Local activists fight to save Brooklyn home believed to be part of Underground Railroad

Local activists are fighting to save a home in Brooklyn (NY), believed to be a part of the Underground Railroad.

Here is a link to the petition mentioned in the story: CHANGE.ORG

Black Inventor Frederick McKinley-Jones: Designed portable air-cooling unit for trucks

Frederick McKinley-Jones (May 17, 1893 – February 21, 1961) was an African-American inventor, entrepreneur, winner of the National Medal of Technology, and an inductee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. His innovations in refrigeration brought great improvement to the long-haul transportation of perishable goods.

In 1912, Jones moved to Hallock, Minnesota, where he worked as a mechanic on a 50,000-acre (200 km2) farm. After service with the U.S. Army in World War I, Jones returned to Hallock; while employed as a mechanic, Jones taught himself electronics and built a transmitter for the town's new radio station. He also invented a device to combine sound with motion pictures. This attracted the attention of Joseph A. Numero of Minneapolis, Minnesota, who hired Jones in 1930 to improve the sound equipment made by his firm, Cinema Supplies Inc.

Around 1938, Jones designed a portable air-cooling unit for trucks carrying perishable food, and received a patent for it on July 12, 1940. Numero sold his movie sound equipment business to RCA and formed a new company in partnership with Jones, the U.S. Thermo Control Company (later the Thermo King Corporation) which became a $3 million business by 1949. Portable cooling units designed by Jones were especially important during World War II, preserving blood, medicine, and food for use at army hospitals and on open battlefields.

John Baxter Taylor: First African-American olympic Gold Medalist

John Baxter Taylor was the first African-American to win an Olympic Gold Medal and the first to represent the United States at an international sporting competition.

Graduating from Central High School in 1902, Taylor attended Brown Preparatory School. Not only was Taylor a member of the track team, he became the star runner. While at Brown Prep, Taylor was considered the best prep school quarter-miler in the United States. During that year, Taylor won the Princeton Interscholastics as well as the Yale Interscholastics and anchored the school’s track team at the Penn Relays.

A year later, Taylor enrolled in the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania and again, joined the track team. As a member of University of Pennsylvania’s varsity track team, Taylor won the 440-yard run at the Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America (IC4A) championship and broke the intercollegiate record with a time of 49 1/5 seconds.

After taking a hiatus from school, Taylor returned to the University of Pennsylvania in 1906 to study veterinary medicine and his desire to run track was reignited at well. Training under Michael Murphy, Taylor won the 440-yard race with a record of 48 4/5 seconds. The following year, Taylor was recruited by the Irish American Athletic Club and won the 440-yard race at the Amateur Athletic Union championship.

In 1908, Taylor graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine.

The 1908 Olympics were held in London. Taylor competed in the 1600-meter medley relay, running the 400-meter leg of the race and the United States’ team won the race, making Taylor the first African-American to win a gold medal.

Five months after making history as the first African-American Olympic Gold medalist, Taylor died at the age of twenty-six of typhoid pneumonia. He was buried in Eden Cemetery in Philadelphia.

At Taylor’s funeral, thousands of people paid homage to the athlete and doctor. Four clergymen officiated his funeral and at least fifty carriages followed his hearse to Eden Cemetery.

[SOURCE: THOUGHTCO]

Esther Jones was the real Betty Boop

The iconic cartoon character Betty Boop was inspired by a Black jazz singer in Harlem. Introduced by cartoonist Max Fleischer in 1930, the caricature of the jazz age flapper was the first and most famous sex symbol in animation. Betty Boop is best known for her revealing dress, curvaceous figure, and signature vocals “Boop Oop A Doop!” While there has been controversy over the years, the inspiration has been traced back to Esther Jones who was known as “Baby Esther” and performed regularly in the Cotton Club during the 1920s.

Baby Esther’s trademark vocal style of using “boops” and other childlike scat sounds attracted the attention of actress Helen Kane during a performance in the late 1920s. After seeing Baby Esther, Helen Kane adopted her style and began using “boops” in her songs as well. Finding fame early on, Helen Kane often included this “baby style” into her music. When Betty Boop was introduced, Kane promptly sued Fleischer and Paramount Publix Corporation stating they were using her image and style. However video evidence came to light of Baby Esther performing in a nightclub and the courts ruled against Helen Kane stating she did not have exclusive rights to the “booping” style or image, and that the style, in fact, pre-dated her.

Baby Esther’s “baby style” did little to bring her mainstream fame and she died in relative obscurity but a piece of her lives on in the iconic character Betty Boop.

Before there was Rosa Parks, there was Claudette Colvin

Most people think of Rosa Parks as the first person to refuse to give up their seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. There were actually several women who came before her; one of whom was Claudette Colvin.

It was March 2, 1955, when the fifteen-year-old schoolgirl refused to move to the back of the bus, nine months before Rosa Parks’ stand that launched the Montgomery bus boycott. Claudette had been studying Black leaders like Harriet Tubman in her segregated school, those conversations had led to discussions around the current day Jim Crow laws they were all experiencing. When the bus driver ordered Claudette to get up, she refused, “It felt like Sojourner Truth was on one side pushing me down, and Harriet Tubman was on the other side of me pushing me down. I couldn't get up."

Claudette Colvin’s stand didn’t stop there. Arrested and thrown in jail, she was one of four women who challenged the segregation law in court. If Browder v. Gayle became the court case that successfully overturned bus segregation laws in both Montgomery and Alabama, why has Claudette’s story been largely forgotten? At the time, the NAACP and other Black organizations felt Rosa Parks made a better icon for the movement than a teenager. As an adult with the right look, Rosa Parks was also the secretary of the NAACP, and was both well-known and respected – people would associate her with the middle class and that would attract support for the cause. But the struggle to end segregation was often fought by young people, more than half of which were women.