Movie Mondays
Known as "Lady Day", her recording of Abe Meeropol's song Strange Fruit released in 1939 conveyed the dangers of lynching and the need for a change. It became the song of the Century.
Who is Billie Holiday?
In 1984, she won an Academy Award for co-writing and singing Best Original Song for the theme to Flashdance. She also starred in the movie musical Fame in 1980.
Who was Irene Cara Escalera?
Entertainment company where Lanny Smoot spent 27 of his 42 years as a technology creator, inventor and researcher with over 74 patents. Hint - I'm sure he saw Mickey & Minnie there!
What is Walt Disney?
Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first Black Woman to join this prestigious group of nine.
What is the United States Supreme Court?
Son of Academy Award winner Denzel Washington who took Broadway by storm in 2022 in August Wilson's Piano Lesson.
Who is John David Washington?
This settlement of middle-class African-American, Irish and German settlers, was seized by eminent domain in 1857 to create the modern day Central Park.
What is Seneca Village?
This amazing trailblazing basketball player from the Mississippi Delta shot the first basket in Women's Olympic Baskeball in 1976 and lead Delta State University to 3 back-to-back Women's AIAW National Championships.
Who is Lusia Mae Harris?
The physical science studied by Dr. James W. Mitchell, who became a Bell Labs Fellow in 1989 and has over 100 publications and citations to his name.
What is Chemistry?
The new Democratic Minority Leader and first African-American to the position. He was born in Crown Heights New York and has represented NY's 8th district for 10 years.
Who is Rep. Hakeem Jeffries?
The Agojie female warriors from this African Kingdom were depicted in Woman King staring Viola Davis.
What is Dahomey?
This Negro League baseball team combined skill and entertainment, similar to the Harlem Globetrotters. Hank Aaron was a former member. He was replaced by female player Toni Stone.
Who were the Indianapolis Clowns?
She went from an Virginia farm to being a mathematician working on NASA satellite projects which became the basis of the Global Positioning System ( GPS).
Who is Dr. Gladys West?
Dr. Earl D. Shaw joined Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1969 as a physicist. He did ground-breaking work on non-linear optics and the tunable version of this device which is an acronym for light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation.
What is the laser?
Colette V. Smith was the first Black female coach of what NFL Sports Team?
Who are the Jets?
Debbie Allen - dancer/actor/choreographer/business woman/director is best known for her role as dance teacher Lydia Grant in this hit TV series from 1982-1987.
What is Fame?
The knickname of an affluent neighborhood in Tulsa OK, that included churches, businesses and professional Black Americans. In 1921 it was destroyed by a violent mob killing 300 and leaving 10,000 homeless.
What is Black Wall Street?
Her 1969 patent for a security system, laid the groundwork for the video monitoring, push button alarms, remote control door locks and instant messaging to first responders.
Who is Marie Van Brittan Brown?
In 1987, Joe Colson became the first African American to achieve this technical position in the Switching Systems Performance Engineering Division.
What is an Executive Director?
In 2022, this Spelmanite and Professor of Economics was the first Black Woman appointed to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors .
Who is Dr. Lisa Cook?
In 2018, she became the first author to win three consecutive Hugo Awards for her "Broken Earth" Trilogy. She has also won a Nebula Award, two Locus Awards, and is a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.
Who is NK Jemison?
Founded in 1950, this Manhattan group pledged to create a safe space for Black writers and to use their writing to communicate how the racial prejudice that Black Writer's faced affected their work. Their first act was a sit-in at the UN protesting Patrice Lumumba's assassination.
What is the Harlem Writer's Guild?
She wrote from Japan about the disparities in treatment of Black soldiers. She eventually became a part of the White House Press Corps from the Chicago Defender questioning President Eisenhower about Civil Rights issues in the 1950s. She continued for 20 years creating alliances with white reporters and elevating black stories.
Who was Ethel Payne?
A scientist who attended Fisk University, he joined Bell Laboratories in 1965 to continue his polymer research and received several patents to improve the plastics used in telephone devices of that era. An early member of ABLE, he transitioned to HR and brought hundreds of Black MTS and summer interns on the payroll during the 1980s.
Who was Ray Storey?
First African America woman oceanographer to journey to the planet's deepest point of the seabed of earth.
Who is Dawn Wright?
This gifted Haitian & Puerto Rican-American from Brooklyn started as a graffiti artist and rose to fame during the 1980s Neo-Expressionism movement. In 2017, his 1982 painting Untitled sold for $110M.
Who is Jean-Michel Basquiat?