Black History Fact Of The Day: Lloyd Ferguson

Red, Black & Green Elsie Law LogoLloyd Ferguson is the first African American to receive a Ph.D in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley.

While a student at the University of California, Lloyd Ferguson created a compound that is capable of gaining and losing oxygen extremely quickly. This compound has been used as a source of oxygen for submarines.

Mr. Ferguson also created the first doctoral program in chemistry at an African American university; Howard University.

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Frederick Douglass’s Advice To Dr. Daniel Hale Williams

Dr Daniel Hale WilliamsFrederick Douglass was reportedly a distant relative of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, the first physician to perform open-heart surgery. Frederick Douglass gave Dr. Williams the following profound advice: “The only way you can succeed is to override the obstacles in your path; by the power that is within you to do what you hope to do!”

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The National Black Convention’s 1853 Statement (Still Relevant Today)

“As a people, we feel ourselves to be not only deeply injured, but grossly misunderstand. Our white fellow-countrymen do not know us. They are strangers to our character, ignorant of our capacity, oblivious of or mist and progress, and are misinformed as to the principles and ideas that control and guide us, as a people. The great mass of American citizens estimate us, as being a characterless and purposeless people: And hence we hold up our heads, if at all, against the withering influence of a nation’s scorn and contempt.”

[SOURCE: “Slavery In New York”]

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The History Of Black Business In New York: Part 1

South Carolina 1899“I fact, a third of all free black people lived and worked in white households and those who did not labored to support themselves in a tightly restricted job market. Four out of ten black men were in the unskilled rank and their proportion in the skilled trades sharply declined during the first decade of the nineteenth century. White workers employed their numerical advantage and political power to push black laborers from occupations like street carting, in which black people gained a foothold during the labor shortages of the Revolutionary era, beginning an exclusion from the city’s transportation industries that lasted well into the twentieth century. Black women operated in a more restricted labor market, limited to domestic and service trades like household servants, seamstresses, and laundresses.” –From, “Slavery In New York”

[SIDEBAR: Stay tuned for a post on how Black New Yorkers combated this, later in the week. The post will be about the New York African Society For Mutual Relief.]

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The History Of The Black Vote: Part 1

Black Voters“The first premise of the argument to deny black New Yorkers the vote asserted that African-Americans were by nature incapable of responsibly exercises this precious right of self-rule. ‘The minds of the blacks are not competent to vote,’ argued one [New York State Constitutional] Convention member. ‘They are too ignorant to know whether their vote is given to elevate another to office, or to hang themselves upon the gallows,’ said another. Left to their own devices the argument went, blacks would sell their votes to the highest bidder- who, thesis Republicans feared, would probably be federalists. Suffrage restriction recapitulated and strengthened the thinking of the American Colonization Society, which asserted that freedom was one thing but political equality quite another. Republican convention delegate Peter Livingston was willing to grant blacks freedom, legal protection, and religious liberty. ‘But if they are dangerous to your political institutions,’ he warned his fellow delegates, ‘put not a weapon in their hands to destroy you.’…

To such thinking there could be no right hand response. ‘Do our prejudices against their color destroy their rights as citizens?’ Asked Federalist Abraham Van Vechten. White New Yorkers decided that they did. The convention removed all property restrictions on white men only to impose a $250 property requirement on black voters. By 1826, further limits on white voting were removed, yet by then only sixteen blacks in New York County could vote.”-From, “Slavery in New York”

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WDIA: The First Radio Station In America Programmed For Black Listeners

WDIAWhite-owned radio station WDIA, first went on the air on June 7, 1947. Its original musical format was country and light pop. However, this programming was not successful for station owners John Pepper and Dick Ferguson. Therefore, they decided to change the format and broadcast black music. The change in format made the station a success.

Musicians like B.B. King and Rufus and Carla Thomas were hired to be on-air personalities at WDIA.

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