A daily Black History Month fact that has nothing to do with George Washington Carver, MLK, Jr., or Harriet Tubman. Promise!
In honor of Fashion Week: Jan Matzeliger was born in Suriname to a Dutch father and an African mother in 1852. He moved to the United States at 18 and became a shoemaker. At the time, shoes were handmade…until Matzeliger revolutionized the process by inventing the shoe lasting machine. His machine attached the top of the shoe to the sole in less than a minute. Working by hand, a person could make 50 pairs of shoes a day, but his machine could produce between 150 to 700 pairs of shoes a day. When Matzeliger died of tuberculosis at the age of 37, he hadn't yet seen any profit from his invention, although he left lucrative stock to his friends and his church. Perhaps the most important result of his machine was that as production costs lowered, the prices of shoes dropped by 50 percent, making shoes far more affordable for the poor.
This concludes your daily dose of BHM.
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Faye Wattleton, Cicely Tyson and Nichelle Nichols. Not sure if they count since she's still alive and all. Didn't know much about them until recently.
Stereohyped, As a heads-up take a look at Blacks in Russia. "The Colchians" aka. the Black Russians.
Pre-dating 1912 discovery. - As far back as 522-443, with early reference in 350/400 AD.
There is a wealth of Black history there that isn't being told.
Also Peter the Great General Abram Petrovich Gannibal, builder of St. Petersburg.
Stereohyped,
another person of great interest in the anti slavery fight, was John Brown (1800-1859) He sacrificed everything, his family and his standing for his fight against Southern slavery.
Also the Quakers, the only White community that believed in the humanity of the Blacks man/woman
They fought hard to get slavery abolished, while all other religions were telling their flock that Blacks didn't have souls, that they were mud people denied humanity by God himself.
Thank you, Lauren for these non-stereotypical BHM heroes/heroines.
TruthTeller:
General Abram Petrovich Gannibal, that you mentionned in your post, is the great grandfather of the legendary Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Pushkin
Black Pushkin, yeah!
It's nice to see something postive about blacks of the past other than them being 'slaves'.
I love these black history moments. Keep them coming, Lauren, we all appreciate this!!
Msim, I did know that but I wanted it to be a discover for those who didn't know.
Gannibal was a Russian hero who was an adopted son of Peter the Great and became a great general who commanded a Provence in Russia.
He was an Ethiopian child adopted by "Peter the great" and sent to Paris for his education, then after that he distinguished himself in battle and was given the rank of general (only noblemen could be generals).
He laid out the design and construction of St. Petersburg, then created a modern form of battlement to protect Russia from it's enemies.
His great grandson Alexander Pushkin was quite proud of his African ancestry and wrote of it many times, but then that's not uncommon as in England the royal family also has Ethiopian blood.
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The above is the short story.
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more truthteller please.
Thank you Chic Noir.
Russians love literature, though the Russian language doesn't do it justice, at least not like French(IMHO),but they are unanimous in their belief that Pushkin was the greatest poet ever, even the KK K types know of his African ancestry and still love him.
do svi dan niye Chic Noir