As a noted surgeon and scientist, Charles Drew was responsible for creating the technology to store blood for long periods of time. His lifelong concern for the necessary transport and storage of blood and plasma made him a pioneer in his field and a valued scientist in world history. Drew saved thousands of soldiers’ lives in World War Two, when he developed his technology and techniques during the Battle of Britain; and millions more since then. At the same time, Drew battled segregation and bigory at home. Dr. Charles Drew and Barack Obama are, of course, alike in that they both accomplished legendary African-American firsts in the face of prejudice. But President Barack Obama may indeed accomplish a similar lifesaving legacy if he ends the bloody wars begun by the previous administration.

Charles Richard Drew was born on June 3rd, 1904 in Washington D.C. Drew first discovered his passion for medicine at Amherst College, where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1926. Drew saved money for medical school by taking instruction jobs and working hard labor before enrolling at McGill University Medical School in Montreal. He finished his residency at Montreal General Hospital and then moved to his hometown of Washington D.C. to serve as a professor at Howard University. But it was during his fellowship at Columbia Presbyterian where he endeavored his groundbreaking research about blood transfusions. His thesis project, “Banked Blood: A Study in Blood Preservation,” earned Drew a Doctorate of Science in medicine from Columbia University in 1940, and then proceeded to change the world.

At the outset of World War II, Drew’s work with plasma was critical in helping the United States and their allied forces to save soldiers’ lives. Drew became an integral member of the American Red Cross in 1941, but later denounced his affiliation when the U.S. War Department declared that blood should be segregated by race. After making his commitment to soldiers of all colors, Drew was disheartened that his countrymen would not support his efforts. In 1946, he was elected to the International College of Surgeons after winning the NAACP’s Spingard Medal two years prior. On his way to a conference at Tuskegee in 1950, Drew fell asleep at the wheel, and his car wrecked. He died on April 1st of that year. Drew did not, as myth has it, die because he was refused a blood transfusion.

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African-American Firsts In New York

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If there is one person from history whose impact on the Black woman’s self-image rivals that of Oprah Winfrey, it is the hair mogul Madame C.J. Walker. Walker was the first successful Black female entrepreneur. Her insistence on involvement in both the business world and civic affairs predates Oprah’s story, and to the extent that Walker created the Winfrey archetype, Barack Obama’s presidency may not have been possible without the great Madame C.J. Walker.

Born Sarah Breedlove, Walker descended from slaves who died when she was still a child. While many young children would have been too traumatized to overcome the death of two parents, she and her sister took jobs laboring in kitchens, and on farms until they could sustain themselves. In 1910, after forming the Hair Culturists’ Union of America in Indianapolis, she made it a point to find allies in the Black political community. She moved to New York in 1916, building (with the help of the first registered black architect) a palatial home that rivaled any in the Hudson River Valley.

How she came into the hair business was no coincidence. Walker may have suffered from alopecia, a rare ailment that is characterized by little or no hair growth on the body. As a response to her own condition, Walker created a formula (that she claimed had been delivered to her in a dream) to restore hair growth. While many say she did invent a metal “hot comb” specifically for Black women to straighten out the curl in their roots, that is not accurate. The primary cause of her hair loss was the result of a common problem of the era i.e. infrequent washing and products that were not designed for the hair of black women.

With her ingenious marketing in every Black publication, and her constant travel to trade shows, Walker became a household name. She interrupted Booker T. Washington’s prestigious National Negro Business League Convention after Washington had apparently ignored her requests to speak. As a woman who had founded and developed one of the nation’s most formidable businesses, she would not be denied the right to correlate with her peers on the same level.

Not one to horde her riches, Walker moved to create philanthropic projects that would help Black communities. She funded the YMCA building in Indianapolis where her business was, donated to the NAACP, and traveled to Woodrow Wilson’s White House to present an anti-lynching petition after violent outbursts had killed Blacks in an Illinois riot. She passed on her legacy of philanthropy to daughter A’Lelia, who was responsible for creating “The Dark Tower,” a salon that hosted Black writers and artists who would display their work during the Harlem Renaissance. Walker died of kidney disease, and bequeathed her estate to her female heirs.

In 1911 Madam Walker pledged $1000 toward the building fund of the black YMCA in Indianapolis. She was one of many funders.

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Black Women Firsts

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In 1940, one Black novelist dared to show America what white supremacy did to one Black man. When “Native Son” appeared on America’s bookshelves, it became an instant bestseller, the first title by an African-American author selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club. It also introduced the world to the complicated protagonist of “Native Son,” Chicago’s Bigger Thomas, who was driven to murder a white woman through his terror of white people, not because of hate. Wright, as an accomplished writer, a prophet, and a leftist, helped cut the path on which Barack Obama walked into Chicago’s South Side, onto the local and national political stage, and now, the White House.

Richard Wright, the grandson of slaves, was born on a plantation in Mississippi in 1908. Shuffled between Mississippi and Memphis for most of his childhood, Wright published his first short story, “The Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre,” when he was 15. In 1927, after graduating high school, Wright moved to Chicago, where he worked for the post office and wrote in his spare time. During the Great Depression, Wright affiliated with the Communist Party, and Wright penned many of his earliest works for leftist publications. Richard Wright’s career blossomed after he moved to New York in 1937. He mentored Ralph Ellison, published an acclaimed book of short stories called “Uncle Tom’s Children,” and with the help of a Guggenheim Fellowship, wrote “Native Son,” published in 1940.

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“Native Son” was criticized by many people for its violence. Black critics targeted Wright for writing a spectacle that seemed to confirm white America’s worst racist fantasies about Black men. But the book catapulted Wright to the top echelon of American letters. He published his autobiography, “Black Boy,” in 1945.

After World War II, Richard Wright expatriated to France, where he fell in with noted existentialist writer/philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. He traveled to Africa in the 1950s, where he contracted dysentery. The illness contributed to Wright’s failing health before his death in Paris in 1960 of a heart attack. Wright was only 52.

Richard Wright greatly influenced the mindset of white liberals in the 1940s and 50s, and his work inspired the Black activists of the 1960s. “Wright,” said Amiri Baraka, “was one of the people who made me conscious of the need to struggle.” Without a doubt, Wright inspired Barack Obama, too.

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Black Literary Greats

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Top 5 Black Sitcoms That Aren’t “The Cosby Show”

Top 9 Black Sitcom Theme Songs

Cars We Loved Way Back When

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The 9 Most Exciting Black Basketball Players

Here we pay homage to Jordan’s stature both on the court and off. Presenting the 25 reasons we love his Airness.

1. The black and red Jordans made their debut in 1985, and were the first shoe of it’s kind. Prior to their arrival, basketball shoes were white. The NBA fined Jordan for his sneakers, for which Nike gladly paid.
2. Game winning shots starting in college when he attended University of North Carolina and shot the game winner in the 1982 NCAA title game against Georgetown University.
3. The Mel Turpin “Was He Big Enough” dunk.
4. Game 5, round 1 of the 1989 NBA playoffs against Cleveland Cavaliers, three seconds left, Chicago Bulls are down by one when Jordan takes over and shoots the game-winning 15-foot jump shot.
5. Jordan covers up the Reebok logo on his tracksuit with an American flag at the medal ceremony for the 1992 Summer Olympic medal ceremony.
6. Played baseball with the minor league Scottsdale Scorpions, after retiring from basketball the first time.
7. The “I can’t believe it” shrug in game 1 of the 1992 NBA Finals against the Portland Trailblazers.
8. His charity: Legend has it that during Chicago home games, Jordan would stop off at an unknown South Side Chicago neighborhood and give four tickets to the kids who lived in the area.
9. In 1996, the Air Jordan IXI were spotted on the feet of all four members of R&B singing group Boyz II Men, who rocked the shoes with their tuxedos at an awards show.
10. The “Love of the Game” clause in Jordan’s contract was one of a kind. Unlike most players, Jordan was allowed to play a pick-up game of basketball anytime, anywhere.
11. The Jordan Brand Classic for high school student basketball players.
12. The 69-point game against the Cleveland Cavaliers in 1990.
13. The infamous mid-air hand switch lay-up in game 2 of the 1991 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers.

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Why We Love Michael Jordan

dunk

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MICHAEL JORDAN
The greatest basketball player of all time, no matter what criteria you want to use to define it.

Michael Jordan

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Check out: 25 Reasons We Love Michael Jordan

KOBE BRYANT
The greatest basketball player playing right now, no matter what criteria you want to use to define it. We may never see another Michael Jordan, but when it’s all said and done, we will probably never see another Kobe Bryant either.

Kobe Bryant

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LEBRON JAMES
And tomorrow? LeBron James will probably be the greatest basketball playing. His size, strength, and ability make him the most exciting player to watch in the NBA, with no signs of slowing up anytime soon.

Lebron James Gallery

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SHAQUILLE O’NEAL
Shaq has arguably been the greatest big man of his generation, revolutionizing the center position with his quick feet and aggressive play under the boards. Since he’s come into the league, Shaq has proven to be as big as the hype surrounding him.

SCOTTIE PIPPEN
Even without Jordan, Pippen was one of the NBA’s greatest players. Nothing flashy, just sound fundamentals, and when his career as a scorer was fading, he remade himself into a defensive specialist, using his long arms to steal balls and block shots with the best of them.

OSCAR ROBERTSON
The only player to average a triple-double in one season, a record many think will never be broken.

CHARLES BARKLEY
Now the funniest and most watchable NBA analyst on television, Barkley was an undersized big man who played like he was the biggest man on the court. Those who watch him today calling games on TNT may forget how Barkley got in his chair in the first place, by being one of the three greatest players on the court anytime he played.

EARVIN “MAGIC” JOHNSON
Along with Larry Bird of the Boston Celtics, Magic Johnson helped save the NBA from going down a path similar to the NHL back in the 1980’s. Johnson could play all five positions, but when he was best was at the guard position, bringing the ball up court, acting as the conductor to the Lakers unstoppable Showtime offense.

KARL MALONE
The Mailman, alongside his partner in crime John Stockton, made the Utah Jazz a powerhouse back in the 90’s. With the second most points scored in NBA history (Kareem Abdul-Jabar is the first), Malone showed how the Power Forward was more than just a boards and clog-the-lane position. He proved they can also be scoring machines.

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Lords Of The Rings

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Ralph Ellison was the first novelist to portray the Black experience as a critical part of the American experience. His seminal novel, “Invisible Man,” was his only major work, but his letters, articles and fiction work established him as one of the most important writers in history. “Invisible Man” encapsulated the feelings of Black men and women as second-class citizens during the heart of the 20th Century. The phenomenon of invisibility — the feeling that one’s very existence isn’t acknowledged — continues to this day for many, if not most Black Americans. Invisibility doubtlessly dogged the young Barack Obama as he grew to manhood. But Obama’s election and inauguration as America’s first Black president marked a turning point. Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, is now very much the Visible Man.

Ralph Waldo Ellison, named for Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born on March 1, 1914 in Oklahoma City. His father was a small business owner who died when Ellison was only three, but who secretly wished that his son would grow up to be a poet, like Emerson. When Ellison enrolled at the Tuskegee Institute, he studied music and already had a reputation as a trumpet player from his days in a high school orchestra. He segued into a relationship with writing and sculpture. Ellison left Tuskegee after his third year, hoping to earn money to pay for his final year by working in New York as an artist. The journey from the South to the North signified the shift in his life from promising rural artist to embattled author of the Black experience.

As Ellison made his way through New York’s circle of intellectuals, he met poet Langston Hughes, and artist Romare Bearden, but it was his acquaintance with author Richard Wright that influenced his later work. Ellison wrote reviews of Wright’s work in “New Challenge” and adopted some of Wright’s socialist attitudes; he also traveled the city searching for a circle of writers who could make sense of this new Black experience in the North. While writing book reviews for the journals of the day had earned Ellison income and public stature, Richard Wright suggested Ellison try his hand at fiction. In Ellison he saw the kind of rich Southern tradition that had made Richard Wright’s early work so palpable.

Ellison’s first attempt at short story writing “Hymie’s Bull” was indicative of his experimentation with the naturalist style, which combined elements of anger, double consciousness and lucidity for a truly unique work. Ellison received the Federal Writer’s Grant to fund his early career and worked consistently on “Invisible Man” from 1947 to 1952 with help from wife Fannie McConnell. “Invisible Man” was, in large part, Ellison’s nuanced response to the radical discourse coming from his social circle. In his novel, with its nameless protagonist, ambiguous racial allegiances, and subtle reference to Black culture seeping into American culture, Ellison encapsulated the parts of Black life that had been overlooked by both the radicals and the mainstream. It was an unapologetic tome that portrayed the sensitivity of Black men, while trumping some of the previously held notions of masculinity. “Invisible Man” won the National Book Award in 1953, beginning its long history into the annals of American literature as an essential work. Ellison reportedly finished 2000 pages of a second novel, but never finished. He did not allow that incomplete novel to end his range of works, preferring instead to join with other writers of his time to create more social commentary. Ellison served as a professor at Rutgers, Yale and New York University, and kept details of his second novel to himself. After Ellison’s death on April, 16th 1994, a long-time friend published Ellison’s anticipated second work as “Juneteenth.”

Ralph Ellison was among the first to assert that Black culture was an integral, inseparable part of American culture. Ellison aspired to show how connected the two cultures could be. The biracial Barack Obama wrote an autobiographical memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” that paralleled the Ellison’s vision of collective, united country, where all Men and Women are visible.

Mary McLeod Bethune, the daughter of slaves, became an early 20th Century educator and civil rights leader, founding both Bethune-Cookman College and the National Council of Negro Women. But Bethune became even more influential as a friend and confidant of Eleanor Roosevelt, and as an advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on Negro affairs. Bethune became a member of Roosevelt’s unofficial”Black Cabinet,” the first time Black Americans had that kind of access to the White House. As such, Bethune helped open the very doors that Barack Obama walked through as the first Black president of the United States.

Bethune was born in Mayesville, South Carolina, on July 3, 1875. She was the fifteenth of seventeen children born to former slaves on a plot of land called “Homestead.”

In 1904, Bethune founded a school for Black girls in Daytona, Florida in a time when segregation threatened to destroy the educational aspirations of countless African-Americans. With little money but plenty of time and attention, she lifted the Daytona school to impeccable standards to rival that of the local white public high school. By 1910, the school’s enrollment had increased from its original six students (one being her son, Albert) to 102 students at a four-year high school. Despite Ku Klux Klan efforts to repeatedly thwart her, she made every attempt to raise funds to keep the school growing. By allying with Booker T. Washington shortly after his visit to the Daytona school, Bethune was able to link her institution to wealthy philanthropists from the North. Of these elites, the Roosevelts and Rockefellers may have been the largest donors.

Bethune’s civic participation was not limited to education. She later founded the National Council of Negro Women, and served on the board for the National Association for Colored Women a vocal advocate for women’s rights. In 1936, Mary McLeod Bethune became the first woman to receive a major appointment from the federal government when she was named Director of the Negro Affairs of the National Youth
Administration.

By the time of her death in 1955, she had used her post at the NYA to travel the country surveying the greater social problems, making recommendations to resolve them, and raising money. Bethune was honored with the unveiling of a National Monument on the grounds of the Capitol in Washington, DC, in 1974. Mary McLeod Bethune was commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp in 1985.

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Freedom Fighters

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A master of storytelling, Toni Morrison was the first Black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and legendary professor is known for the vivid black characters brought to life in her novels that recreate the Black experience. Morrison’s novels often illuminate themes of slavery, racism, and identity, but also shine with hope for the future. In her first-ever political endorsement, Morrison wrote of a “national evolution” in a letter that publicly endorsed Barack Obama. As an educator and author, Morrison used her authority and standing as a Black pioneer to lay the groundwork for the presidency of Barack Obama.

Morrison was born Chloe Ardelia Wofford, in Lorain, Ohio, on February 18, 1931. An avid reader and learned storyteller, she graduated from high school with honors. In 1953 Morrison received her Bachelors in English from Howard University and then earned her Masters from Cornell. Morrison soon became an English professor at Texas Southern University in Houston. She later returned to Howard to teach English.

In 1970 Morrison wrote her first novel, “The Bluest Eye,” about a little Black girl that dreamed every night of waking up with blue eyes. Seven years later, she gained national acclaim with her third novel, “Song of Solomon.” It was the first novel by a black writer to be selected for the Book-of-the-Month Club since Richard Wright’s Native Son in 1940.
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She wrote a play, “Dreaming Emmett,” based on the true story of Emmett Till, an African-American teenager brutally killed by racist whites after allegedly whistling at a white woman in the South. It premiered January 4, 1986. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel, “Beloved,” which was adapted for film by Oprah Winfrey. In 2006, The New York Times Book Review named “Beloved” the best American novel published in the past 25 years.

Morrison taught within the State University of New York system and held the Robert F. Goheen Chair in the Humanities at Princeton University from 1989 until 2006. Morrison authored nine novels, the most recent being “A Mercy.” She continues to exemplify brilliance in creative writing and sets the bar with her multilayered narrative.

Perhaps the most interesting political moment in Morrison’s career came when she called Bill Clinton “our first Black president.” But in 2008, Morrison backpedaled from that assertion, saying that Clinton was “Black” only in the sense that he had been treated that way. If there was any question of Morrison’s true feelings, it was answered by Morrison’s spurning of Hillary Clinton in favor of Barack Obama.

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Black Literary Greats

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Professing to be “unbossed and unbought,” Shirley Chisholm was the first black female major-party candidate for President of the United States, and the first black woman to be elected to Congress. Chisholm wasn’t intent on winning the presidency, but was steadfast on challenging conventions and showing Black America that they could aim high. She set the bar, in many ways, over which President Barack Obama jumped.

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was born November 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York. She attended Brooklyn College, where she majored in sociology; she later earned a Masters from Columbia University.

In 1964, Chisholm ran for and was elected to the New York State Legislature. Four years later, she ran as the Democratic candidate for New York’s 12th District congressional seat and was elected to the House of Representatives. As the first woman in Congress she hired an all-female staff.

Serving seven terms, Chisholm was an outspoken advocate for women, minorities, and the poor: she worked to improve opportunities for inner-city residents. She authored legislation that instituted a program called SEEK (Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge), which provided college funding to disadvantaged youth.

The pinnacle of Chisholm’s ascent occurred in 1972, when she became the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States, and the first female candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Chisholm won 152 votes at the 1972 Democratic National Convention, but lost.

Chisholm retired from Congress in 1982, but remained a public figure and voice. On January 1, 2005, Shirley Chisholm died. Chisholm, as politician, author, and educator, overcame her two largest “handicaps,” being a woman and being black. She fought for political change in the 20th century that allowed tangible change, which is exhibited in the current presidency of Barack Obama.

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Black Political Firsts

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