Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Samuel Massie Jr. (1919-2005)overcame racial barriers to become one of America’s greatest chemists in research and teaching. As a doctoral candidate during World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project with Henry Gilman at Iowa State University in the development of uranium isotopes for the atomic bomb. In 1966, the U.S. Naval Academy appointed him as its first black faculty member. Massie’s research over fifty years led to the development of drugs to treat mental illness, malaria, meningitis, gonorrhea, herpes, and cancer. Chemical and Engineering News in 1998 named him one of the top seventy-five chemists of all time, along with Marie Curie, Linus Pauling, George Washington Carver, and DNA pioneers James Watson and Francis Crick.
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Samuel Massie was born on July 3, 1919, to school teachers Samuel Proctor and Earlee Jacko Massie of North Little Rock (Pulaski County). He had one younger brother. He quickly advanced to high school and graduated second in his class from Dunbar High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County) by age thirteen. Early on, he wanted to be a chemist to find a cure for his father’s asthma.
After working for a year at Horton’s Grocery Store across the street from his home in North Little Rock, Massie had saved enough to afford tuition of $15 per semester at Dunbar Junior College. A year later, in 1934, the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) turned down his application for admission because he was black. He enrolled at Arkansas AM&N (now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff); earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry with a minor in mathematics in 1937; and, with the aid of a federal National Youth Administration scholarship, finished a master’s degree in chemistry in 1940 at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He taught a year at Arkansas AM&N before gaining admission to a doctorate program in chemistry at Iowa State University.
Racial discrimination did not make Massie’s life any easier in Iowa. The closest housing available for African Americans was three miles from campus, requiring him to hitchhike to classes. He noted that he was assigned to a separate lab space “next to the rats in the basement” until he proved himself.
But he almost did not get to complete his doctoral program. Massie returned to Arkansas in 1943 to attend his father’s funeral and to renew his draft deferment. According to his autobiography, a member of the draft board in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) decided that he had too much education for a black man and would be drafted. Massie quickly contacted Dr. Gilman, who assigned him to his research team working on the atomic bomb. In 1946, Massie received his PhD in organic chemistry.....Read More
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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In South Carolina, bikers speed past history. For Black families from Baltimore to Atlanta, Atlantic Beach was once the summer hot spot. But its historic past is slipping away as neighborhood towns develop quickly. WashingtonPost: In South Carolina, bikers speed past history.
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For black families from Baltimore to Atlanta, the four-block hamlet of Atlantic Beach was once the summer hot spot. In fact, it was the only spot. During the days of segregation, families came from all over the coast to the lone place in this region where black residents could relax on sugary sands and taste the saltiness of the ocean.
The annual black biker rally, which Young describes as “the second best thing, right after Christmas,” started in Atlantic Beach more than three decades ago. Back then, it was a small, family-friendly event that provided an alternative to the overwhelmingly white Harley-Davidson Week in neighboring Myrtle Beach.
But the lure of the Atlantic Beach Bikefest could not be contained. Hundreds of thousands flocked to the fest, and it began to spill into a string of seaside towns and cities known as the Grand Strand, transforming the event into a tawdry beach bacchanal.
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Most of those things won’t be in Atlantic Beach. While the bikefest remains the town’s biggest event of the summer, it also reveals just how much has been lost.
Riders sleep in other cities’ hotels. They dine in other cities’ restaurants. They make memories on other beaches, while Atlantic Beach’s significance slips away.
As neighboring towns were annexed into North Myrtle Beach to widen its tax base and woo developers, Atlantic Beach decided to stand alone, like it always had.
“We wanted to preserve our story,” said Retha Pierce, the town’s outgoing mayor. “But we couldn’t get developers. Everyone else did.”
Washington Post
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DuVernay’s drama takes place entirely in communities of Los Angeles that aren’t usually frequented by Hollywood filmmakers. The crew filmed in Compton, Inglewood, at a federal correction facility in Victorville, Leimert Park and East Los Angeles, as well as various areas of South-Central. LA Times: On Location: 'Middle of Nowhere' finds love in South-Central L.A.
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Writer-director Ava DuVernay stands outside a well-maintained Spanish mission-style duplex in South-Central Los Angeles, home to the heroine of her story, a hardworking nurse who works the night shift and struggles to maintain a relationship with a husband serving a prison sentence.
“When people think South-Central or Compton, it’s all ‘Boyz n the Hood,’’’ said DuVernay, referring to the 1991 saga directed by John Singleton. “It’s never a house like this. It becomes an assumption that people who live in these communities don’t care about their home, don’t work as hard for them and don’t own their homes. That’s one of the reasons why I chose this area. It reminded me of the house I grew up in.”
DuVernay and her small crew spent a week last summer filming in the quiet, well-kept neighborhood on East 91st Street for her film, “Middle of Nowhere.” The critically acclaimed movie won DuVernay the best director award in the U.S. drama category at this year’s Sundance Film Festival -- the first for an African American woman.
"Middle of Nowhere,” an independently produced film set for a theatrical release in October, will receive a prestigious gala screening this week at the Los Angeles Film Festival, sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.
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Before Trayvon Martin was shot, before George Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder in Martin’s death more than six weeks later, before the protests, and before the anguish, there was a confused father worried for his son’s whereabouts. MSNBC: In audio of police call, Trayvon Martin's father worries about his son.
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In recordings provided to NBC News under Florida public records laws, Trayvon’s father, Tracy Martin, speaks with Seminole County dispatchers more than 13 hours after his son was killed.
From the call made to the non-emergency line at the county Sheriff's Office at 8:39 a.m. Feb. 27, it’s clear that Tracy Martin is unaware of what’s happened as he asks if he can file a “missing persons report.”
“I’m from Miami. And my son’s up here with me,” Martin can be heard saying, adding, “He don’t know anybody up here.”
Father and son are from Miami Gardens – outside the city – but the two had traveled to Sanford to visit with Tracy Martin’s girlfriend.
“Do you know the address?” the dispatcher asks.
“What’s the address, baby?” Martin can be heard saying – presumably to his girlfriend.
Martin goes on to say he hasn’t seen his son since 8 or 8:30 the prior night.
A second county dispatcher representing the Sanford Police Department called Martin back sometime later, asking for details about his son. Does his son have a driver’s license?
“No, he don’t,” Mr. Martin says.
“Ok, does not have a DL,” the dispatcher says. “And is he white, black, or Hispanic?”
“He’s black,” Martin says.
“I have a nephew up here,” Martin says, “but he’s not at my nephew house. He hasn’t been over there, either.”
Click here to listen to Tracy Martin's call for help
Click here to listen to police dispatch calling Tracy Martin back
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Just when you thought the Republicans couldn't get any lower. Talking Point Memo: N.C. Senate Blocks Compensation For State Sterilization Victims.
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A plan to compensate victims of forced sterilization in North Carolina stalled in the state Senate on Wednesday.
The North Carolina House had set aside $10 million in the state budget, so as to give victims of its eugenics program $50,000 each, but Senate Republicans rejected the proposal, The Raleigh News & Observer reports.
“You just can’t rewrite history. It was a sorry time in this country,” state Sen. Don East (R) told the Associated Press. “I’m so sorry it happened, but throwing money don’t change it, don’t make it go away. It still happened.”
An estimated 7,600 North Carolinians, both men and women, were sterilized under the authorization of the North Carolina Eugenics Board between 1929 and 1974, according to the N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation. Many of those people were minorities, poor, undereducated, institutionalized, sick or disabled. Between 1,500 and 2,000 victims of state sterilization are estimated to still be alive today. The News & Observer reports that 146 living victims have been verified so far.
“If you could lay the issue to rest, it might be one thing. But I’m not so sure it would lay the issue at rest because if you start compensating people who have been ‘victimized’ by past history, I don’t know where that would end,” Sen. Austin Allran (R) told the AP.
But victims of sterilization, and their advocates, were dismayed at the development.
“They have really devastated victims,” N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation executive director Charmaine Fuller Cooper told the News & Observer. “Even though they are 80-, 90-years-old, they remember it vividly. They had to reopen those old wounds. We have had people come forward and relive those memories and have had people tell their families and nothing happens. They’re angry and they have justification in how they feel.”
Cooper said the foundation’s office will close at the end of the month, when state funding will dry up.
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