My favorite fact is that, even though Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine, it was 2 Black scientists at Tuskegee Institute who proved his worked and created the process to mass produce it.
It’s not just polio. HeLa cells were used in 70,000 medical studies including the Human Genome Project & developing the COVID vaccine. If there’s ever a cancer cure, HeLa cells will likely be involved.
I think the WHO count of 10 million lives saved is low but I’ll go with it
Number 2 is also kind of easy:
Dr Charles Drew
You probably know Drew created the process for collecting & storing blood plasma. You might know he was the creator of the blood bank. But he didn’t have research assistants or get funding.
It was his doctoral THESIS!
But that isn’t even the craziest part. Remember, most medical
schools were segregated at the time, so he dedicated his life to training Black doctors. For a decade after his death, 2 out of every 3 Black surgeons were personally trained by Dr. Drew.
No that’s not the crazy part
See, when the Nazis attacked Great Britain, Drew was appointed to lead the Red Cross’s Blood for Britain project to figure out how to collect & send blood to British soldiers & civilians. By the time America entered the war, Drew had figured out how to package DRIED PLASMA
He created a refrigerated truck called a “bloodmobile” that could take blood to soldiers on the battlefield. Bloodmobiles were on the scene at every Nazi concentration camp. The surgeons general of the army AND the Navy called his process “the greatest lifesaver of WWII”
His innovations weren’t just used for war. It’s used for cancer treatment, auto accidents, pregnancies and shock. But here’s why it’s impossible to totally how many lives were saved by Dr. Charles Drew.
In America alone, Dr. Charles Drew’s innovation save 2 lives every second.
The 3rd is a gimme, too.
Onesimus.
The enslaved man didn’t just introduce smallpox inoculations to America, because of Onesimus, it’s how Dr Edward Jenner got the idea to use cowpox as the world’s first successful vaccine.
If not for Onesimus, there might not be ANY vaccine
Or an America.
At the beginning of the American Revolution, smallpox ravaged colonial forces. Because of a strong, white antivaxx movement in VA & Mass, vaccine mandates were illegal.
George Washington made the Continental Army get the original ONESIMUS inoculation anyway
So there might not be an America without Onesimus.
It’s estimated that smallpox may have killed as many as half a billion people in the 20th century ALONE.
In 1977, smallpox was the first disease to be eradicated from the earth.
My only question is whether Onesimus gets credit for ALL vaccines or just for smallpox. Can I count the lives saved by the Salk vaccine twice? How about cancer treatments that use blood plasma and HeLa cells?
Anyway…
Who y’all got?
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First of all, let’s get this out of the way, NO ONE deserves hate. It is wrong
Yet, year in and year out, there are more anti-Black hate crimes than any other category.
And according to the latest FBI data there, are nearly 3 times more anti-black crimes than anti-Jewish crimes.
But of course, there are SIX TIMES more Black American than Jewish Americans, so people just divide the number of hate crimes by the percentage of the population and Jewish Americans are more likely to experience hate crimes…
A few years ago, while working for one of the greatest sports franchises of all time, I learned a very important life lesson.
A thread
Every summer, my hometown's recreation department hosted a "stop the violence" summer league to keep kids "off the street."
It eventually became so competitive that teams would recruit out-of-town ringers, leaving local basketball players shut out of their hometown's tournament
My homeboys asked me to sponsor a team and I agreed. Unlike the other teams, no one on my team played college ball. They were essentially regular dudes from the hood who just loved basketball.
Many people don’t know that the phrase “crabs in a barrel” comes from an old Geechie Gullah tale.
A thread:
A long time ago, it was impossible to catch crabs. They were too crafty. Even when they got caught in a net, other crabs would come and free them. Then, one day, a fisherman found a crafty old crab in his net one morning. He was just about to eat it when the the crafty old crab said:
“Please Mr. Fisherman, don’t eat me. Please don’t eat me!”
“Why wouldn’t I eat you?” said the fisherman
“Because I’m crafty, old, & other crabs respect me,” the crab replied.
Fisherman: What good does respect do me? You ain’t nothing but a crab”
Crafty Crab: Well crabs are very stupid, and I’m smart. They’ll believe anything I tell them
7 years ago, I wrote a small piece about a man who was falsely accused of a crime.
A few days later, I got an anonymous telling me to look up the woman they called “the evilest white woman on earth.”
What happened next is the absolute wildest story you’ll ever hear
A thread
The story begins in 2017, when an editor asked me to fill in for a coworker and do a quick write-up about Lamonte McIntyre, who spent 23 yrs in prison for a double murder he didn’t commit.
I thought it was weird his conviction wasn’t actually overturned
Contrary what people who don't read things say, the Virginia legislature is not "targeting" the Klan-affiliated, pro-Confederate hate group that is responsible for the "lost cause" by taking the tax-exempt status from the KKK's little sister.
See, in 1950, Virginia GAVE the UDOC a plot of land to build their HQ in Robert E Lee Park with 3 stipulations
1. They had to finish building in 5 years 2. If they didn't, the land reverted back to the state 3. If they finished, the state would GIVE them an additional $10K
In 1924, lawmakers tasked the census bureau was tasked with figuring out the “national origins of the white population of the US.”
If white people were from a certain country, that country was considered “Good.” Nonwhite people were from “bad countries.”
To preserve the country’s racial composition, they created a formula. Ppl from good countries could immigrate based on the % of pop. in the formula. Immigration from bad countries was limited.
And no Asians
This was why we call it the Asian Exclusion & National Origins Act
In 1952, they changed the formula to allow people from “bad countries” to immigrate at a minimum # 100
Except for Africans. Under the formula, ALL of Africa was considered 1 country
In 1965, civil rights activist convinced LBJ to sign the Immigration & Nationality Act