. His work would lay the foundation for the steroid dru...g industry's production of cortisone, other corticosteroids, and birth control pills.
He later started his own company to synthesize steroid intermediates from the Mexican wild yam. His work helped greatly reduce the cost of steroid intermediates to large multinational pharmaceutical companies, helping to significantly expand the use of several important drugs.
Many believe had it not been for him being African American, he would have been nominated for the Nobel Prize.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Lavon_Julian




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[Kemetstry]

Must Read.

"I never had no whitefolks that was good to me. We all worked jest like dogs and had about half enough to eat and got whupped for everything. Our days was a con...stant misery to us...My old Master was Dave Giles, the meanest man that ever lived. He didn't have many slaves, my mammy, and me, and my sister, Uncle Bill, and Truman. He had owned my grandma but he give her a bad whupping and she never did git over it and died. We all done as much work as a dozen *******—we knowed we had to.
I seen old Master git mad at Truman and he buckled him down across a barrel and whupped him till he cut the blood out of him and then he rubbed salt and pepper in the raw places. It looked like Truman would die it hurt so bad. I know that don't sound reasonable that a white man in a Christian community would do such a thing but you can't realize how heartless he was. People didn't know about it and we dassent tell for we knowed he'd kill us if we did. You must remember he owned us body and soul and they wasn't anything we could do about it. Old Mistress and her three girls was mean to us too.
One time me and my sister was spinning and old Mistress went to the well-house and she found a chicken snake and killed it. She brought it back and she throwed it around my sister's neck. She jest laughed and laughed about it. She thought it was a big joke.
Old Master stayed drunk all the time. I reckon that is the reason he was so fetched mean. My, how we hated him! He finally killed hisself drinking and I remember Old Mistress called us in to look at him in his coffin. We all marched by him slow like and I jest happened to look up and caught my sister's eye and we both jest natchelly laughed—Why shouldn't we? We was glad he was dead. It's a good thing we had our laugh fer old Mistress took us out and whupped us with a broomstick. She didn't make us sorry though."
---Annie Hawkins, formerly enslaved Afrikan who was sold from Georgia to Texas. This interview was done in Colbert, Oklahoma where her and her family moved after emancipation. Interview, conducted Spring, 1937 with a date stamp of August 16, 1937. Ms. Hawkins was 90 years old at the time of the interview and what she relates occurred in Texas.
Source: Library of Congress





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