Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Bessie Virginia Blount (November 24, 1914 – December 30, 2009) was a physical therapist, inventor, and forensic scientist also known by her married name, Bessie Blount Griffin.
Blount, born in Hickory, Virginia, initially attended Union Junior College. She received nurse's training at Community Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, then went on to Panzer College of Physical Education and Hygiene in East Orange, New Jersey. Along the way, she studied physical therapy in Chicago.
(con't)
During World War II, as part of her work with wounded soldiers, Blount devised an apparatus to help amputees feed themselves. She invented an electronic feeding device in 1951, a feeding tube that delivered one mouthful of food at a time, controlled by biting down on the tube. The American Veterans Administration did not accept her invention, so she sold it to the French government. Blount was once a physical therapist to the mother-in-law of Theodore Edison, son of famed inventor Thomas Edison. She and the younger Edison became close friends and while in his home she invented the disposable cardboard emesis basin. This invention was also not accepted by the American Veterans Administration, so she sold it to Belgium. (emphasis mine)
[snip]
In 1953, Blount appeared on the WCAU Philadelphia television show “The Big Idea”, becoming the first African-American and the first woman to be given such recognition. On the program, she stated, "A Black woman can invent something for the benefit of human kind."....Read More
[from The Star Ledger]
...Bessie Blount was also a featured columnist for the African-American newspapers, the N.J. Herald News and the Philadelphia Independent, covering most notably Fidel Castro's visit to Harlem and Lyndon Johnson's nomination in Atlantic City. From her nurse's work in various New Jersey hospitals, she noted and documented the relationship between various states of physical health and handwriting characteristics publishing technical literature on "medical graphology." She perfected the practical application of such to detecting forgeries and invalid documents. This led to a new full career in forensics in the early '70's with document assistance to the Vineland, N.J., and Norfolk, Va., police departments. Bessie advanced to become chief examiner of the Portsmouth, Va., police department until the 1972 Virginia State Crime Lab centralization of all document examination. In 1977, at 63, she became the first American woman accepted for advanced studies in the Document Division of the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory, London, England (Scotland Yard), earning the affectionate nickname, "Mom Bessie." She continued in private practice, training attorneys on the handling of questioned documents and advising various law enforcement agencies. She was a past member/associate of the International Association of Forensic Sciences (IAFS), the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE), Virginia Women in History past honoree (2005) and the Montreal Rehabilitation Institute, among other organizations. She donated her time and services to the Vineland, N.J., NAACP, Camden Community College and the Creative Achievement Academy (Vineland, N.J.). She was an ardent follower of Father Divine's Peace Mission Movement and a vocal advocate for children, veterans, animals, women and human rights.....Her Obituary
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Local versus national treasures. The artworks by famed black artists Charles Alston and Hale Woodruff should stay in LA, not be sold to the Smithsonian. LA Times: Liquidating L.A.'s heritage
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The Golden State Mutual Life Insurance building on West Adams Boulevard is one of Los Angeles' too-often-overlooked historical and cultural treasures.
It was designed in the late 1940s to house what was then the largest African American-owned business west of the Mississippi by one of the city's storied architects, Paul Williams, certainly the most important black American architect of his generation. The building is a wonderful example of his singular capacity to meld utility and livability with an approach to design that wrung every ounce of expressive elegance from whatever style he engaged — in this case, Moderne.
The Golden State headquarters lobby also contains — and not by happenstance — two of the most significant works of art ever created here by African American artists, a complementary pair of murals titled "The Negro in California History" that comprises Charles Alston's "Exploration and Colonization" and Hale Woodruff's "Settlement & Development." Both men were heavily influenced by the great Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, with whom Woodruff studied.
Whether these unique and uniquely important murals remain in Los Angeles, where they have hung since their completion in 1949, will be decided in court hearings that get underway in downtown Monday. Unless the current owners of the Williams building can persuade a judge to intervene, the murals will go to the Smithsonian's new National Museum of African American History and Culture.
How the city finds itself on the verge of losing treasures it barely knows it has is a complex story characterized by, at least, reasonable intentions on all sides.
Hale Woodruff's "Settlement & Development." (Courtesy of gmslife.com)
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The thousands of murals famously dispersed throughout Philadelphia have become an iconic backdrop to a diverse city. Gloucester County Times: Philly tour highlights African American murals
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Portraying pride, culture and a rich history, the size and scope of the murals continues to expand, correlating with the city’s ever-changing landscape.
In celebration of the murals, the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program has announced the Robert M. Greenfield African American Iconic Images Collection. The collection is curated in partnership with the African American Museum in Philadelphia. It includes 47 of the city’s most famous murals portraying African American imagery and can be seen either by tour or through the Mural Arts Program’s website muralarts.org/iconicimages.
“(The program) uses public art for social change,” said Cari Feiler Bender, spokesperson for the Mural Arts program, noting the organization’s unofficial moniker: “Art saves lives.”
Bender also said the mural program aims to educate students around the area about the city’s art history. As part of the collection’s multimedia features, including online lesson plans, an audio tour — narrated by Roots drummer and Philadelphia native ?uestlove) — and video, the program will provide monthly public trolley tours of the city’s murals.
The trolley tours will take place on the last Saturday of each month with the first scheduled for Saturday, March 26.
Photos by Jack Ramsdale for Mural Arts Program"Celebration of Poetry," by Parris Stancell, located at 1531 West Girad Ave. in Philadelphia, was completed in 2004.
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Caught between greedy landlords and an absentee government. Race Talk: Haiti’s displaced
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Today the Center for Constitutional Rights delegation in Haiti visited the Barbancourt II displacement camp in Port-Au-Prince. This camp is home to 310 families who lost their homes in the earthquake and have set up tents, tarps and corrugated metal structures with the few possessions they have left on the corner of an industrial company’s property. We talked with camp leaders and other residents who told us that the owner has notified them that they will be evicted in a week. This is the latest in what has been a series of threats; last November, the owner showed up with twenty four police with guns drawn.
Regardless of what the landowner might like, international law concerning the treatment of internally displaced people does not permit him to effectuate (or the Haitian government to permit) forced evictions of this population. The Inter-American Commission said as much in the precautionary measures it issued to Haiti as a result of a petition CCR worked on with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and other Haitian and US human rights partners. But the people of Barbancourt II need help. Now.
Barbancourt II is not a place that these families want to settle into. To make matters worse, there is a several foot deep, fetid pool of human and other waste that has taken over a large area of the back portion of the camp. Residents told us that the people whose tents abut the pool are breaking out in nasty rashes and constantly fight off disease-carrying mosquitoes. The residents are disgusted that, solely as a result of their displacement, they are being forced to live in such conditions. The camp residents were very clear that they want to move into safe, long-term housing. The problem is that they have no place to go and if they are evicted they will be out on the streets.
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This is becoming a larger issue across the country. Is it racism, the effects of poverty, or a mixture of the two. Winston-Salem Journal: Office of Civil Rights to examine discipline of Black students.
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The U.S. Office of Civil Rights will visit six Winston-Salem/Forsyth County schools next month in its review of whether discipline policies, especially for black male students, are in line, school officials said Wednesday.
The visits to conduct interviews, part of a review that began a year ago, will take place the week of April 4, said Allison Tomberlin, general counsel for the school system.
"We are happy to have them come and look at our data," Tomberlin said. "We don't have a concern that they're going to come and look at things and find something wrong."
The school system has come under criticism from the NAACP and a local leadership forum over statistics indicating possible disproportionate punishment of black students. African-American students are suspended more than any other racial group in the district. Black males accounted for 63.8 percent of suspensions in 2009-2010, according to school data, but represent only about 13 percent of all students.
The Office of Civil Rights, which is part of the U.S. Department of Education, plans to visit Mount Tabor and Reynolds high schools, Hanes, Jefferson and Mineral Springs middle schools and Mineral Springs elementary.
Tomberlin said the civil-rights office has asked for meeting rooms at the schools in which to interview staff and students and for reviewing discipline files. The office has also asked for suggestions on where it could hold a town hall-style meeting with the public to discuss concerns about student discipline. No information on that forum was available Wednesday.
In addition, schools are being asked to describe how they handle discipline, at what point discipline matters are turned over to an assistant principal and who enters discipline information into the computer system.
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[] Alabama owes Mrs. Recy Taylor an apology by Deoliver47
[] Send Black urban youth back to the Plantation says Tea Party candidate for Chris Lee's seat by Lefty Coaster