Commentary: Black Scientists, Explorers, and Inventors
By dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
Elijah J. McCoy (May 2, 1844 – October 10, 1929) was a Canadian-born engineer and inventor of African American descent. McCoy is notable for 57 US patents, most having to do with the lubrication of steam engines. McCoy was born in Canada, to parents who fled slavery in the US. As a teenager, McCoy trained in Scotland as an engineer. Later as an adult, unable to find work as an engineer in the United States, he took a job working for a railroad. Working around trains, McCoy subsequently invented a lubrication device to make railroad operations more efficient. There is also evidence that although a popular expression was not created by his admirers, fans of his work made it popular.
Elijah McCoy was born on May 2, 1844, in Colchester, Ontario, Canada, to George and Mildred Goins McCoy. The McCoys were fugitive slaves who escaped from Kentucky to Canada via the Underground Railroad. In 1847, the large McCoy family returned to the United States, settling in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
Starting at a young age, McCoy showed a strong interest in mechanics. His parents arranged for him to travel to Scotland at the age of 15 for an apprenticeship in mechanical engineering. He returned home to Michigan after becoming certified as a mechanical engineer.
Despite his qualifications, McCoy was unable to find employment as an engineer in the United States due to racial barriers. In the 1890’s skilled professional positions were not available for African Americans regardless of their education. So McCoy accepted a position as a fireman and oiler for the Michigan Central Railroad. It was during working directly on trains that he developed his first major inventions.
After studying the inefficiencies inherent in the existing system of oiling axles, McCoy invented a lubricating cup that distributed oil evenly over the engine's moving parts. He obtained a patent for this invention, which allowed trains to run continuously for long periods of time without pausing for maintenance.
McCoy continued to refine his devices, receiving nearly 60 patents over the course of his life. While the majority of his inventions related to lubrication systems, he also developed designs for an ironing board, a lawn sprinkler, and various other machines. Lacking the capital with which to manufacture his lubricators in large numbers, McCoy typically sold his patent rights to his employers or sold them to investors. Although McCoy's achievements were recognized in his own time, his name did not appear on the majority of the products that he devised due to racism by white purchasing agents. In 1920, toward the end of his life, McCoy formed the Elijah McCoy Manufacturing Company to produce lubricators bearing his name.
The creation of the popular expression "The real McCoy", meaning "the real thing", has been incorrectly attributed to Elijah McCoy's oil-drip cup invention. The expression was already 50 years old at the time. One theory is that railroad engineers looking to avoid inferior copies would request it by name, and inquire if a locomotive was fitted with "the real McCoy system".
This theory is mentioned in Elijah McCoy's biography at the National Inventors Hall of Fame. His biography quotes the December 1966 issue of Ebony in an advertisement for Old Taylor bourbon whiskey: "But the most famous legacy McCoy left his country was his name." Also a 1985 pamphlet printed by the Empak Publishing Company also notes the phrase's origin but does not elaborate. But regardless of the phrase’s true origins, there is a lot of evidence that this myth made the "The real McCoy" expression popular with urban trendsetters in the black community, who then made the expression part of pop-culture.
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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR
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“Finally!”
That’s Georgia nonprofit leader Deborah Scott’s reaction to this year’s election, where massive Democratic turnout looks to have flipped the state to a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1992.
“We’ve been trying to get here for the last 15 years,” the executive director of Georgia Stand-Up, a group that works on civic engagement and other issues, told Vox. “I’m so happy that we’re at this moment.”
It’s a moment many Democrats are celebrating — and analyzing — even as the state heads for a recount. And around the country, millions of Americans are paying attention — finally — to organizers in Georgia, many of them Black women, who have spent years trying to get people to the polls.
Many say it’s been an uphill battle against restrictions designed to keep Black voters away. That battle got nationwide attention in 2018 after Democrat Stacey Abrams narrowly lost the gubernatorial election to Republican Brian Kemp, the secretary of state who had presided over purges that eliminated more than a million people from the state’s voting rolls between 2012 and 2016.
Abrams went on to found a voting rights group called Fair Fight, whose nonprofit arm sued the state in November 2018, arguing that its election policies disproportionately impacted — and even disenfranchised — Black and other voters of color in the state, as P.R. Lockhart reported for Vox at the time.
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Joe Biden thanked Black voters in his victory speech, saying “you’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.” But many remained skeptical that he would usher in real change. New York Times: Black Voters Helped Deliver Biden a Presidential Victory. Now What?
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When President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. thanked Black voters in his victory speech on Saturday night for rescuing his campaign when it was at its lowest point and declared “you’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours,” Kourtney Neloms did not cheer like the hundreds in attendance.
Instead, listening to Mr. Biden speak in Wilmington, Del., from her hometown, Detroit, she felt somewhat skeptical.
“OK, let’s see if he’s really being honest about this,” Ms. Neloms, 42, who is Black, recalled thinking. “My prayer is that it’s not just lip service.”
While Black voters across the country celebrated the election of Mr. Biden and his vice president, Senator Kamala Harris of California, many said in recent days that the administration would have to prove its sincerity when it came to addressing the country’s vast inequalities and systemic barriers.
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The first Black baby doll with an afro has been inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame on Thursday (Nov. 5), reports the Associated Press.
Baby Nancy, which debuted in the U.S. in 1968, was the “was the inaugural doll for Shindana Toys, a California company launched in 1968 by Operation Bootstrap Inc.” and was created to “reflect Black pride, Black talent, and most of all, Black enterprise,” the Toy Hall of Fame noted.
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A new Miss USA has been crowned! Asya Branch, whose first accomplishment was becoming the first-ever Black Miss Mississippi, can now be referred to as Miss USA 2020 according to Good Morning America.
The 22-year-old student who attends the University of Mississippi won the title Monday night at the Graceland Exhibition Center in Memphis, Tenn.
In an earlier interview with Miss Mississippi USA before the competition, Branch spoke about how she plans to tackle criminal justice and prison reform during her tenure as Miss USA 2020. Her father being incarcerated for 10 years has inspired her to advocate for reform.
“I will continue fighting for criminal justice and prison reform; that’s something that is near and dear to my heart,” Branch said on “GMA.” “I hope to continue making change within throughout my reign.”
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Before the opening weekend of the Big Ten football season, the conference sent a press release outlining the ways each school would support the league’s “United as One” social justice campaign. Many of those efforts involved stickers, logos, T-shirts, and other ways of distributing messages such as “End Racism” and “Equality.” But it was the University of Nebraska, alone among Big Ten teams, that made a nod to history, using a helmet sticker to pay tribute to the school’s first Black football player, George Flippin.
As it turns out, Flippin’s story resonates far beyond Nebraska, illuminating racial dynamics within college football and American culture more broadly. It also raises the thorny question of what we should remember when we look at the past. For Nebraska, the choice to honor Flippin was a gesture of unity in the midst of racial unrest. “In a lot of ways I think society should mirror locker rooms when you have good cultures built,” Nebraska coach Scott Frost remarked when asked about the tribute to Flippin. The reality of Flippin’s time at Nebraska, however, suggests that any celebration needs to be coupled with a reckoning.
Flippin was born in Ohio three years after the end of the Civil War, eventually moving to Kansas and then Nebraska. He arrived at the state university in 1891, a few months after the school organized its first football team. By the fall of that year, Flippin had been recruited to join the squad, and he saw his first live action against Iowa on Thanksgiving weekend. It was the fifth game in Nebraska’s history and the first against an out-of-state opponent.
Nebraska (or the “Old Gold Knights” as they were known that year) lost that day, but Flippin caught the eye of the victors. “For Nebraska,” the Iowa student newspaper declared, “Flippin, the colored left half back, undoubtedly did the best work.”
What that statement lacks in detail it makes up for in significance. At the very beginning of Nebraska’s football history, the player carrying the banner for the state was a Black man. While there were a handful of other Black athletes at predominantly white colleges at the time—George Jewett at Michigan, William Henry Lewis at Harvard—Flippin was the only one building a football tradition from the ground up.
Over the next three seasons, Flippin continued to lead the way. The Illinois student newspaper recognized him as Nebraska’s “star.” A Kansas newspaper declared that he “had no rival in the West.” And reports out of Colorado said that Flippin “gave Denver more trouble” than anyone on Nebraska’s team because of his “weight, strength, and good playing.”
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Harpist Charles Overton had started to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic curtailing his work when Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd. With the U.S. hit by the relentless scourges of COVID-19 and violence against African Americans, Overton felt distant from the bright, complex music he produced with his harp.
“I just didn’t have it in myself to be making music at that time,” he says. “I thought, ‘What does the world need from me right now in terms of my music and my art?’ I didn’t think it needed anything.”
Then, an old friend, Boston Symphony Orchestra associate principal horn Richard Sebring, reached out to Overton with a scrap of music Sebring had composed following Floyd’s death. The heartfelt, simple melody helped bring Overton, who had studied with Sebring at Berklee College of Music, back to his instrument. The two began a collaboration that blossomed into a piece Overton titled “Listen, to the Cry of Your Fellow Man.” In October, the contemplative harp and horn duet became part of the Boston Symphony’s “Encore BSO Recitals,” a weekly online series featuring new performances.
“It essentially turned into a conversation between us,” Sebring says. “It brings tears to my eyes to hear [Overton] play. It’s so exquisite. It’s like a fine piece of jewelry with such detail. He has a beautiful touch and warm heart in his playing.”
The forceful but nuanced rise and fall of “Listen” shows off the skills of a 26-year-old already in complete control of his craft. Overton’s journey began in fifth grade in Richmond, Virginia, when his music teacher advised him to switch from the violin to the harp. “I had had a trial lesson and I was just floored because you have to try very hard to make the harp sound bad,” Overton says. “[At this point] I was really, really bad at the violin and, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard really, really bad violin playing, but it’s something that’s just so terrible.”
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