COMMENTARY: AFRICAN AMERICAN SCIENTIST AND INVENTORS
By Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Lloyd Augustus Hall (June 20, 1894 - January 2, 1971) was an African American chemist, who contributed to the science of food preservation. By the end of his career, Hall had amassed 59 United States patents, and a number of his inventions were also patented in other countries..
Lloyd Hall was born in Elgin, Illinois on June 21, 1738. Hall's grandmother came to Illinois via the "Underground Railroad" at the age of sixteen. His grandfather came to Chicago in 1837 and was one of the founders of the Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church. He became the church's first pastor in 1841. Hall's parents, Augustus and Isabel, both graduated high school. Although Lloyd was born in Elgin, his family moved to Aurora, Illinois. He graduated in 1912 from East Side High School in Aurora. After graduating school, he studied pharmaceutical chemistry at Northwestern University, earning a B.S. and a master's at the University of Chicago. At Northwestern, Hall met Carroll L. Griffith, who with his father, Enoch L. Griffith, founded Griffith Laboratories. The Griffiths later hired Hall as their chief chemist.
After leaving university, Hall was hired by the Western Electric Company after a phone interview. The company refused to hire Hall after they discovered he was black. Hall then went to work as a chemist for the Department of Health in Chicago followed by a job as chief chemist with the John Morrell Company.
During World War I Hall served with the United States Ordnance Department where he was promoted to Chief Inspector of Powder and Explosives.
Lloyd Hall devoted much of life and efforts to and food science curing meat, particularly to improving a curing salt marketed by Griffith Laboratories known as flash-drying. This product originated with German chemist Karl Max Seifert, developer of a process whereby solutions of sodium chlorine and one or more secondary salts were sprayed onto hot metal and rapidly dried, producing crystals of the secondary salts encased inside a shell of sodium chloride. Seifert patented the process in 1934 and sold the rights to Griffith Laboratories. The adaptation of Seifert's process specifically for meat curing was then patented by company owner Enoch L. Griffith, who proposed nitrates and nitrites, well-known curing agents, as the secondary butt salts.
Lloyd Hall is often falsely credited with the original invention of Seifert's process. However, Hall took a leading role in developing the patent after it was sold to Griffith Laboratories, adding hygroscopic agents such as corn sugar and glycerine to inhibit caking of the powder. Most of his patents in meat curing dealt with either preventing caking of the curing composition, or remedying undesired effects caused by the anticaking agents.
Hall also investigated the role of spices in food preservation. It was common knowledge that certain seasonings had antimicrobial properties, but Hall and co-worker Carroll L. Griffith found that some spices carried many bacteria, as well as yeast and mold spores. To counter these problems, they patented in 1938 a means to sterilize spices through exposure to ethylene oxide gas, a fumigant. This method was all but abandoned upon the discovery that ethylene oxide was a toxic carcinogen. Hall and Griffith later promoted the use of ethylene oxide for the sterilization of medical equipment, helping to advance an idea that had been around for several years.
Hall also invented new uses of antioxidants to prevent food spoilage, especially the onset of rancidity in fats and oils. Aware that unprocessed vegetable oils frequently contained natural antioxidants such as lecithin that slowed their spoilage, he developed means of combining these compounds with salts and other materials so that they could be readily introduced to other foods.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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As Congress debates new rules for food stamp recipients, race is one thing Republicans backing the proposal don’t want to discuss.
Legislators are currently discussing a bill that would reform the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, often referred to as food stamps. The reforms would create stricter work requirements for able-bodied adults between the ages of 18 and 59, requiring them to provide monthly proof that they are working a minimum number of hours a week or are in a job training program. Those who don’t meet these requirements would lose their spot in the program, a change that could cut some $20 billion over a 10-year period.
Republicans support the new measure and argue that the program should be doing a better job of promoting self-sufficiency.
But as Vox’s Tara Golshan explained in April, SNAP already has work requirements, leaving some congressional Democrats and policy experts to argue that the legislation is written in a way that aims to kick people out of the program.
And during a House Agriculture Committee meeting in April, Rep. David Scott (D-GA) noted that race plays a part in discussions of food stamps and public assistance.
“The image of able-bodied men not working are African-American men in the minds ― not in everybody’s minds, but there are unfortunately people out there who have this mental disposition,” Scott, a black legislator, said. He argued that the bill was “filled with racial vicissitudes,” adding that the new work requirements played on stereotypes that cast African Americans receiving public assistance as lazy, despite evidence that more whites use public assistance.
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London Breed, a longtime community activist who grew up in public housing, has won San Francisco’s mayoral election, becoming the city’s first black female mayor.
“No matter where you come from, no matter what you decide to do in life, you can do anything you want to do,” Breed said Wednesday on the steps of City Hall. “Never let your circumstances determine your outcome in life.”
Her victory comes after the second-place finisher, Mark Leno, a former state senator who hoped to become the city’s first openly gay mayor, conceded defeat on Wednesday, about a week after the city’s voters went to the polls.
“She is a remarkable young woman and she is going to do a very fine job,” Leno said Tuesday. “Her success is San Francisco’s success.”
Jane Kim, the third-place finisher, said: “I’m proud to live in the largest city in America with a woman as mayor.”
Breed will be the only woman among the mayors of the United States’ largest 15 cities.
Vote counting in San Francisco is a protracted process, thanks to the large number of people who vote by mail and the city’s ranked choice voting system, which allows voters to select their top three candidates. Though Breed won the most first-place votes, Leno held a narrow lead on election night.
However, with most of the ballots processed and an advantage of 2,177 votes, Breed’s current lead is believed to be insurmountable.
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In Baltimore, a 20-year gap in life expectancy exists between the city’s poor, largely African American neighborhoods and its wealthier, whiter areas. A baby born in Cheswolde, in Baltimore’s far-northwest corner, can expect to live until age 87. Nine miles away in Clifton-Berea, near where The Wire was filmed, the life expectancy is 67, roughly the same as that of Rwanda, and 12 years shorter than the American average. Similar disparities exist in other segregated cities, such as Philadelphia and Chicago.
These cities are among the most extreme examples of a national phenomenon: Across the United States, black people suffer disproportionately from some of the most devastating health problems, from cancer deaths and diabetes to maternal mortality and preterm births. Although the racial disparity in early death has narrowed in recent decades, black people have the life expectancy, nationwide, that white people had in the 1980s—about three years shorter than the current white life expectancy. African Americans face a greater risk of death at practically every stage of life.
Except in the case of a few specific ailments, such as nondiabetic kidney disease, scientists have largely failed to identify genetic differences that might explain racial health disparities. The major underlying causes, many scientists now believe, are social and environmental forces that affect African Americans more than most other groups.
To better understand how these forces work, I spent nearly a year reporting in Sandtown and other parts of Baltimore. What I found in Kiarra’s struggle was the story of how one person’s efforts to get better—imperfect as they may have been—were made vastly more difficult by a daunting series of obstacles. But it is also a bigger story, of how African Americans became stuck in profoundly unhealthy neighborhoods, and of how the legacy of racism can literally take years off their lives. Far from being a relic of the past, America’s racist and segregationist history continues to harm black people in the most intimate of ways—seeping into their lungs, their blood, even their DNA.
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Black women turn out at incredibly high and reliable voting rates, something that institutions like the Democratic Party are finally starting to notice. When Jones won, praise for black female voters was far and wide. Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez tweeted: “Let me be clear: We won in Alabama and Virginia because #BlackWomen led us to victory. Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party, and we can’t take that for granted. Period.”
The question remains: If black women will save us, who will save black women? Who will come to our aid and take action to support us when we’re assaulted and violated by the very same people meant to uphold the law?
I watched the video of Chikesia Clemons’ arrest in a Waffle House in Saraland, Ala., and I can only imagine the horror she experienced when three white male police officers forced her to the ground, pulling her dress and exposing her breasts. Or the fear in the pit of her stomach as one officer choked her and another threatened to break her arm.
This is the intersection of state violence and sexual abuse, which so many black women have experienced from institutionally powerful white men. Clemons was violated, humiliated, and then arrested and charged for her own assault.
We’ve seen it time and again: Every time high-profile instances of police violence against people of color occur, there is a concerted effort to criminalize the victims, to make it look as if they brought about their own abuse. There is always a narrative chock-full of bold lies, whether it’s the fabricated presence of a gun or the innocuous charge of “resisting arrest.”
Whenever women are assaulted, we’re hit with the misogynistic “She was asking for it” response that says we brought our trauma on ourselves and we should suffer the consequences. This can have a direct impact on whether or not charges are pressed—and against whom.
As a black woman, I’m left with a new question: Why is there such fascination with and fetishization of black women’s strength, but such failure to support us when we experience trauma? Our strength is either celebrated for its usefulness or perceived as a threat and a reason to harm us. Our vulnerability and humanity are always ignored.
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Update on the controversy surrounding the choice of singer Fabiana Cozza to portray a very important singer/songwriter in the world of Brazilian samba, the beloved Dona Ivone Lara, who recently passed away at the age of 97. Those following this story surely know by now that, after criticism that she was too light-skinned to portray a darker-skinned woman such as Dona Ivone, Cozza recently relinquished the role even as Ivone Lara’s family defended her selection. Personally, I think Fabiana made the right decision, again, not because I question her blackness, but because of all of the ways a light-skinned black woman portraying a dark-skinned black woman can be interpreted in a racist society as well as how such such a portrayal can be manipulated in the future.
Fabiana’s decision, even though under pressure, reminded me of the young actress Amandla Stenberg, who admitted to stepping down from a role in billion-dollar grossing blockbuster Black Panther, that had such a huge influence on black Brazilians. In an interview, Stenberg revealed that as she got closer and closer to winning a role in the film, she looked around and saw all of the darker-skinned actors in the film and decided that, having such representation, in a film with such investment and so many black people in such a huge film, was much bigger than a role for her in a film. I certainly hope that Fabiana sees this latest controversy in the same manner and understands that, if black people are to be one family, we must all recognize certain situations in which some of us may have certain privileges that the rest of us don’t have.
Throughout the piece below, featuring Cozza’s post in which she relinquished the role, several people weighed in on the controversy through social media in comments that were recently featured on a Buzzfeed article.
In a letter, Fabiana Cozza renounces role as Dona Ivone Lara in the theater
Singer says that by being mixed was criticized for being “too white for the role”. “I renounce it resign because the skin color of Dona Ivone Lara now needs, still, to be another artist, blacker more than me,” she says
By Newsroom of Revista Fórum
Singer Fabiana Cozza renounced the role of Dona Ivone Lara who she would play in the musical “Dona Ivone Lara – um sorriso negro” (a black smile). According to her, the samba singer, who died on April 16 at 97 years of age, “now needs, still, to be another artist, blacker than me.”
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