Inventions that would not exist without Black Women.
—A THREAD—
Valerie Thomas, NASA physicist, invented 3D Movies
In 1977, she began to develop the illusion transmitter, the 1st mechanism that allowed images to be viewed in 3D using concave mirrors & rays of light.
Dr. Gladys West helped develop the GPS (Global Positioning System). She is responsible for the math used in GPS technology.
You can thank her the next time you use any navigation device like Google Maps to get around!
Dr. Patricia Era Bath, 1981. Inventor of the Laserphaco Probe, used worldwide in eye surgery to remove cataracts. Bath founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness.
She restored sight to millions of people suffering from cataracts.
Dr. Shirley Jackson research paved the way for numerous developments in telecommunication including the Touch-Tone Telephone, the Portable Fax, Caller ID & Call Waiting.
She was the first black woman to ever earn a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Mary Beatrice Kenner changed the world of feminine care with the invention of the sanitary belt, the forerunner of sanitary pads.
Her creation was considered to be the first form of modern menstruation protection.
In 1919, Alice Parker invented a gas furnace that supplied central heating for entire homes and buildings! It became the foundation for modern heating.
The first home security system and CCTV was invented by a black nurse, Marie Van Brittan Brown.
Thanks to her, we can all feel safer in our homes.
For all those who love baking, but want the task to be made easy as possible. Anna M. Mangin foresaw your needs. She invented the pastry fork in 1891.
The ironing board is a product was invented by sarah boone an african american women who was born enslaved.
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In 1963, 15 black girls were arrested for protesting segregation laws at the Martin theatre. Aged 12-15, they were locked in an old, abandoned stockade for 45 days without their parents knowledge. They came to be known as The Leesburg Stockade Girls,
A THREAD
The girls marched from Friendship Baptist Church to the Martin Theater, attempting to buy tickets at the front entrance, defying segregation laws. Police attacked with batons and arrested them, transporting them to a Civil War-era stockade in Leesburg, Georgia, 15 miles away.
The stockade had no beds, a broken toilet, and only hot water from a shower. The girls slept on concrete floors in sweltering heat, ate undercooked burgers, and drank from a single cup. Parents were not informed of their location for weeks, heightening their fear and isolation.
On this day in 1923, a lie by a white woman that she’d been sexually assaulted by a black man, led to the destruction of the predominantly African American town of Rosewood, Florida, thus the Rosewood Massacre.
A THREAD
Rosewood was a quiet, self-sufficient town in Florida. By 1900 the population in Rosewood had become predominantly African-American. Some people farmed or worked in local businesses, including a sawmill in nearby predominantly white town.
A rumour spread by a white woman, Fanny Taylor, sparked a massacre in the predominantly black town. Taylor claimed she was sexually assaulted in her house by a Black man. A group of white men believed her claims that she was raped by Jesse Hunter, a recently escaped convict.
The Watch Night Services in Black communities can be traced back to gatherings on December 31, 1862, also known as “Freedom’s Eve.”
THREAD
On that night, black people came together in churches and private homes all across the nation, anxiously awaiting news that the Emancipation Proclamation actually had become law.
Just a few months earlier, on September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the executive order that declared enslaved people in the rebelling Confederate States legally free. However, the decree would not take effect until the start of the new year.
In 1780, Paul Cuffee, his brother & 5 other Black men petitioned the Massachusetts legislature demanding the right to vote.
He won free black men the right to vote in Massachusetts on the basis of "No Taxation Without Representation."
THREAD
Paul Cuffee was born Paul Slocum on Jan. 17, 1759, Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts, to Kofi Slocum, a farmer & freed slave, and Ruth Moses, a native American of the Wampanog nation.
In 1766 he & his brother John inherited a 116 acre farm from their father in Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts, near Dartmouth. He changed his surname to Kofi, spelled "Cuffee." The name Kofi suggests that his father came from the Ashanti or Ewe people of Ghana.
On this day in 1831, Over 60,000 enslaved Jamaicans, led by one man, Baptist preacher, Samuel Sharpe, went on to carry out one of the largest Slave Rebellions in West Indian history.
A THREAD
So who was the Baptist preacher, Samuel Sharpe?
He was a baptist deacon and the leader of the native Baptists in Montego Bay. Also he was an avid follower of the growing abolitionist movement in London.
He led a plan for a peaceful general strike to start on Christmas Day in 1831, with the enslaved jamaicans demanding: —more freedom and
—a working wage
and refusing to work unless their demands were met by the state owners and managers.