Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Sometimes the greatest inventions are those which simplify necessary tasks. Such is the case with Jan Matzeliger – the man who made it possible for ordinary citizens to purchase shoes.
Jan Matzeliger was born in Dutch Guiana (now known as Surinam) in South America. His father was a Dutch engineer and his mother was born in Dutch Guiana and was of African ancestry. His father had been sent to Surinam by the Dutch government to oversee the work going on in the South American country.
At an early age, Jan showed a remarkable ability to repair complex machinery and often did so when accompanying his father to a factory. When he turned 19, he decided to venture away from home to explore other parts of the world. For two years he worked aboard an East Indian merchant ship and was able to visit several countries. In 1873, Jan decided to stay in the United States for a while, landing in Pennsylvania. Although he spoke very little English, he was befriended by some Black residents who were active in a local church and took pity on him. Because he was good with his hands and mechanically inclined, he was able to get small jobs in order to earn a living.
At some point he began working for a cobbler and became interested in the making of shoes. At that time more than half of the shoes produced in the United States came from the small town of Lynn, Massachusetts. Still unable to speak more than rudimentary English, Matzeliger had a difficult time finding work in Lynn. After considerable time, he was able to begin working as a show apprentice in a shoe factory. He operated a McKay sole-sewing machine which was used to attached different parts of a shoe together. Unfortunately, no machines existed that could attach the upper part of a shoe to the sole. As such, attaching the upper part of a shoe to the sole had to be done by hand. The people who were able to sew the parts of the shoe together were called "hand lasters" and expert ones were able to produce about 50 pairs of shoes in a 10 hour work day. They were held in high esteem and were able to charge a high price for their services, especially after they banded together and formed a union called the Company of Shoemakers. Because the hand lasters were able to charge so much money, a pair of shoes was very expensive to purchase. Hand lasters were confident that they would continue to be able to demand high sums of money for their services saying "… no matter if the sewing machine is a wonderful machine. No man can build a machine that will last shoes and take away the job of the laster, unless he can make a machine that has fingers like a laster – and that is impossible." Jan Matzeliger decided they were wrong.....Read more
News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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In the latest effort to reform the Ferguson Police Department, the embattled Missouri city swore in Delrish Moss as the new chief of police yesterday (May 9). As NBC News reports, Moss is the first Black person to run the department.
Moss, 51, takes over the department as it works to implement the terms of its agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which requires a major overhaul of practices that were found to violate the civil rights of the city’s Black residents. The world learned about the St. Louis suburb when White officer Darren Wilson fatally shot unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown on August 9, 2014.
Moss comes from the Miami Police Department, where he served for 32 years. He replaces former chief Tom Jackson, who resigned in March 2015 after the DOJ released a report that detailed systematic racial bias in the department and the local court system.
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Reason number on local off year elections matter. The Milwaukee sheriff's conservative political views, particularly on law enforcement, have made him a darling of the right-wing media, but his critics have called him a "shill". Sadly he often wins most of the city’s majority black wards. Ebony: David Clarke, a Black Cop With a Dangerous Mentality.
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Milwaukee Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr.’s podcast, The People’s Sheriff, begins with a slide-guitar and a boot-stomp beat before segueing into the rich baritone of the sheriff himself. Over the next 40 minutes, Clarke holds forth on the topics of the day: Planned Parenthood is “what I call ‘Planned Genocide.’” Public schools are so dangerous “there should be a body camera on every teacher.” Higher education has become “a racketeering ring.” The Sheriff is also a big fan of presidential candidate Donald Trump: “He gets us. He understands us.”
Clarke, an African American law-enforcement leader who favors cowboy hats and often appears atop a horse, fights crime in Milwaukee, the U.S. city that has been called “the worst place” for African Americans to live. He has become a fixture of conservative media. Glenn Beck presents the sheriff’s podcast on his multimedia juggernaut, The Blaze, and he is a frequent guest on Fox News. Clarke is also popular on Twitter, where he recently tweeted to his 127,000 followers that the young activists of the Black Lives Matter movement—he calls it “Black Lies Matter”—will eventually “join forces with ISIS.” He made sure to note, “You heard it first here.”
Lately, Clarke has been focused on what he calls “the myth of mass incarceration,” warning that recent efforts by some of his fellow conservatives to reduce prison sentences and ease punishment for drug offenses are little more than “cuddling up to criminals.” He believes that rehabilitation is “not something for the criminal-justice system to do” and that incarceration should primarily function as a deterrent to breaking the law.
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Though Clarke’s most vocal opponents are Black leaders, he consistently polls well with Milwaukee’s Black population. In August 2014, Clarke ran a 23 percent lead over his Democratic-primary challenger, a white police lieutenant named Chris Moews, in areas of the city that were at least two-thirds Black, according to a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel analysis. Some local critics chalk up that support to his skin color. But “when you look at older communities of color, there is a little more conservative thought going on there,” state Representative Mandela Barnes said. “In a primary-election electorate, you’re talking about older people,” and Clarke’s tough rhetoric makes them “feel safe.”
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A few years ago, while clearing dried broccoli stalks from the tired soil of our land at Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York, I received a cold call from Boston. On the other end was a Black woman, unknown to me, who wanted to share her story of trying to make it as a farmer.
Through tears, she explained the discrimination and obstacles she faced in a training program she’d joined, as well as in gaining access to land and credit. She wondered whether Black farming was destined for extinction. She said she wanted to hear the voice of another African-heritage farmer so that she could believe “it was possible” and sustain hope.
The challenges she encountered are not new. For decades, the U.S. Department of Agriculture discriminated against Black farmers, excluding them from farm loans and assistance. Meanwhile, racist violence in the South targeted land-owning Black farmers, whose very existence threatened the sharecropping system. These factors led to the loss of about 14 million acres of Black-owned rural land—an area nearly the size of West Virginia.
n 1982, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights extrapolated the statistics on land loss and predicted the extinction of the Black farmer by the year 2000.
They were wrong. While the situation is still dire, with Black farmers comprising only about 1 percent of the industry, we have not disappeared. After more than a century of decline, the number of Black farmers is on the rise.
These farmers are not just growing food, either. The ones you’ll meet here rely on survival strategies inherited from their ancestors, such as collectivism and commitment to social change. They infuse popular education, activism, and collective ownership into their work.
And about that woman who called me from Boston? Years after we first spoke, I called her back. Turns out, she is still at it.
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When asked if he agreed with David Cameron’s assertion that Nigeria was “fantastically corrupt”, the west African country’s tall, austere president thought for a moment and then said softly: “Yes.”
Muhammadu Buhari came to office on a promise to fight Nigeria’s legendary corruption, and he is admired and feared for his tenacity.
He has been in trouble for bad-mouthing his countrymen before, but Buhari, for all his faults, has a reputation for being scrupulously honest.
And, speaking in London on Wednesday after the British prime minister’s embarrassing diplomatic gaffe, he was not about to gloss over the defining issue of his presidency.
“From a personal integrity point of view, nobody will question his personal commitment to dealing with corruption,” said Manji Cheto, a west African risk analyst. “But there are questions about the way he’s dealing with it. It almost feels like the end justifies the means.”
Buhari’s government has made high-profile arrests and launched many investigations into former officials and politicians in the administration of his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan.
However, critics say that those mandated to pursue the alleged thieves are under-funded and, rather than focus on painstakingly securing a few major scalps, use a scattergun approach of intimidation and trial by the public to implicate many.
“I fear none of these cases will stand up in a court of law,” Cheto said. “The current tactics are undermining Nigerian institutions.”
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Lost in most of the coverage of Brazil is the fact that most of that countries poor are worried about the future of Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff. BBC: If Rousseff goes will 47 million Brazilians lose their benefits?
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Mother-of-six Ana Rita de Jesus is worried about the future of Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff.
She works in a womens' pottery cooperative in the secluded rural community of Itamatatiua, in the Northeast state of Maranhao. "I saw on television that they want to remove Dilma from power and end the Bolsa Familia programme," she tells me.
"If that happens, I might have to move to a bigger city, because there are no paying jobs here."
Bolsa Familia is the world's largest cash-transfer programme. A total of 47 million Brazilians - almost a quarter of the population - receive money from it on a monthly basis. It was introduced in 2003 when the Workers' Party came to power under the former president, Lula da Silva.
Without it, Ana Rita de Jesus says she would be in extreme poverty, even with the wage she gets from her day job at the cooperative.
Her monthly income hovers around 65 reais ($18; £12) and this depends on the how many pottery pieces the cooperative sells
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