Commentary: Black Scientists, Explorers, and Inventors
By dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
Saint Elmo Brady (December 22, 1884 – December 25, 1966) was the first African American to obtain a Ph.D. degree in chemistry in the United States. He received his doctorate at the University of Illinois in 1916. Many years later, he told his students that when he went to graduate school, "they began with 20 whites and one other and ended, in 1916 with six whites and one other."
Brady went on to become highly regarded for his impressive teaching career at four historically black colleges, where he energized the chemistry curricula and established new programs for young African American scientists. In November 1916, The Crisis—the monthly magazine of the NAACP—selected Brady for its biographical sketch as "Man of the Month."
Brady was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the eldest of three children. At the age of 20 he left home to attend Fisk University, an all-black college in Nashville, Tennessee, where he was encouraged by his chemistry teacher, Thomas Talley. When Brady graduated with his bachelor’s degree in 1908, he took a teaching position at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama, which was established by Booker T. Washington. Both Washington and the agricultural chemist George Washington Carver were mentors to the young Brady.
After four years at Tuskegee he received a graduate scholarship to the University of Illinois, where he earned a master’s degree in chemistry in 1914 and his doctorate in 1916. He conducted his doctoral research in the respected Noyes Laboratory at the University of Illinois, writing his thesis on the divalent oxygen atom. While at Illinois, Brady became the first African American admitted to Phi Lambda Upsilon, the national chemistry honor society.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Cecilia Rouse, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, called the IRA a “historic piece of legislation” and emphasized the economic benefits for Black households. The Grio: How will the Inflation Reduction Act help Black communities?
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President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law, providing billions of dollars to reduce medical and energy costs for millions of Americans.
“In this historic moment, Democrats sided with the American people and every single Republican in the Congress sided with the special interests in this vote,” said President Biden in his remarks at the IRA signing ceremony. “We can protect the already powerful or show the courage to build a future where everybody has an even shot. That’s the America I believe in.”
As theGrio reported last week, the White House has vowed to ensure that Black communities are not left behind in the landmark federal investments.
In an interview with theGrio, Cecilia Rouse, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, called the Inflation Reduction Act a “historic piece of legislation” and emphasized the economic benefits for Black households.
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Almost three years to the day after powerful Category 5 Hurricane Dorian ripped though the northwestern Bahamas, leaving billions of dollars in damage, the island nation Tuesday welcomed delegates from 17 Caribbean countries and international financing institutions to a two-day high-level summit to address the climate crisis.
The historic meeting, hosted by the Bahamas at a resort in Nassau, comes ahead of the United Nations Climate Conference, more commonly referred to as COP 27, in November in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. The goal, said Prime Minister Philip Davis, who lauded the recent passage of the massive climate change bill in the U.S. Congress, is for Caribbean leaders to speak with one voice.
“Our goal is to construct practical financing solutions, ones that help us move forward rather than lead to further indebtedness,” Davis said at an opening press conference. “I remain optimistic about our collective ability to meet the challenge of climate change.”
Davis said while there is no country on earth where the impact of climate change cannot be felt, for small islands and nations like the Bahamas and others in the Caribbean, “the threat is existential.
“This is the front lines,” he said, citing a report that showed that sea levels rose last year more swiftly in the Caribbean region than anywhere else in the world.
The Bahamas and other nations in the Caribbean know they need to rebuild for resiliency and to adapt to the realities of a warming planet, the prime minister added, a task made harder by the impact of a storm like Dorian, which ripped through the country over Labor Day weekend in 2019.
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In 1986, there were more violent crimes in the U.S. than had ever been recorded in a calendar year. The murder rates in Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., and many other places spiked by double digits. But in newspapers and on TV news, it was Detroit that got branded the worst of the worst: “the murder capital of the United States.”
Detroit had 648 homicides in 1986, the highest per capita murder rate of any major American city. While plenty of Detroiters did what they could to make their neighborhoods safer, fixing the city’s problems felt totally impossible. But one of Detroit’s biggest celebrities thought he might have the answer.
On the first episode of the third season of Slate’s history podcast One Year, we tell the story of Isiah Thomas’ audacious attempt to change Detroit. By 1986, the Pistons point guard had become a star in the NBA, and he wanted to make a difference off the court. That summer, while he was recovering from thumb surgery, the idea came to him: Detroit should have a “No Crime Day.”
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, said “unfortunately” Black Americans continue to be disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and warned that the virus likely won't be eradicated. The Grio: Dr. Fauci encourages Black Americans to get soon-to-come updated booster amid COVID-19 surge
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In a sit-down interview with theGrio, Dr. Fauci, who is also the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said “unfortunately” Black Americans continue to experience disproportionate shares of COVID-19 infection rates, severe health outcomes and deaths compared with white Americans.
Two factors that contribute to this disparity, Fauci pointed out, are exposure because of the type of jobs generally occupied by Black Americans and underlying health conditions that become more severe when exposed to COVID-19.
“African Americans — as a group — generally are employed in jobs that put them out into society, in contact with individuals where the risk of getting infected is greater than someone who can actually do their job behind a computer screen or in front of a zoom,” Fauci told theGrio.
Once exposed, many Black Americans who have underlying health conditions like diabetes, hypertension, obesity, chronic lung disease and kidney disease, among others, are at risk of severe outcomes. “When you look at the relative risk of having a severe outcome — if in fact, you get infected — it disproportionately is against the brown and Black populations,” said Fauci.
Black people should be especially concerned now, as Dr. Fauci notes that the United States is experiencing a “summer surge.”
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The Kenyan opposition leader, Raila Odinga, has rejected as “null and void” the result of a presidential election that he was declared to have lost, and pledged to challenge the outcome with “all constitutional and legal options”.
Odinga said he would channel his complaints through “appropriate authorities”, in his first comments since William Ruto, the deputy president, was declared the winner with 50.49% of the vote by the electoral commission chair, Wafula Chebukati, on Monday.
“We totally and without reservations reject the presidential results announced yesterday by Mr Chebukati,” said Odinga on Tuesday.
His announcement came shortly after four electoral commissioners said they stood by their decision to disown the outcome of the election, saying Chebukati had declared the results without the involvement of all commissioners.
“The results of the presidential elections held in August 9th 2022, declared and announced by Mr Wafula Chebukati on August 15th, 2022 belonged to himself and do not represent the (position) of the commission,” said the deputy chair of the electoral body, Juliana Cherera. The commissioners also said Chebukati did not address some of the political parties’ complaints before calling the win.
Odinga lauded the four commissioners’ “heroism” for denouncing the results, adding: “We are certain that justice will prevail.”
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The organization, JULIAN, is seeking a temporary restraining order against the Lexington police department to demand protection for the town's largely Black population. The Grio: Lawsuit: Mississippi police ‘terrorized’ Black residents in small town
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Police have “terrorized” Black residents in a small Mississippi town by subjecting them to false arrests, excessive force and intimidation, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday by a civil rights organization.
The organization, JULIAN, is seeking a temporary restraining order against the Lexington police department to demand protection for the town’s largely Black population. Lexington is about 63 miles (100 kilometers) north of the capital city of Jackson.
“It’s both unconscionable and illegal for Lexington residents to be terrorized and live in fear of the police department whose job is to protect them,” said Jill Collen Jefferson, president and founder of JULIAN. “We need both the courts and the Department of Justice to step in immediately.”
The town’s city attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The town’s interim police chief, Charles Henderson, cast doubt on many of the allegations in response to an email request for comment from The Associated Press.
“I’m working on moving the Lexington Police Department forward,” Henderson said. “I will say, don’t buy into everything you hear. This is defamation of character.”
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Tallahassee U.S. District Judge Mark Walker said in a 44-page ruling that the “Stop WOKE” act violates the First Amendment and is impermissibly vague. AP: Judge blocks Florida ‘woke’ law pushed by Gov. DeSantis
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A Florida judge on Thursday declared a Florida law championed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis that restricts race-based conversation and analysis in business and education unconstitutional.
Tallahassee U.S. District Judge Mark Walker said in a 44-page ruling that the “Stop WOKE” act violates the First Amendment and is impermissibly vague. Walker also refused to issue a stay that would keep the law in effect during any appeal by the state.
The law targets what DeSantis has called a “pernicious” ideology exemplified by critical race theory — the idea that racism is systemic in U.S. institutions that serve to perpetuate white dominance in society.
Walker said the law, as applied to diversity, inclusion and bias training in businesses, turns the First Amendment “upside down” because the state is barring speech by prohibiting discussion of certain concepts in training programs.
“If Florida truly believes we live in a post-racial society, then let it make its case,” the judge wrote. “But it cannot win the argument by muzzling its opponents.”
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. DeSantis has repeatedly said any losses at the lower court level on his priorities are likely to be reversed by appeals courts that are generally more conservative.
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