"Aaron Rose Philip (pronounced A-ron, born March 15, 2001) is an Antiguan-American model. In 2018, she became the first black, transgender, and physically disabled model to ever be represented by a major modeling agency and has since modeled in several major high fashion photo shoots and campaigns. In 2021, Philip debuted as an exclusive for Moschino’s spring/summer 2022 fashion show - making her the first model using a wheelchair to walk for a major luxury fashion brand.
Career
In 2016 at age 14, Philip published a memoir called This Kid Can Fly: It's About Ability (Not Disability) detailing her experiences growing up with cerebral palsy. The book was co-written with Tanya Bolden and published by HarperCollins.
Philip was a high school junior when she decided to pursue modeling. She was discovered through her social media where she took notice of the lack of representation of trans women of color within the fashion industry, let alone anyone with a disability.
Philip has actively worked towards an inclusive industry via her editorial features in W, i-D, Dazed, ELLE, Allure, and Paper magazines, and also on Refinery29 and Now This. In 2018, Philip was also subject to a profile in The New York Times, hailing Philip's career as a sign of a more diverse industry. Vogue (magazine) recently featured and photographed Aaron with her friend, Chella Man, discussing the lack of disabled representation.
Philip has graced the cover of Paper magazine's "Pride" issue, interviewed by supermodel Naomi Campbell. She's also graced the September Issue cover of S moda for El Pais and the Spring/ Summer 21 cover of INDIE. Philip has shot editorials for American Vogue, British Vogue, and Vogue Italia, and has appeared in campaigns for Dove, Sephora, Outdoor Voices, and Nike. Philip starred in the music video for Miley Cyrus' song '"Mother's Daughter," which received over 100 million views to date.
Philip made her first runway appearance in 2019 when she closed a show for Willie Norris Workshop. Philip has also modeled for Collina Strada's digital runway shows and in the brand's lookbooks. Marc Jacobs has also made Philip one of the designer's closest, most frequent collaborators, working with her on various media projects. In 2019, Philip made her television debut on TBS's Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. In 2020, Jeremy Scott, creative director of Italian luxury fashion brand Moschino then tapped her as the face of the brand's fall/winter 2020 campaign, shot by photographers Luigi + Iango. In 2021, Philip debuted exclusively for Moschino’s spring/summer 2022 runway show at New York Fashion Week - she is the first model using a wheelchair to walk a runway show for a major luxury fashion brand.
She is currently represented by Community New York and Milk Management London." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Rose_Philip
"Alexander Twilight (1795–1857) was born in Corinth, Vermont, on September 23, 1795. He was raised by a white or fair-skinned mother, Mary Twilight, and a mixed-race father, Ichabod Twilight, who served as a private in the American Revolutionary War. In the Vermont 1800 census, the Twilights are listed under the racially ambiguous category: Others free except Indians. Alexander Twilight was forced to work as an indentured servant on a farm near his home from the age of eight until he was 21.
Twilight entered Middlebury College in 1821 and graduated in 1823, one of 18 men to receive the BA degree. During his two years at Middlebury, only four professors and four tutors instructed the student body of more than 100 students. Elected to the Vermont General Assembly in 1836, Twilight became the first American of African descent to serve in a state legislature in the United States. Likewise, Twilight has been noted as the first person of color to graduate from an American college. While recent scholarship complicates the history of Twilight’s racial identity, the clarity of his achievements as a Middlebury graduate, educator, and statesman are undiminished. " Source: https://www.middlebury.edu/office/twilight-project/bio
"Andrea Jenkins made history in 2017 as the first African American openly trans woman to be elected to office in the United States. Now serving as Council President, she is also a writer, performance artist, poet and transgender activist.
Jenkins moved to Minnesota to attend the University of Minnesota in 1979. She worked as a Vocational Counselor for Hennepin County government, for a decade. Jenkins worked as a staff member on the Minneapolis City Council for 12 years before beginning work as curator of the Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota's Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies.
She holds a master’s degree in Community Development from Southern New Hampshire University, a MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University and a Bachelor’s Degrees in Human Services from Metropolitan State University. She is a nationally and internationally recognized writer and artist, a 2011 Bush Fellow to advance the work of transgender inclusion, and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. In 2018 she completed the Senior Executives in State and Local Government at Harvard University." Source: https://www.minneapolismn.gov/government/city-council/ward-8/about-andrea-jenkins/
CHADWICK AARON BOSEMAN (1976-2020)
Chadwick Aaron Boseman was born on November 29, 1976 in Anderson, South Carolina, to Carolyn and Leroy Boseman. His mother was a nurse, and his father was a factory worker. Boseman played little league baseball and basketball in his youth and attended T.L. Hanna High School in his hometown. He aspired to become an actor and write plays; he wrote his first play titled Crossroads in his junior year of high school before graduating in 1995. Boseman then entered Howard University in Washington, D.C., earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts in directing in 2000.
One of Boseman’s teachers and mentor, actress Phylicia Rashad, was responsible for raising funds to send Boseman and nine other theater students to attend the Oxford Mid-Summer program at the British American Drama Academy in London. The funding was provided by actor Denzel Washington. When he returned to the U.S., Boseman moved to New York and enrolled the New York City Digital Film Academy, graduating in 2002. He first worked at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York, as a drama instructor for the Junior Scholars Program.
Boseman’s first television role was in a 2003 episode of the NBC crime drama Third Watch. He then made appearances in Law & Order, CSI: NY, ER and had a recurring role in the series Lincoln Heights. He moved to Los Angeles in 2008 and appeared in his first feature film, The Express: The Ernie Davis Story, a film based on the life of the Syracuse University football player the same year. His first starring role was in the film 42 (2013), where he portrayed Jackie Robinson and the following year he portrayed musician James Brown in the film Get On Up (2014).
In 2016, Boseman starred as the Egyptian deity “Thoth” in the movie Gods of Egypt. That same year, he made his first appearance in the role of T’Challa in the Marvel franchise film, Captain America: Civil War. He starred and co-produced in the 2017 film Marshall, taking on the role of civil rights icon Thurgood Marshall. Boseman became the first African American superhero in a major feature film when he starred in the 2018 movie Black Panther, the 12th-highest grossing movie of all time. Boseman won several MTV Movie Awards the same year and also presented one to James Shaw Jr., who was lauded as a hero for disarming a shooter who killed three people in a Nashville, Tennessee Waffle House.
Boseman began dating Taylor Simone Ledward, a singer, in 2015. The two were photographed together over the next few years and were engaged in 2019. The couple secretly married in 2020. In 2016, Boseman was diagnosed with stage III colon cancer, which later progressed to stage IV. He never revealed his diagnosis and continued to work in films through chemotherapy and surgeries. He also visited with terminally ill children battling cancer. On August 28, 2020, Boseman died at his home in Los Angeles after his four-year battle with colon cancer, with his wife and family by his side. He was forty-three years old. The 2020 MTV Video Music Awards that aired on August 30, 2020 were dedicated to Boseman." Source: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/chadwick-aaron-boseman-1976-2020/
American civil rights activist Claudette Colvin (born 1939) was a 15‐year‐old high school student in Montgomery, Alabama, in early 1955 whose refusal to yield her bus seat resulted in her arrest and conviction. Nine months later, another Black American woman in Montgomery also refused to obey a bus driver and became an iconic figure in the American civil rights struggle. “If there had been no Claudette Colvin, there would have been no Rosa Parks,” asserted Fred Gray, the lawyer involved in both cases, to Atlanta Journal‐Constitution writer Jim Auchmutey in 2005.
Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama, and carried the family name of her biological father, C. P. Austin. He was a roamer and left Colvin's birth mother, Mary Jane Gadson, unable to provide for her and a younger sister, Delphine. Gadson's aunt, Mary Ann Colvin, took in both girls and gave them the surname she shared with her husband Q. P. Colvin. In the 1940s the family lived in Pine Level, a sharecropper town near Montgomery, and later left their farm for an address in the King Hill section of the state capital, where Mary Ann found work as a domestic and Q. P. worked for a landscape company. In the late summer of 1952 Delphine contracted polio and died on Colvin's 13th birthday.
That same week Colvin began 9th grade at Booker T. Washington High School, one of the city's two all‐black high schools. Later in November of 1952 a popular 16‐year‐old senior at Washington High, Jeremiah Reeves, was arrested and purportedly confessed to sexually assaulting several white women—a confession he later recanted. Colvin and other students were horrified when Reeves was convicted by an all‐white jury and sentenced to die in the electric chair.
Colvin was a bookish student who earned good grades and was inspired by two teachers at Washington High: her sophomore‐year English teacher Geraldine Nesbitt, who exposed students to classic texts covering human rights and democracy, and history teacher Josie Lawrence, whose lectures explored the trajectory of the African diaspora. In fact, Nesbitt and Lawrence taught a special Negro History Week unit in February of 1955 during Colvin's junior year that effectively helped Colvin find her voice on the afternoon of March 2, 1955.
Montgomery City Lines was a private company whose buses carried the majority of city residents to and from jobs and school. As in other cities in the South, riders were expected to abide by a municipal ordinance that mandated separate “colored” or “Negro” seating at the rear. The Montgomery City Lines passenger policies were especially egregious, even for the Jim Crow South. In the spring of 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in the Brown v. Board of Education that the South's “separate but equal” segregated schools were in fact a violation of the constitutional guarantees extended to all, including Black American students and their parents. Buoyed by this successful legal challenge mounted by attorneys for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a group of Montgomery activists were considering a bus boycott and had pressed executives of City Lines company to treat Black American passengers with more courtesy and a modicum of dignity for the ten‐cent fares they paid—an amount equal to the one paid by white riders.
Colvin was a member of the NAACP Youth Council and knew that a local ordinance actually outlawed the practice of forcing black bus passengers to yield their seats to white passengers in the colored section if the bus filled to capacity. The ordinance had been in place for decades but was habitually flouted by drivers, who were called motormen. After classes ended on an unusually warm day of March 2, 1955, Colvin boarded the Highland Gardens bus and paid her half‐price student fare at Dexter Avenue and Bainbridge Street. She and three other Washington High teens took seats in the center section of the bus, a middle neutral section where blacks were allowed to sit if the rear seats were full. When more passengers came aboard, the whites‐only front section filled up and a white woman was left standing. The driver ordered Colvin and the three other teens to vacate their seats in the middle section for the white woman. “The motorman looked up in his mirror and said, ‘I need those seats,” she recalled years later to biographer Phillip Hoose in Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. “We had been studying the Constitution in Miss Nesbitt's class. I knew I had rights.… But it wasn't about that. I was thinking, Why should I have to get up just because a driver tells me to, or just because I'm black? Right then, I decided I wasn't gonna take it anymore.”
In a pivotal moment, Colvin's schoolmates exited the middle section and moved to the rear as instructed. The white passenger was now free to take one of the seats but refused to do so because Colvin was still lodged in place. “That was the whole point of the segregation rules—it was all symbolic—blacks had to be behind whites,” she recalled to Hoose. This time, the driver spoke sharply to Colvin. “‘Why are you still sittin' there?’ I didn't get up, and I didn't answer him. It got real quiet on the bus. A white rider yelled from the front, ‘You got to get up!’ A girl named Margaret Johnson answered from the back, ‘She ain't got to do nothin' but stay black and die.’”
"Claudette Colvin." Encyclopedia of World Biography Online, Gale, 2022. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1631010445/OVIC?u=colu44332&sid=bookmark-OVIC&xid=5d52f342. Accessed 31 Jan. 2023.
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1631010445/OVIC?u=colu44332&sid=bookmark-OVIC&xid=5d52f342
"Dido Elizabeth Belle is best known for the 1779 painting of her alongside her cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray, the great-niece of William Murray, The First Earl of Mansfield. The Earl, also known as Lord Mansfield, was at the time the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, the highest ranking jurist in Great Britain. Mansfield was famously involved in two important cases involving slavery, the Sommersett Case in 1772 where he ruled that English law did not sanction slavery in Great Britain (a ruling highly praised by abolitionists), and the Zong Massacre Case (1783) where he ruled in favor of insurers who refused to pay a ship captain who had purposely threw overboard a number of slaves on his ship.
Elizabeth Belle, referred to as Belle, was born around the month of June in 1761. Her father, John Lindsay, was a young British naval officer and nephew of Lord Mansfield, while her mother, whose name is believed to be Maria Bell, was a slave in the West Indies. The year that Belle’s parents met is not known, nor is it clear that their relationship was consensual. Belle’s baptism records yield no information about her father which indicates she was considered an illegitimate child.
Upon the death of Maria Bell, John Lindsay in 1766 requested that Belle be entrusted to his uncle, Lord Mansfield, who was already raising his young great-niece, Elizabeth Murray, due to her mother passing and her father’s serving the Crown as an ambassador first to Austria and later to France. The addition of Belle to Lord Mansfield’s household provided Elizabeth Murray with a playmate. Belle’s role in the household seemed to have been as Elizabeth’s lady’s companion rather than her lady’s maid. While in the household she received an education and an annual allowance of £30, several times the wages of a domestic servant. As an adult she managed the estate’s dairy and poultry yards and helped Lord Mansfield with his correspondence, a task normally assigned a male secretary or clerk.
Dido Elizabeth Belle spent nearly three decades at Kenwood House, the home of the Murray family. The best insight into Belle’s life with Lord Mansfield comes from Thomas Hutchinson who visited Kenwood House in 1779 when she was around 18 or 19. While dining with Mansfield, Hutchinson was surprised to see Belle, a woman of black ancestry, sitting with the ladies drinking coffee and later going on a walk with her arm locked with another woman. An American guest reported, however, that Belle was not allowed to dine with the family.
In 1784, Belle witnessed the death of Lady Mansfield and the following year the marriage of Lady Elizabeth Murray to a distant cousin, George Finch Hatton. She remained at Kenwood House, however, for nearly another decade, finally leaving the estate upon the death of Lord Mansfield in 1793." Source: https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/belle-dido-elizabeth-1761-1804/
A favorite headline act during the Harlem Renaissance, American blues‐belting pianist Gladys Bentley (1907–1960) packed New York City nightclubs during the 1920s and '30s. Wearing her signature white tuxedo and top hat, Bentley entertained fans with her risqué lyrics and her sexually charged innuendo was viewed as playfully taboo. The crowds she attracted included both queer and straight fans, all who witnessed her efforts to confront the social norms of her day.
The eldest of four siblings, Gladys Alberta Bentley was born on August 12, 1907, in Philadelphia. Bentley's mother, Mary C. Mote (Bentley), hailed from Trinidad while her father, George L. Bentley, was an American. In recollecting her childhood, Bentley recalled sensing tension in the family and referred to herself as a problem child. “It seems I was born different,” she explained in 1952, in an autobiographical essay published in Ebony magazine. When Bentley was nine years old, she began borrowing her brothers' suits and wearing them to school, preferring slacks to skirts. “Soon I began to feel more comfortable in boys' clothes than in dresses,” she later explained.
Bentley's cross‐dressing immediately caught the ire of her young classmates, and she was teased for her clothing as well as for her large, stocky physique. Her parents also grew concerned when they recognized that their daughter was developing an attraction to women. Even as a young girl, Bentley recalled having a huge crush on one of her female teachers and doing everything in her power to remain in that teacher's room during recess, cleaning the chalkboards and chatting with the woman. When the behavior continued into their daughter's teens, Bentley's parents took her to several doctors, hoping to discover a cure. The stress of this intervention prompted Bentley to strike out on her own at age 16.
It was 1923 when Bentley arrived in New York City, and the Harlem Renaissance was underway. A cultural movement, the Harlem Renaissance was born following an influx of Southern Black people into Manhattan, their exodus from the former Confederacy prompted by that region's racist Jim Crow laws. This northward migration to the Harlem neighborhood was accompanied by a rise in Black self‐expression in literature, art, and music that became known as the Harlem Renaissance. Amid this creative confluence, which included writers, artists, intellectuals, and performers, the talents of Langston Hughes, Bessie Smith, and Moms Mabley would root and flourish. Within this creative atmosphere, Bentley gained the acceptance she needed.
When Bentley arrived in Manhattan, she found work as a fill‐in pianist at several small Harlem clubs. She also played what was then known as the “rent‐party” circuit. Because rents were so high in Harlem due to the increased demand, tenants often held “rent parties,” charging guests a nominal fee for entrance and entertainment and using the proceeds to pay their monthly rent. Bentley soon landed a permanent job as a pianist at a Harlem club called Mad House. She now developed her reputation as a “male impersonator,” employing the stage name Bobbie Minton and openly exhibiting gender fusion. Rather than wearing a formal gown, Bentley performed wearing a white dress shirt and bow tie, oxford shoes, and trousers topped by a short, formal suit jacket.
Once her following was established, Bentley moved to Harry Hansberry's Clam House, a Harlem speakeasy that was popular among the city's gay community. Harry Hansberry's was one of several nightclubs that catered specifically to a gay clientele. To keep such queer clubs from operating in New York City, the police conducted regular raids, often arresting guests on charges of disorderly conduct or degeneracy. In Harlem, such establishments were often left alone because city leaders chose to enforce local decency laws in affluent parts of the city. As a result, Harlem became a hub of New York City's growing gay subculture.
Read more! https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1631010994/OVIC?u=colu44332&sid=sru&xid=d7a06724
"Gladys Bentley." Encyclopedia of World Biography Online, Gale, 2022. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1631010994/OVIC?u=colu44332&sid=sru&xid=d7a06724. Accessed 31 Jan. 2023.
American cell donor Henrietta Lacks (1920-1951) was the unwitting creator of the world's first "immortal" cell line, HeLa. Developed from a handful of cells culled from Lacks's cervical cancer tumor, the HeLa cell line has been used to research a number of important 20th and 21st century medical advances, including the polio vaccine and genetic disorder testing. Despite the widespread use of Lacks's cells, the donor herself went unrecognized and even misidentified for many years due to the medical practices of the era. In the 21st century, increased popular attention has been paid to Lacks thanks to a 2010 New York Times best-selling book and a 2017 film about her life and legacy that was produced by Oprah Winfrey.
Born Loretta Pleasant on August 1, 1920, in Roanoke, Virginia, Lacks grew up poor on a former tobacco plantation once farmed by her enslaved ancestors. Her father, Johnny Pleasant, sent his children to live with relatives after Lacks's mother, Eliza Lacks Pleasant, died in childbirth in 1924. The young Henrietta--the reason for her name change is not recorded--went to live with her grandfather in a rural community known as Lacks Town after the original plantation-owning Lacks family near Clover, Virginia. As a girl, Lacks helped work on the farm and attended school through the sixth grade. From a young age, Lacks was known as a pretty girl, and she had at least one other dedicated suitor before deciding in 1941 to marry her cousin and childhood companion David Day Lacks, with whom she already had two children, Lawrence and the mentally disabled Lucile Elise.
A few months after the wedding, a visiting family member described the job opportunities afforded African Americans by the steel industry in Baltimore. Lacks and her family left Virginia for Maryland, where David Day Lacks hoped to find work in the booming industry. Although he succeeded, drawing a better income than possible from working on the tobacco farm, life for the family was still difficult. Lacks did not work in Baltimore, but instead spent her time caring for her husband and children and socializing with friends. "Hennie made life come alive--bein with her like bein with fun," commented a cousin of Lacks to Rebecca Skloot in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. "Hennie just love peoples. She was a person that could really make the good things come out of you." By the end of the 1940s, Lacks had given birth to two additional children, David in 1947 and Deborah in 1949. The final Lacks child, Joseph, followed in 1950.
"Henrietta Lacks." Encyclopedia of World Biography Online, vol. 31, Gale, 2011. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1631009594/OVIC?u=colu44332&sid=bookmark-OVIC&xid=82ca6ebf. Accessed 31 Jan. 2023.
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1631009594/OVIC?u=colu44332&sid=bookmark-OVIC&xid=82ca6ebf
"Article by Desiree Houston, Patron Services Assistant
Janet Collins broke color barriers in the 1950s when she became the first African American prima ballerina and one of the very few prominent black women in American classical ballet.
Collins was born on March 17, 1917 in New Orleans, Louisiana. She and her family moved to Los Angeles, where Collins started taking private dance lessons at a Catholic community center. Collins continued her dance training with Carmelita Maracci, who was one of the few dance teachers during the time to accept black students.
By the age of 15, Janet Collins was prepared to audition for Lèonide Massine and the De Basil Ballet Russe Company. Although she was accepted into the company, she declined the offer after being told that she would either need special roles created for her or dance in white face to disguise the fact that she was black. An upset Collins left the audition in tears and vowed to perfect her art so that race would not be an issue.
Collins appeared in her first theatrical performance in 1940. She and Katherine Dunham’s troupe performed in the 1943 musical film Stormy Weather. Collins made her New York debut in 1949 after performing her own choreography on a shared program at the 92nd Street Y. In the same year, after two more performances, Dance Magazine named her “the most outstanding debutante of the season.” Collins was noticed by Zachary Solov, the ballet master of the Metropolitan Opera House at the time, in a Broadway production of Cole Porter’s Out of this World. Solov then invited Collins to join the Metropolitan Company. " Source: https://www.atlantaballet.com/news/celebrating-black-history-month-spotlight-on-janet-collins
JOHN WILLIAM COLTRANE (1926-1967)
John Coltrane, 1963
John William Coltrane emerged as one of the most innovative and influential jazz musicians of the 20th century. Born in Hamlet, North Carolina on September 23, 1926, the son of John Robert and Alice Blair Coltrane, he grew up in High Point, North Carolina where his grandfather, Rev. William W. Blair, an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) minister, was one of the community leaders. John Coltrane’s childhood attendance at his family’s black church shaped the spiritual dimensions of his musical orientation. Following his father’s death and the family’s sudden impoverishment, he and his mother moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1943 to ensure he would have a proper education. Coltrane’s mother Alice worked as a domestic servant while nurturing her son’s musical interest and encouraged him to enroll at the Ornstein School of Music.
Coltrane’s musical education was interrupted when he was drafted into the U.S. Navy at the end of World War II, where he played with a Hawaii-based naval band. By this point Coltrane found that he was increasingly attracted to jazz. After he left the Navy in 1945 he made his professional debut as an artist. Coltrane worked for a number of bandleaders including Dizzy Gillespie and Earl Bostic. As his reputation grew, John Coltrane began to work with the most famous jazz artists of the era. Between 1955 and 1959, he played in a band led by the legendary trumpeter Miles Davis. He also worked intermittently with the famed jazz pianist Thelonious Monk.
In 1960 John Coltrane formed a group which eventually became known as the Classic Quartet and put into practice a unique compositional and improvisational technique he had developed based on “modal” playing. Coltrane quickly emerged as the leading jazz tenor saxophonist of the era. Described by some jazz critics as the “high priest” of avant-garde jazz, Coltrane’s style involved dense, rapidly changing chords with complex extensions built upon each note. Rejecting traditional harmonies, his quartet soon became a platform for introducing new ideas into jazz.
John Coltrane’s innovative style was evident on his 1959 album Giant Steps, which remains a marker of musical excellence. Coltrane incorporated African musical traditions, slave spirituals and the blues into his compositions as well as elements of classical European and Indian musical traditions. Coltrane’s ability to draw inspiration from a variety of musical traditions was also evident on his albums India, Ascension, and especially A Love Supreme which was released in 1964 and soon became his most successful recording." Source: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/coltrane-john-william-1926-1968/
"Confidence is how you show up at max capacity," says Lauren "Lolo" Spencer, a disability advocate, actress, and model. "It's the ultimate form of self-expression, regardless of what society says or thinks, or what the 'rules' of the world are."
That sort of unwavering confidence is important (and impressive), especially within the beauty industry, where standards remain unrealistic and equal representation for all individuals doesn't yet exist. And it looks different for everyone.
For Spencer — who was diagnosed with ALS, a neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells, at age 14 — confidence is expressed through an animal print blazer, feathery shoes, bold colors, and colorful jewelry. On the makeup front, it comes in the form of a show-stopping, "very colorful evening glam look," featuring pops of purple and green.
"The standards of beauty traditionally don't include people with disabilities," says Spencer, who uses a wheelchair and lacks muscle strength in her hands and fingers, which is why she looks for beauty products she can control and work with easily, like pencils. "And when they are included, it's like, 'Give me my gold star for showing this disabled person in a beautiful light.' I'd rather see storylines about the humanity of those people [instead] of their whole stories being predicated on their health."" Source: https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/lauren-lolo-spencer-disability-representation-makeup-tutorial
"LeVar Burton is an American German Born Actor, Director, Producer and Author. Burton is most famous for his roles in “Star Trek, The Next Generation”, and “Roots”, in which he played the main character, “Kunta Kinte”. Burton was also famous as the main host for PBS’s main children’s series, “Reading Rainbow”.
Burton’s father was a photographer for the United States Army who was stationed at West Germany, Landstuhl, during the time of Burton’s birth (February 16, 1957). Burton’s mother raised him and his two sisters at Sacramento, California, after which Burton soon joined the St. Pius Seminary to become a Catholic Priest. However, after reading books by Lao Tzu and Kierkegaard, he grew skeptical of his religion and dropped out of the seminary to join the University of Southern California where he studied drama and theatre.
Burton’s first acting role was for ABC’s award winning television mini-series, “Roots”, which was based on a novel by Alex Haley titled “Roots: The Saga of an American Family”. Burton played a young “Kunta Kinte” in the series. The series itself was nominated for thirty seven Emmy Awards, out of which it won nine, while Burton was nominated for “Best Actor in a Drama Series”. Burton was asked to portray “Kunta Kinte” for the book’s 1988 film adaptation, “Roots: The Gift”.
Burton then went on to star in ‘Fantasy Island’, ‘Battle of the Network Stars’, and ‘Word Up!’, after which he went on to host PBS’s premiere children’s series, “Reading Rainbows”. The series, for whom Burton was also an executive producer, was one of the most successful PBS series of all time. Not only did it run for twenty three consecutive seasons, it also picked up over two hundred broadcast awards during its run, including over twenty six Emmy’s, with Burton himself winning a little over ten.
Burton started acting for “Star Trek, The Next Generation” in 1986. He played Lieutenant Junior Grade Geordi La Forge, a blind engineer who is visually aided by an ingenious prosthetic device called “VISOR”. At the time, Burton was one of the only highly acclaimed actors to join the show, and his role was defined by several critics as that of ‘a new Spock’. Burton went on to reprise his role as Geordi La Forge in the subsequent Star Trek Movies, “Star Trek Generations”, and “Star Trek: Nemesis”.
The Star Trek ‘Enterprise’ also helped Burton kick start his career as a director, as his first assignment as director was for a Star Trek episode. Burton went on to direct more Star Trek episodes than any other director affiliated with the Star Trek name.
Burton also hosted a documentary titled “The Science of Peace”, which documented pieces of technology that aimed to bring about world peace. Burton also played the great Martin Luther King Jr. in the 2001 blockbuster release titled “Ali”. He makes regular cameo appearances on popular shows and sitcoms such as “The Big Bang Theory”, “Smosh”, “Community”, “This Week in Tech”, “Family Guy”, and “The Weakest Link”.
LeVar Burton was awarded the 1990 Hollywood Walk of Fame Star at 7030 Hollywood Boulevard. He has also won a Grammy Award for “Best Spoken Word Album”." Source: https://www.famousafricanamericans.org/levar-burton
MARIAH CAREY (1969- )
For the last thirty years, the name Mariah Carey has been synonymous with stellar singing and unmatched musical talent. As one of modern music’s most powerful voices, Carey holds the record for third-best-selling female artist of all time, after Madonna and Rhianna, and the most No. 1 hits on the Billboard charts. She is a distinguished singer-songwriter, actress, and philanthropist. Her five-octave vocal range is unmistakable.
Carey was born on March 27, 1969, in Huntington, New York to Alfred Roy Carey who was Afro-Venezuelan, and Patricia Hickey who is white American with Irish heritage. Hickey, who was an opera singer and vocal coach, had an ear for her daughter’s vocal abilities when she was only three years old. As a mixed-race child, Carey, her two older siblings, and her parents faced bigotry in 1970s Long Island. Amid several moves and an estranged relationship with her father due to the parents’ divorce, Carey still held aspirations of becoming a singer. Her mother cultivated her daughter’s rich voice by giving her vocal training.
By the time Carey graduated high school, after years of recording demo tracks, she was singing backup for recording artist Brenda K. Starr. Her big break came at a 1988 New York City industry party when she was 18 years old. She met record producer Tommy Mottola who signed her to Sony Music after hearing her demo tape. Her career under Sony spanned the 1990s and produced chart-topping albums such as her eponymous debut in 1990, Music Box (1993), and Daydream (1995). “All I Want For Christmas” from her 1994 Merry Christmas album became one of her greatest hits and it charted again at No.1 on its 25th anniversary in 2019.
Carey’s close working relationship with Mottola turned into marriage in 1993, but it ended in 1997 because of what Carey recounted as his controlling behavior. Their divorce spearheaded Carey’s transition from girl-next-door pop melodies to R&B and hip-hop, beginning with her Butterfly album in 1997. As a result of the transition, she had a No.1 song in every single year of the 1990s decade, a feat no other artist ever accomplished." Source: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/mariah-carey-1969/
Born: October 30, 1922
Birthplace: New York, New York
Died: February 2, 1999
Place of death: New York, New York
Also known as: Marie Van Brittan
Significance: Marie Van Brittan Brown and her husband, Albert L. Brown, invented the first home security system in the United States. It led to the development and rise of home security systems, including contemporary closed circuit-television systems.
Marie Van Brittan Brown was born on October 30, 1922, in Jamaica, a neighborhood in Queens, New York. She was raised and spent her entire life there. As an adult, Brown became a nurse and worked nights at a hospital in Jamaica, Queens. After a rise of crime in her neighborhood, she became concerned about her safety. She slept during the daytime and was often home alone while her husband, Albert L. Brown, was at work as an electronics technician. Although the police responded to emergency calls, their response times were typically slow.
To counter the increased crime rate in her area, Brown decided to create a surveillance system that would enable her to see anyone outside their home and immediately contact the police. Brown and her husband devised a home surveillance system made up of a motorized camera, a monitor, audio equipment, four peepholes, and two buttons. The peepholes would be placed in the front door at different heights to accommodate a tall adult, a child, and all heights in between. A motorized camera that could move up and down would be attached to the interior of the front door and could be controlled by someone inside the home to allow viewing through the desired peephole. The camera would scan the area outside the front door and transmit images to a video receiver that appeared on the monitor, which would be placed in a cabinet in the Brown's bedroom. The audio equipment consisted of microphones, speakers, antennas, transmitters, receivers, amplifiers, oscillators, and switches that allowed for two-way communication between people inside and outside the home, as well as for recording of conversations. One of the buttons was a radio-controlled alarm that, when pressed, would create a siren to signal an emergency. The other button allowed the door to be locked or unlocked via remote control. Additional apparatus could be placed at a guard station or other external location to receive an alert when the alarm button was engaged. The recording device allowed for both sound and images to be transmitted to the guard station so a security guard or other individual could monitor what was occurring at the home in the case of an intruder or break-in.
Brown and her husband submitted their invention to the US Patent Office on August 1, 1966. Classified as a door telephone, it was assigned patent number 3,482,037. Three drawings submitted with the patent application described it as a home security system utilizing television surveillance and showed each component, their assembly, and the electrical schematics. The written description of the invention cited its objectives: to provide a visual means to scan visitors to the house; to allow for audio communication between people inside and outside the house when the door was shut and locked; to provide a security system for the house that could be controlled by an occupant of the house; and to allow for a signal to alert a watchman, guard, or other person outside the home of an intruder. The description also provided a detailed explanation of the electrical controls, reflecting Albert Brown's expertise as an electronics technician. The Browns cited three patents as references on their application: a television system invented by Edward D. Phinney in 1934; an identification system by Thomas J. Reardon in 1956; and a remote operated self-powered observation device including remotely controllable visual scanning means. These patent citations described patented inventions that had any similarity to the Browns' invention. The Browns' patent was granted on December 2, 1969.
There are few media reports or public records about the invention or the Browns after they received a patent for their invention. The New York Times wrote about the Browns' patent in a December 6, 1969, article titled "Audio-Viewer Screens Callers," but the media did not publish any follow-up stories indicating whether the Browns installed the system. For the invention, the National Scientists Committee honored Marie Van Brittan Brown with an award.
MILES DAVIS (1926-1991)
"Miles Davis was one of the most influential and innovative jazz musicians of the 20th Century. He constantly altered his sound to introduce new forms of jazz and led the progression of jazz from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Miles Dewey Davis III was born in Alton, Illinois on May 26, 1926 to a music teacher mother and dental surgeon father. Although his mother wanted him to play violin and study classical music, “Little Miles” was fascinated with the trumpet and jazz music. He received his first trumpet at the age of 10. By the age of 13 was already playing professionally around St. Louis, and after graduation from high school attended the Julliard Music School in New York.
Young Davis quickly became bored with Julliard’s classical music emphasis and turned his attention to the vibrant jazz scene on New York’s 52nd Street. Acting on an earlier invitation from a meeting in St. Louis, Miles contacted saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, a jazz legend, and joined his band as lead trumpet. After dropping out of Julliard in 1945, Miles devoted himself to jazz and in particular a fast new highly improvisational form called “Be-Bop” that he soon mastered. By 1949 Davis altered his style again, recording The Birth of the Cool as part of a nine-piece band arranged by Gerry Mulligan. His recording created a new mellower style named “cool jazz” (or West Coast Jazz).
Davis’s professional accomplishments however took a back seat to his dependency on heroin and other hard drugs. Inspired by Sugar Ray Robinson’s similar saga, Miles Davis kicked his heroin addiction in 1954. One year later he gave an historic solo performance at the Newport Jazz Festival that earned him a recording contract with Columbia Records. In 1958 Davis recorded Kind of Blue, a revolutionary album that defined “modern jazz.” For the next several years he recorded albums with some of the greatest jazz musicians including Joe Jones, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Red Garland, Herbie Hancock, and Tony Williams.
By the late 1960s Davis’s experimentation with electric guitar and keyboard in his sound gave birth to the “fusion jazz,” so called because of its fusing of rock, jazz, and funk elements. His 1970 album Bitches Brew earned him a Grammy Award and a gold record and placed him at the height of his international fame. Davis however had returned to alcohol and drug abuse and was forced to retire in 1975.
Davis periodically returned to the stage in the 1980s, however, he refused to play earlier hits. Only during what would be his last concert in 1991 did Davis perform old standards. His amazing dedication to incorporating new sounds and styles into his music constantly pushed jazz to new limits that may not have been possible without him. Miles Davis died on September 28, 1991 in Santa Monica, California at the age of 65." Source: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/davis-miles-1926-1991/
"Moses Sumney is a Ghanaian-American singer-songwriter. His self-recorded EP, Mid-City Island, was released in 2014. He released another five-song EP in 2016, titled Lamentations. His first full-length album, Aromanticism, was released in September 2017. His second studio album, Græ, was released in 2020. Sumney has performed as an opening act for James Blake, Solange Knowles, and Sufjan Stevens. Early life Born in California, Sumney was raised by pastor parents, and moved with his family back to Ghana at the age of 10. He described his childhood as "Americanized" by this age and had difficulty adjusting to the culture of Ghana, especially the rural nature of his new environment. There he grew up on a goat farm in Accra and commuted by public bus to school. His family returned to Southern California when Sumney was 16, settling in Riverside. He did not learn to play any instruments until he was older, writing a cappella music for years instead. Sumney did not perform his musical compositions publicly until he was 20. After high school, he moved to Los Angeles in 2010 to attend the University of California, Los Angeles. He majored in creative writing and studied poetry, which helped him improve his songwriting. Musical career In 2014, Sumney broke into the Los Angeles music scene and caught the eye of many record labels. He said at the time it did not feel right because labels were trying to conform him into a certain image and he was still trying to discover the artist that he wanted to be. He decided to turn down these labels and move to Asheville, North Carolina.His resistance to labels is reflected in his later album, Græ. Sumney's 2014 debut project, Mid-City Island, is a five-song EP that was self-recorded onto a four-track recorder given to him by TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek. The self-released EP was described by Pitchfork as "primarily composed of first-takes and improvisation; the music is stirring but purposefully incomplete".Sumney joined Terrible Records after the release. He considers his songs to be performance based, and that many of his recorded compositions derive from fleshing the songs out through live performance. " Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Sumney
"Patricia E. Bath, an ophthalmologist and laser scientist, was an innovative research scientist and advocate for blindness prevention, treatment, and cure. Her accomplishments include the invention of a new device and technique for cataract surgery known as laserphaco, the creation of a new discipline known as "community ophthalmology," and appointment as the first woman chair of ophthalmology in the United States, at Drew-UCLA in 1983.
Patricia Bath's dedication to a life in medicine began in childhood, when she was first heard about Dr. Albert Schweitzer's service to lepers in the Congo. After excelling in her studies in high school and university and earning awards for scientific research as early as age sixteen, Dr. Bath embarked on a career in medicine. She received her medical degree from Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C., interned at Harlem Hospital from 1968 to 1969, and completed a fellowship in ophthalmology at Columbia University from 1969 to 1970. Following her internship, Dr. Bath completed her training at New York University between 1970 and 1973, where she was the first African American resident in ophthalmology. Bath married and had a daughter Eraka, born 1972. While motherhood became her priority, she also managed to complete a fellowship in corneal transplantation and keratoprosthesis (replacing the human cornea with an artificial one).
As a young intern shuttling between Harlem Hospital and Columbia University, Bath was quick to observe that at the eye clinic in Harlem half the patients were blind or visually impaired. At the eye clinic at Columbia, by contrast, there were very few obviously blind patients. This observation led her to conduct a retrospective epidemiological study, which documented that blindness among blacks was double that among whites. She reached the conclusion that the high prevalence of blindness among blacks was due to lack of access of ophthalmic care. As a result, she proposed a new discipline, known as community ophthalmology, which is now operative worldwide. Community ophthalmology combines aspects of public health, community medicine, and clinical ophthalmology to offer primary care to underserved populations. Volunteers trained as eye workers visit senior centers and daycare programs to test vision and screen for cataracts, glaucoma, and other threatening eye conditions. This outreach has saved the sight of thousands whose problems would otherwise have gone undiagnosed and untreated. By identifying children who need eyeglasses, the volunteers give these children a better chance for success in school.
Bath was also instrumental in bringing ophthalmic surgical services to Harlem Hospital's Eye Clinic, which did not perform eye surgery in 1968. She persuaded her professors at Columbia to operate on blind patients for free, and she volunteered as an assistant surgeon. The first major eye operation at Harlem Hospital was performed in 1970 as a result of her efforts." Source: https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_26.html
"Paul D. Hudson (born February 11, 1956), known professionally as H.R. (Human Rights), is an American musician who leads the hardcore punk band Bad Brains, and is an instrumental figure in the development of the genre. His vocal delivery has been described as diverse, ranging from a rapid-fire nasal whine, to feral growling and screeches, to smooth near-crooning or staccato reggae rhymes. He has departed the band periodically to pursue solo efforts that are more reggae than Bad Brains' punk sound. He is the older brother of Earl Hudson, Bad Brains' drummer.
Born in Liverpool, England to a Jamaican mother and American father stationed with the US Air Force in the UK, his family moved to the United States when he was a toddler, and proceeded to move around until finally settling in Washington, D.C. He was a gifted athlete from an early age, competing in swimming and pole-vaulting. He and his younger brother Earl both entered the local D.C. music scene as teenagers with their friends and future bandmates Dr. Know and Darryl Jenifer. H.R. was an early nickname that initially stood for "hunting rod", but which he changed to stand for "human rights." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.R.
Marianne Joan Elliot-Said, a.k.a. Poly Styrene 1957 – 2011
"She was born Marianne Joan Elliott-Said in Bromley, Kent. Her mother was a British legal secretary, who raised her alone, and her father was a dispossessed Somali aristocrat. She exhibited a free-thinking attitude from an early age, running away from home when she was 15 and, almost penniless, hitchhiking her way around music festivals. As Mari Elliott, she recorded a reggae single called Silly Billy, but it failed to chart. Then her musical thinking was turned inside out by seeing an early Sex Pistols gig on Hastings pier. "They weren't signed and I just thought that's something I could do – get up and play without being signed," she recalled. X-Ray Spex were formed in 1976 after she placed an advertisement for "young punx who want to stick it together". They were rapidly accepted on the erupting punk circuit and played one of their first gigs at the Roxy club in London, on a bill with the Drones and Chelsea. She was struck by seeing "girls in dog collars and leads, being pulled along by their boyfriends ... To me it was quite a bizarre night, but they all seemed happy expressing themselves in this way." Poly Styrene herself was far from conventional, with wildly uncool wire braces on her teeth, Day-Glo stage clothes and utter determination not to conform to stereotypical notions of Barbie-doll pop pinuphood. "There's nothing wrong with beauty," she said, "but whether it's actually helping the female cause of being equal to men, you have to judge for yourself." The band's 1977 single Oh Bondage, Up Yours! became their best-known song, a blast of raucous guitars, honking saxophone and her piercing, foghorn vocals. The allusions in the lyrics to victimhood and consumerism were among Poly Styrene's signature themes, and she threw down the opening line – "Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard" – like a live grenade. The band appeared at some of the key events of the punk era, including the Front Row festival at the Hope & Anchor pub in Islington, north London, and the huge Rock Against Racism concert at Victoria Park in Hackney, east London, in April 1978, alongside the Clash, Steel Pulse and the Tom Robinson Band. They released their debut album, Germ Free Adolescents, in November 1978. Its songs were rife with imagery of a consumerist, braindead society." Source: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/apr/26/poly-styrene-obituary
"RuPaul Andre Charles (born November 17, 1960) is an American drag queen, television personality, actor, musician, and model. Best known for producing, hosting, and judging the reality competition series RuPaul's Drag Race, he has received several accolades, including 12 Primetime Emmy Awards, three GLAAD Media Awards, a Critics' Choice Television Award, two Billboard Music Awards, and a Tony Award. He has been dubbed the "Queen of Drag". Born and raised in San Diego RuPaul later studied performing arts in Atlanta. He settled in New York City, where he became a popular fixture on the LGBT nightclub scene. He achieved international fame as a drag queen with the release of his debut single, "Supermodel (You Better Work)", which was included on his debut studio album Supermodel of the World (1993). He became a spokesperson for MAC Cosmetics in 1994, raising money for the Mac AIDS Fund and becoming the first drag queen to land a major cosmetics campaign. He later received his own talk show on VH1 called The RuPaul Show, which he hosted for over 100 episodes while co-hosting the morning radio show on WKTU with Michelle Visage. RuPaul's Drag Race was created in 2009 and has gone on to produce fourteen seasons in the United States. The show has also seen success internationally. There are several international variants of the show including RuPaul's Drag Race UK and Canada's Drag Race. This has also inspired several spin-offs of the main show, including RuPaul's Drag U, RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars, and RuPaul's Secret Celebrity Drag Race. He is also featured as a host on other reality television series such as Skin Wars, Good Work, and Gay for Play Game Show Starring RuPaul. RuPaul has made appearances in films such as Crooklyn (1994), The Brady Bunch Movie (1995), To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), But I'm a Cheerleader (1999), television shows such as Girlboss (2017), Broad City (2017), and Grace and Frankie (2019). He later created and starred in his own Netflix original television series AJ and the Queen (2020). In addition, he has also published three books: Lettin' It All Hang Out (1995), Workin' It! RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style (2010), and GuRu (2018). RuPaul is considered the most commercially successful drag queen in the United States, with Fortune saying that he is "easily the world's most famous drag queen." For his work on RuPaul's Drag Race, he has received 12 Primetime Emmy Awards, becoming the most-awarded person of color in the history of the Primetime Emmys. In 2017, he was included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. Outside of film and television, he also continues to write and record music; he has released fifteen studio albums as of 2023, and received a Tony Award for Best Musical as a producer for the musical A Strange Loop." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuPaul
"SARAH E. GOODE (C.1855?-1905)
Drawing of Sarah E. Goode's Cabinet Bed
Public domain image
Sarah Elisabeth Goode was one of the first African-American women to obtain a patent from the United States government in 1885. She shares the distinction with Judy Reed, who invented a dough-kneading machine that was patented in 1880, and Miriam Benjamin, who received a patent in 1888 for a hotel chair that signaled the service of a waiter.
Little has been confirmed of Goode’s early life, but it is believed that in 1860, at age five, she was living as Sarah Jacobs, a free inhabitant of Toledo, Ohio. By 1870, she had moved to Chicago, Illinois and by 1880 was married to Archibald Goode, a carpenter/stair builder. The couple had children, but the exact number is unknown.
On July 14, 1885, Sarah Goode was granted patent number 322,177 from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a folding cabinet bed. The bed was designed to make maximum efficient use of small spaces where surface area was limited. Known today as the “hide-away bed,” Goode’s invention had hinged sections that were easily raised or lowered. When not functioning as a bed, the invention could easily be used as a desk because there were small compartments for storing supplies. This was ideal for urban apartments of Chicago where living space was shared and limited.
Aside from Goode’s invention and lineage, little is known about her life. Although some biographies indicate that Sarah Goode became a successful owner of a furniture store in Chicago, this has not been confirmed. However, Goode’s father and husband were carpenters, and this could have influenced her knowledge about furniture construction. It is believed that Sarah Goode died in Chicago on April 8, 1905." from https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/goode-sarah-e-c-1855-1905/
