Daniels & Bell, Inc.
Continuing on the Wall Street theme today:
The first Black-owned firm on the New York Stock Exchange was Daniels & Bell, Inc., founded by Travers Bell Jr. and Willie E. Daniels. They joined the Exchange in 1971.
Bell grew up on the south side of Chicago. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis and the New York Institute of Finance. His father helped him get a job at the Chicago office of Dempsey Tegler & Company, where he rose through the ranks, eventually becoming vice-president. Daniels had worked in finance for about 10 years before founding Daniels & Bell.
The company served minority-owned businesses and opened the door for greater opportunities for Blacks. Daniels left the company in the mid 70s to enter the restaurant business. Bell died in 1988 at the age of 46 from a heart attack. Bereft of its leader, the company closed in 1994 after financial trouble.
Fun fact: One of Bell’s sons, Darryl Bell played Ron Johnson, Jr. on the show A Different World and Brother X-Ray Vision in the Spike Lee film School Daze.
His other son is the author of the book In the Black, our source for yesterday and today’s posts!
Interview with Gregory Bell: http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2002-06-18/a-slow-walk-up-wall-street-for-blacks
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/27/obituaries/travers-j-bell-jr-46-founder-of-only-black-firm-on-exchange.html
https://exchanges.nyx.com/steven-wheeler/daniels-bell-nyse%E2%80%99s-first-black-owned-member-firm-1971?page=1
![melanatedcontributions:
Dr. Shirley JacksonTelecommunications InventionsDr. Shirley Jackson, a theoretical physicist and famous black inventor, has been credited with making many advances in science. She first developed an interest in science and mathematics during her childhood and conducted experiments and studies, such as those on the eating habits of honeybees. She followed this interest to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she received a bachelors, masters, and doctoral degree, all in the field of physics. In doing so she became the first African-American woman to acquire a Ph.D. from MIT.Jackson started to conduct successful experiments in theoretical physics and then started to use her knowledge in physics to start making advances in telecommunications while working at Bell Laboratories. These inventions include developments in the portable fax, touch tone telephone, solar cell, and the fiber optic cables used to provide clarity in overseas telephone calls. She has also helped make possible Caller ID and Call Waiting.Currently, Jackson is the president of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, recently ranked by U.S. News and World Report as one of the nation’s top 50 universities. The mission of the Rensselaer Plan calls for “apply[ing] science to the common purposes of life.” Dr. Jackson’s goal for Rensselaer is “to achieve prominence in the 21st century as a top-tier world-class technological research university, with global reach and global impact.”
“So now, I go to MIT, boom. And I’m going because it’s my great chance to be with people really like me, that loved math and science. And I’m just really ready to get into it and have people I can talk to all the time and (humph), I get there, and they don’t even wanna talk to me, you know, don’t sit next to me, don’t eat with me, don’t do problem sets. They had their study groups. I was never in them, so alone, alone, alone. … But all this time, the Civil Rights Movement is going on…. They’re doing all kinds of things, and I’m sitting up here in Boston [Massachusetts] not being particularly well treated, in fact, being horribly treated at some points. One time I was mistaken for the elevator operator at MIT. And a faculty member got on the elevator and told me to press the floor. And I said, excuse me? He says, I want, I told you to press 3. And I said, if you want to go to the floor, you do it yourself, and I, you know, got off the elevator on that floor. So I had all these kind of incidents. And I really, don’t need to talk about the rest of it. You asked me what was remarkable about my junior year. It was less about what was going on at MIT because that was kind of a continuation, but there were things happening in Boston. And I got, you know, had things happen to me in Boston, spit on and shot at and chased”
Watch the rest of her History Makers intereview](http://24.media.tumblr.com/ed44b371e19248d113401cc7d19c2f75/tumblr_mkus37UYK31s5pjs6o1_400.jpg)
Dr. Shirley Jackson
Telecommunications Inventions
Dr. Shirley Jackson, a theoretical physicist and famous black inventor, has been credited with making many advances in science. She first developed an interest in science and mathematics during her childhood and conducted experiments and studies, such as those on the eating habits of honeybees. She followed this interest to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she received a bachelors, masters, and doctoral degree, all in the field of physics. In doing so she became the first African-American woman to acquire a Ph.D. from MIT.
Jackson started to conduct successful experiments in theoretical physics and then started to use her knowledge in physics to start making advances in telecommunications while working at Bell Laboratories. These inventions include developments in the portable fax, touch tone telephone, solar cell, and the fiber optic cables used to provide clarity in overseas telephone calls. She has also helped make possible Caller ID and Call Waiting.
Currently, Jackson is the president of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, recently ranked by U.S. News and World Report as one of the nation’s top 50 universities. The mission of the Rensselaer Plan calls for “apply[ing] science to the common purposes of life.” Dr. Jackson’s goal for Rensselaer is “to achieve prominence in the 21st century as a top-tier world-class technological research university, with global reach and global impact.”
“So now, I go to MIT, boom. And I’m going because it’s my great chance to be with people really like me, that loved math and science. And I’m just really ready to get into it and have people I can talk to all the time and (humph), I get there, and they don’t even wanna talk to me, you know, don’t sit next to me, don’t eat with me, don’t do problem sets. They had their study groups. I was never in them, so alone, alone, alone. … But all this time, the Civil Rights Movement is going on…. They’re doing all kinds of things, and I’m sitting up here in Boston [Massachusetts] not being particularly well treated, in fact, being horribly treated at some points. One time I was mistaken for the elevator operator at MIT. And a faculty member got on the elevator and told me to press the floor. And I said, excuse me? He says, I want, I told you to press 3. And I said, if you want to go to the floor, you do it yourself, and I, you know, got off the elevator on that floor. So I had all these kind of incidents. And I really, don’t need to talk about the rest of it. You asked me what was remarkable about my junior year. It was less about what was going on at MIT because that was kind of a continuation, but there were things happening in Boston. And I got, you know, had things happen to me in Boston, spit on and shot at and chased”
Watch the rest of her History Makers intereview
Father & Son - c: 1860-1870
Chickasaw & African heritagemy grandmothers tribe
Nova Scotian Black Hockey Team, ca. 1910
The Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes (1890s-1920s)
Nova Scotia is considered the place of origin of modern ice hockey. The quantity of natural ponds ideal for skating, combined with the British gaming tradition helped facilitate the geographic and social conditions necessary for the development and creation of the game now known as Canadian hockey.
The roots of Canadian hockey originated with the North American Indians but early African-Canadian players also helped shape the sport. By the mid-1890s, in an era when many believed blacks could not endure the cold, these African-Canadian athletes defied myths and developed a revolutionary style of hockey that was fast moving, tough, acrobatic, exciting, and entertaining.
During the late 1890s games between black club teams in Nova Scotian towns and cities were arranged by formal invitation. By 1900, however, the Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes was created and was headquartered in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The Colored Hockey League produced players and athletes comparable to any in Canada. These Black Nova Scotians changed this winter game from the primitive “gentleman’s past-time” of the nineteenth century to the modern fast moving game of today. Led by skilled and educated leadership, the Coloured League emerged as a premier force in Canadian hockey and supplied the resilience necessary to preserve a unique sports culture that still exists. Unfortunately, their contributions were ignored as hockey players copied elements of the black style and often took credit for black hockey innovations.
Some of these innovations important to the modern game of ice hockey included the “slap-shot” and the practice of goalies going down on the ice in order to stop the puck. Despite these and other important contributions to today’s game of hockey, there are no monuments to the Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes.
Although the League continued to be prominent until the mid-1920s, racism, World War I, and dramatic changes in the Nova Scotian economy all played a part in the League’s demise. Nonetheless the Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes changed the way hockey was seen and played in early Canada.
(via Black Past)
Historic.
— Frederick Douglass
William Henry Lane is credited as one of the most influential figures in the creation of American tap dance.
Until a young African-American performer named William Henry Lane donned rags, covered his brown face with burnt cork, and danced the foot-stomping, hand-clapping, thigh-patting ditty called “Juba,” those portraying African Americans on the nation’s stages were predominantly white. Credited with performing “authentic Negro dances,” these men and women, with their blackened faces, popularized derogatory caricatures of the Negro while creating a uniquely American art form — minstrelsy. As historian Jacqui Malone indicated in her book Steppin’ on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance, a free African American named William Henry Lane was the most important exception to this rule. Having perfected his skills in “the academy of the vernacular,” young Lane, under the guidance of a well-known black jig and reel dancer, “Uncle” Jim Lowe, soon won several “challenge dances” against his white counterparts and was declared the “King of All Dancers.”
Blackface minstrelsy was both a unique form of American entertainment and a reflection of the African-American image audiences had come to expect. It also embodied the classic tale of “They’ve taken my blues and gone,” according to Langston Hughes in Black Magic, the book he coauthored with Milton Meltzer: “Hundreds of white minstrels performing in burnt cork borrowed not only the Southern Negro’s songs but his dance steps, his jokes, and his simple way of speech as well — which they distorted into what became known as ‘Negro dialect.’ White entertainers, North and South, literally made millions of dollars from Negro material. The Negroes themselves, barred from most theatres as spectators and segregated in others, could seldom see a minstrel show, and at that time they were not allowed to perform in them.”
The appearance of Master Juba — William Henry Lane — was a sign that things were changing. In 1842, Charles Dickens, fresh from a trip to New York City’s Five Points section, was clearly impressed by a dancer many historians believe was Lane, described in his book American Notes. “Single shuffle, double shuffle, cut and crosscut: snapping his fingers, rolling his eyes, turning in his knees, presenting the backs of his legs in front, spinning about on his toes and heels like nothing … dancing with two left legs, two right legs, two wooden legs, two wire legs, two spring legs — all sorts of legs and no legs — what is this to him?”
One awestruck critic, marveling at Lane’s ability to “tie his legs into such knots, and fling them about so recklessly, or make his feet twinkle until you lose sight of them altogether in his energy,” decided this performance reflected the dance style of an entire people, which he labeled “Nigger Dance.” In truth, Lane was an anomaly, the real McCoy in an art form built on distortion and caricature. Ironically, even he had to conform to a distorted image of who he was and how he was supposed to dance. Nonetheless, Lane, who died in London when he was only 27 years old, has been described as the “most influential single performer of nineteenth-century American dance.” Not only did he found a school in London, where he lived after a brief tour with an all-white minstrel troupe, but he rekindled the white search “for inspiration among the Negro folk” as they sought to copy his complicated steps.
The Exodusters
Many people know about the Great Migration and are aware that thousands of Blacks fled from the South for Northern cities such as Chicago and Harlem in the early 1900s. However, this was not the only voluntary mass Black migration in American history.
The end of the Civil War marked a turning point in U.S. history. It signaled the beginning of a new era that, among other things, promised freedom to African slaves held in bondage, or at least those held within the confederate states. The post-war Reconstruction, initiated to help bring the confederate states back into the Union and smooth the transition to a non-slave society, lasted from 1865 to 1877. During this time, ex-slaves experienced a level of liberty and equality unlike any before. The passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments abolished slavery, granted citizenship, and guaranteed every male citizen the right to vote. These newly granted rights were supported by organizations such as the Freedmen’s Bureau. Its programs covered a wide variety of services: provision of emergency food, housing & medical aid; initiation and support for educational activities; an intermediary in setting up work opportunities and supervising labor contracts; and finally, acting as a legal recourse for equality for ex-slaves.
When Reconstruction ended in 1877, the support system and protections enjoyed by the freed slaves were terminated. In fact, the end of Reconstruction meant a return to pre-Civil War society and all the unjust prejudicial practices. The reality was that white southerners resented the removal of those institutions that had kept slaves subjugated and subordinate to white society. As early as 1865, hostile white southerners introduced black codes, effectively controlling the ex-slave population by limiting and inhibiting their newfound freedoms. Mainstream society and organizations like the Ku Klux Klan enforced these codes, practiced social and economic discrimination, and used terror tactics to keep ex-slaves from attaining equality. In the end, the plight of the freedpeople, in many cases, was no better than it had been during slavery.
Frustrated and demoralized by their ever-worsening situation, freedpeople began to look for a way out of their desolate situation. All around them were tales of the opportunities of the West, including stories of the exploits of black cowboys who seemed to have obtained some measure of freedom, equality, and prosperity. Benjamin Pap Singleton, an ex-slave cabinetmaker and carpenter, and others encouraged freedmen and freedwomen to take advantage of laws like the Homestead Act of 1862. This Act encouraged settlement on the Great Plains by offering grants of 160 acres of public land to people who would live on and farm the land for five years. The ex-slaves believed that only by migrating out of the South would freedpeople be able to live in peace, control their own destiny, and attain true freedom. Singleton began his migration crusade in 1868 and brought the first migrants to Kansas in 1869. He had minor success with black migration until 1876 when [mass exodus overwhelmed his efforts].
Between 1878 and 1880, approximately 15,000–20,000 [some sources estimate as many as 50,000.. and thousands more had been turned back by whites patrolling the rivers and roads, afraid to lose their cheap source of labor] freed people made the journey from Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas to settle in Kansas. These immigrants became known as Exodusters because their migration resembled the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, as documented in the Hebrew bible.
(via Votaw Colony Museum)
A great book about this moment in history is Nell Irvin Painter’s Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction.
Black History Month: Vivien Thomas (1910-1985)
Thomas dreamed of becoming a physician, and saved his money from carpentry for seven years to attend medical school. But he lost his savings in the Great Depression, and instead began working as a laboratory assistant at John Hopkins University to Alfred Blalock, whose name is well known as a pioneer in cardiac surgery.
When Dr. Helen Taussig approached Blalock about how they could solve a congenital heart defect causing blue baby syndrome among her young patients—a condition called Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF)—Blalock approached his technician Vivien Thomas with the problem. Thomas had the idea to connect the aorta to the pulmonary trunk, thus allowing blood to circulate through the pulmonary tract. Blalock asked Thomas—who was not allowed to perform surgery on white patients—to attempt to recreate the conditions of the defect on a dog and then rectify them. Thomas was only able to reproduce 2 of the 4 features of TOF, but the procedure was successful and harmless nonetheless. Thomas performed similar operations numerous times; Blalock only once. Blalock then executed the operations on the children from Taussig’s ward—with Thomas standing on a stool behind him, explaining the proper procedural methods along the way. The operations were largely successful and the “blue babies” were cured.
So what is the procedure called? The Blalock-Taussig Shunt. Thomas received no credit or mention in the development of this life-preserving method. News of the surgery spread far and wide, and confirmed Blalock’s success as a physician. Thomas still received no acknowledgement for his achievements, from the public, from Blalock, or from the university.
After Blalock’s death, Vivien Thomas stayed at John Hopkins mentoring and educating young black technicians. Though he had never received a medical degree, he was presented an honorary doctorate by the university in 1976 (but it was a doctorate of Law, presented so that his students may finally call him “doctor”). He died in 1985, just days before the publication of his autobiography.So why is Black History Month important? Because names like Vivien Thomas need to be known, and the naming of procedure’s like the Blalock-Taussig shunt give a false impression of history. I don’t know about you, but I think Vivien Thomas shunt is a better name for the procedure.
Note: much of this I got from my class on embryology; further information was gleaned from the following sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivien_Thomas
http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/thomas-vivien-1910-1985
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blalock%E2%80%93Taussig_shunt
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/partners/legacy/l_colleagues_thomas.html
Mos Def was awesome as Vivien Thomas in the film “Something the Lord Made”
(via soulbrotherv2)
Huey P. Newton (seated on porch) watches Donna Howell and the children of the Intercomunal Youth Institute. Photo: Lauryn Williams, 1972
The Oakland Community School (OCS) was one of the most well-known and well-loved programs of the Black Panther Party. Point Five of the Black Panther Party’s original 1966 Ten Point Platform and Program, emphasized the need to provide an education that, among other things, taught African American and poor people about their history in the United States. To this end, the Oakland Community School became a locale for a small, but powerful group of administrators, educators, and elementary school students whose actions to empower youth and their families challenged existing public education concepts for black and other poor and racially marginalized communities during the 1970s and 1980s.
Historically, however, the educational programs of the BPP started long before the OCS with the vision of the party’s leaders. As early as 1967 Huey Newton and Bobby Seale began speaking to high school youth at San Francisco/Bay Area public schools. In 1969, in U.S. cities where there were strong BPP chapters, liberation schools staffed by volunteer party members opened in storefronts, churches and homes. These after-school programs were created to give academic support to black and other poor youth. These community school programs created a forum for young people to explore a factual history of America and a sense of connection and community.
(via Erika Huggins)
