Concerned Black Men Of America

05/30/2022

Happy Memorial Day from CBM ❤️

04/17/2022

Happy Easter to you and your family from CBM. Enjoy!

04/16/2022

Gilbert Scott-Heron (April 1, 1949 – May 27, 2011) was an American soul and jazz poet, musician, and author, known primarily for his work as a spoken-word performer in the 1970s and 1980s. His collaborative efforts with musician Brian Jackson featured a musical fusion of jazz, blues, and soul, as well as lyrical content concerning social and political issues of the time, delivered in both rapping and melismatic vocal styles by Scott-Heron. His own term for himself was "bluesologist", which he defined as "a scientist who is concerned with the origin of the blues".His poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", delivered over a jazz-soul beat, is considered a major influence on hip hop music.

04/16/2022

Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was a writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "black, le***an, mother, warrior, poet," who "dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia."

04/15/2022

Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was a poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "the Negro was in vogue", which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue.

04/11/2022

Toni Morrison (February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019) was a novelist and poet. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

04/11/2022

Nikki Giovanni (born June 7, 1943) is a poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. One of the world's most well-known African-American poets, her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature. She has won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award. She has been nominated for a Grammy Award for her poetry album, The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. Additionally, she has been named as one of Oprah Winfrey's 25 "Living Legends".

03/30/2022

Serena Williams (born September 26, 1981)is an American professional tennis player. She has been ranked singles world No. 1 by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for 319 weeks, including a joint-record 186 consecutive weeks, and finished as the year-end No. 1 five times. She has won 23 Grand Slam singles titles, the most by any player in the Open Era, and the second-most of all time.

03/30/2022

Michelle Obama (born January 17, 1964) is an American attorney and author who served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She was the first African-American woman to serve in this position. She is the wife of former President Barack Obama.

03/28/2022

Avye Couloute (born in 2008) is a maker, coder, Tech Advocate, workshop leader and Social Entrepreneur. She began attending coding & physical computing workshops at 7. Nowadays she is very active in the tech & maker community, dedicating a lot of her spare time to exploring & learning about coding & technology.Aware of female under-representation in STEM education & careers, Avye was motivated to found Girls Into Coding to encourage more girl involvement in tech, to offer them the opportunity to develop their digital and making skills. She has received the Diana Award, the Diana Legacy Award and the FDM EveryWoman Tech Award in the “One To Watch” category for her work to create opportunities for girls to engage with tech and for fundraising to provide girls with microcontrollers, physical computing kits & STEM themed books.

03/28/2022

Maggie Walker (1864 –1934) was an African American businesswoman and teacher. At the turn of the century, Walker was one of the foremost female business leaders in the United States. In 1903, Walker became both the first African American woman to charter a bank and the first African American woman to serve as a bank president. Walker’s entrepreneurial skills transformed black business practices while also inspiring other women to enter the field. As a leader, Walker achieved successes with the vision to make tangible improvements in the way of life for African Americans.

03/28/2022

Dr. Valerie L. Thomas (born February 8, 1943) is an American scientist and inventor of illusion transmitting technology. Her work and leadership led to the development of Landsat technology which revolutionized studying Earth from space. She also facilitated LACIE, a crop monitoring project.

03/27/2022

Mary Kenner (1912 –2006) was an African American inventor most noted for her development of the adjustable sanitary belt, although racial discrimination caused her patent for the sanitary belt to be prevented for thirty years. Despite setbacks, Kenner holds a total of five patents, the most of any Black woman.

03/27/2022

Celia Cruz (1925–2003) was a Cuban American singer and one of the most popular Latin artists of the 20th century. Cruz rose to fame in Cuba during the 1950s as a singer of guarachas, earning the nickname "La Guarachera de Cuba". In the following decades, she became known internationally as the "Queen of Salsa" due to her contributions to Latin music in the United States.

03/27/2022

Eunice Carter (1899 –1970) was an American lawyer. She was one of New York's first female African-American lawyers, and one of the first prosecutors of color in the United States. She was active in the Pan-African Congress and in United Nations committees to advance the status of women in the world. The trailblazing lawyer uncovered the evidence that tied the Mafia boss to a prostitution operation that allowed New York District Attorney Thomas Dewey to successfully charge and convict Mafioso kingpin Charles "Lucky" Luciano.

03/27/2022

Alice Augusta Ball (1892–1916) was an African American chemist who developed the first successful treatment for those suffering from Hansen’s disease (leprosy). Ball was also the very first African American and the first woman to graduate with a M.S. degree in chemistry from the College of Hawaii (now known as the University of Hawaii). Tragically, Ball died at the young age of 24.

03/27/2022

Althea Neale Gibson (1927 – 2003) was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and in 1956, she became the first African American to win the French Championships. The following year she won both Wimbledon and the US Nationals (precursor of the US Open), then won both again in 1958 and was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in both years. In all, she won 11 Grand Slam tournaments: five singles titles, five doubles titles, and one mixed doubles title.

03/27/2022

Hattie McDaniel (1893 -1952) a child of two slaves, McDaniel became the first African American ever to win an Oscar. Portraying the head slave Mammy in David O. Selznick's Gone with the Wind, McDaniel was forced to accept her award for Best Supporting Actress in a racially segregated hotel. Selznick pulled some strings so that McDaniel could give her acceptance speech at the 12th Academy Awards. "I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything I may be able to do in the future," she said. "I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry."

03/27/2022

Yvonne Brathwaite Burke (October 5, 1932) in 1972, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke became the first African American woman from California to win a House seat. While she achieved many historic firsts, such as serving as the first female chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) as well as earning a coveted spot in the Appropriations Committee, Burke is most known for being the first congresswoman to have given birth and been granted maternity leave while in office. Among her legislative agenda, Burke fought for the rights of minority-owned businesses. As a proponent of the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline, she successfully added two amendments to the bill — the first ensuring the implementation of affirmative action programs, and the second requiring that the pipeline materials be manufactured in the United States.

03/27/2022

Willa Beatrice Brown (1906-1992) the first Black woman to receive her pilot license in the United States, which she did in 1938, Brown also became the first Black woman to serve as a Civil Air Patrol officer, the first to receive a commercial pilot's license and the first to run for Congress. Having co-founded the Coffey School of Aeronautics with her husband, Cornelius Coffey, Brown would later organize flight schools for youth and remained active in Chicago politics and its public education system before she retired in 1971.

03/18/2022

Dr. Marie M. Daly (1921 – 2002) after receiving her B.S. and M.S. in chemistry from Queens College and New York University respectively, Marie Daly went on to complete her Ph.D. at Columbia University. Upon graduating in 1947, she earned the distinction of being the first African American woman to receive a chemistry Ph.D. in the U.S. Daly's groundbreaking research included studies of the effects of cholesterol on the mechanics of the heart, the effects of sugars and other nutrients on the health of arteries and the breakdown of the circulatory system because of advanced age or hypertension.

03/18/2022

Annie Jean Easley (1933 –2011) another major contributor to the U.S. Space Program, Easley worked on myriad projects for NASA over the course of her 30-year career as a mathematician and rocket scientist. Like Johnson, Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, she first worked as a computer and then eventually became a programmer. Aside from conducting studies on battery-powered vehicles, Easley also worked on shuttle launches and designed and tested a NASA nuclear reactor. She was also a "leading member of the team which developed software for the Centaur rocket stage, which laid the technological foundations for the Space Shuttle launches and launches of communication, military and weather satellites," per NASA.

03/15/2022

Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson (born August 5, 1946) a theoretical physicist, was the first Black woman to graduate with a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in any field (Her Ph.D. is in Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics) and just the second African American woman to earn a doctorate in physics in U.S. history. During her tenure at what was formerly known as AT&T Bell Laboratories' Theoretical Physics Research Department in the 1970s and 1980s, she has been credited as helping develop the technology that enabled caller ID and call waiting.

03/15/2022

Dr. Gladys Mae West (born October 27, 1930) began working at the U.S. Naval Weapons Laboratory and helped produce a study that proved the regularity of Pluto’s motion relative to Neptune. Also, while at U.S. Naval Weapons Laboratory, her mathematical work and programming of an IBM 7030 “Stretch” computer delivered refined calculations for an “extremely accurate geodetic Earth model, a geoid, optimized” for what would eventually become known as GPS.

03/14/2022

Alice H. Parker (1885 – 1920) was an African American inventor known for her patent for a gas furnace. The central heating furnace design Ms. Parker patented in December 1919 made use of natural gas for the first time to keep homes warm. Many modern homes still employ a similar forced air heating system for which her idea was a precursor.

03/11/2022

Dr. Patricia Era Bath (1942 - 2019) became the first female African American medical doctor to receive a medical patent when she invented a laser cataract treatment device called a Laserphaco Probe in 1986. (Bath was also the first African American to complete a residency in ophthalmology.) The co-founder of the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness patented her invention in 1988.

03/11/2022

Marie Van Brittan Brown (1922 - 1999) created an early version of the modern home security system more than a century later. Feeling unsafe due to her neighborhood’s high crime rate, the full-time nurse rigged a motorized camera to record her home entryway and project images onto a TV monitor. Also included in her setup was a two-way microphone tocommunicate with visitors without opening the door, as well as a panic button to notify police of any potential emergency in progress. After filing to patent the closed-circuit TV security system in 1966, Brown received her approval in December 1969.

03/11/2022

Amanda S. C. Gorman (born March 7, 1998) is an American poet and activist. Her work focuses on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalization, as well as the African diaspora. Gorman was the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate. In 2021, she delivered her poem "The Hill We Climb" at the inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden.

03/04/2022

03/04/2022

We are kicking it off this morning!! We Are Unstoppable: Protecting The Right To Vote and Combatting Voter Suppression.

Watch live at 11:15AM CT http://facebook.com/TJC.DC

02/25/2022

Congratulations Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on your historic and well-deserved selection to the US Supreme Court.

02/23/2022

Another design that contributed to saving lives was Alexander Miles’s elevator design. Before him, elevators were operated manually; people had to consciously open and close the doors of both the elevator and the shaft every time. Miles realized the constant hazard this posed when riding on an elevator with the shaft door open with his daughter. In 1887, he obtained the patent for his invention including a flexible belt attached to the elevator cage, allowing the doors to function automatically. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2007.

02/22/2022

In his 1987 handbook, "How to Make $100,000 Farming 25 Acres," Booker T. Whatley outlined clientele membership clubs and other farming practices that remain in demand today. Clientele membership clubs, the beginnings of the modern Community Supporter Agriculture (CSA), provided farmers with a guaranteed income, reduced farm waste, and provided community members with fresh produce.

02/21/2022

Dr. Robert G. Bryant has served as an inventor or coinventor on dozens of issued patents related to polymers and advanced composites during his career at NASA. His work is highly regarded in the industry, having received numerous accolades over the years, including R&D 100 awards in 1994 and 1996 and the NASA Government Invention of the Year Award in 2006.

02/19/2022

Norbert Rillieux was an inventor who was widely considered one of the earliest chemical engineers and noted for his pioneering invention of the multiple-effect evaporator. This invention was an important development in the growth of the sugar industry.

02/18/2022

Physicist and engineer George Carruthers invented a camera to photograph ultraviolet images in space. Carruthers' 1969 invention captured the first UV images of the Earth's atmosphere. His cameras photographed over 550 stars and galaxies, including Halley's Comet. Carruthers earned NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal and induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

02/17/2022

Mark Dean, who earned a doctorate at Stanford University, is a co-inventor of IBM's original personal computer and the PC color monitor, literally changing how we all interact with the internet.

02/16/2022

So many of us know George Washington Carver as the man famous for giving us peanut butter (bless him), but he’s responsible for much more. As an agricultural chemist, in an effort to increase the profitability of sweet potatoes and peanuts (which thrived in the South as opposed to dwindling cotton supply), Carver began conducting experiments in 1896 and created 518 new products from the crops. They include ink, dye, soap, cosmetics, flour, vinegar, and synthetic rubber. He publicly revealed his experiments in 1914.

02/16/2022

It’s safe to say that Garret Morgan’s most prominent original designs have saved thousands of lives since their invention. Take his traffic signal, which he patented in 1922. It was the first to offer a third “caution” signal, which we now know as the yellow light. And in 1912, Morgan received a patent for his “Breathing Device,” which was one of the earliest versions of a gas mask.

02/14/2022

Douglas Lee Williams is an American football executive and former quarterback and coach. Williams is best known for his performance with the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XXII against the Denver Broncos, where he was named Super Bowl MVP after passing for 340 yards and four touchdowns, a single-quarter Super Bowl record which he set in the second quarter, making him the first black quarterback to both start and win a Super Bowl.