History

February is Black history month. This is when we are supposed to honor and recognize the achievements and contributions of Black Americans. It is important for black people to know our history, but it is not just Black history it is American History, it is history in general. Often we concentrate our focus on the few year in and year out. We always center our attention on Dr. King, Harriet Tubman, and George Washington Carver. I am not trivializing their contributions, but by focusing only on them we are trivializing the contributions of the many other people. Here are some important, but less well known aspects of Black/American History

Gwendolyn Brooks first African-American to win Pulitzer Prize

Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church first African-American church

Thomas L. Jennings first African-American to hold a patent

Alexander Twilight first African-American to receive a degree from an American college

Freedom's Journal first African-American owned-and-operated newspaper

James McCune Smith first professionally trained African-American doctor

Macon B. Allen first African-American licensed to practice law in the United States

John Mercer Langston first African-American elected to public office

Oscar Dunn first elected African-American lieutenant governor (Louisiana)

P.B.S. Pinchback of Louisiana first African-American governor (non-elected)

Edward Alexander Bouchet (Yale College)Ph.D in physics first African-American to earn a doctorate degree, also first African-American to graduate from Yale, 1874

Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. first African-American U.S. Army general:

First Lieutenant Vernice Armour First female African-American combat pilot in the U.S. Armed Services:

Manning Marable is a prominent African-American political scholar

John Hope Franklin is a United States historian and past president of the American Historical Association

Abram Lincoln Harris, Jr. was an African American economist, academic, anthropologist and a social critic of blacks in the United States

Toni Morrison is one of the most prominent authors in world literature, having won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 for her collected works

Otelia Cromwell is the first African-American graduate of Smith College. The college later began the tradition of canceling afternoon and evening classes in her honor every November as a venue to talk about race and diversity

Beverly Daniel Tatum is the current president of Spelman College Tatum received her B.A. in psychology from Wesleyan University and her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan.Tatum received her B.A. in psychology from Wesleyan University and her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan

Dr. Jacqueline Bontemps continues to be recognized in numerous publications, resource books, and textbooks for her scholarship in the field of art by African American women

Morgan State University is a historically black college and Maryland's designated public urban university

Southern University and A&M College is one of the most well-known historically black colleges and universities

The Negro Leagues were American professional baseball leagues comprising predominantly African-American teams

The one-drop theory (or one-drop rule) is a historical colloquial term for the standard, found throughout the United States of America, that holds that a person with any trace of sub-Saharan ancestry (however small or invisible) can not be considered white and so unless said person has an alternative non-white ancestry they can claim, such as Native American, Oriental, Arab, Australian aboriginal, they must be considered black