Essay on African American Contributions in Science

Garrett Augustus Morgan Sr. was born on March 4, 1877, in Paris, Kentucky. Morgan was an African American inventor and a community leader. Morgan is responsible for inventing a type of protective respiratory hood, hair straightening chemical, and a traffic signal light. In 1963, Morgan and three others used the safety hood device to save workers trapped within a water intake tunnel fifty feet below Lake Erie; Morgan is also accredited as the first African American in the state of Cleveland, Ohio to own an automobile. In 1963, Morgan was nationally recognized, although nearly blind, he continued to work on his invention. One of Morgan’s last inventions was a self extinguishing cigarette. In Cleveland, Ohio the Garrett A. Morgan Cleveland School

This website/online article gave me information about Elijah McCoy's early life and how he invented the automatic lubricating

Elijah McCoy was borned in Colchester, Ontario, Canada may 2, 1844 and died in october 10, 1929 at the age of 86. His place in history was in Entrepreneur Engineering Inventor. He was knew for the 19th century African American inventing lubrication devices used for making trains travel more efficiently.

Slavery began in the late 16th century to early 18th century. Africans were brought to American colonies by white masters to come and work on their plantations in the South. They were treated harshly with no payments for all their hard work. In addition, they lived under harsh living conditions, and this led to their resistance against these harsh conditions. The racism towards the African Americans who were slaves was at its extreme as they did not have any rights; no civil nor political rights.

The African American race and the events they have been involved in from 1865- resent day, have single handedly contributed to and shaped the race they are today and the issues they deal with now. There are six specific areas of history that had great impact an effect on shaping African Americans, their culture, the society, and even social status to date. These events include The Civil War, this marked the beginning of freedom for blacks or so they thought. It directly relates to and shows how blacks were given something or promised a way of life but treated completely different. It also sparked all types of injustices one being segregation and the long standing feud between southern and Northern whites.

Morgan often said “If it's in a book, you can do it, if it's not, then use your imagination” meaning that don’t give up, if you find it in a book, you can make it happen, if it's not, then make your own steps on how to make it happen. If Garrett never went by this quote, fires would be more deadly than they are now and car crashes would happen more often than they are now. Morgan made the first “illuminated traffic lights” to direct traffic. How Morgan thought of this was when he witnessed a horrible car crash leaving a poor girl in critical condition. With his Morgan’s don't stop attitude and creativity, Morgan found a solution to car accidents. To this day forward, we still use them today. Finally, Garrett created the “Gas Mask”. Back then, fires were deadly due to the toxic gasses and of course the flames. Morgan’s gas mask was popular, but not well known. Then, Morgan had the chance to show that his invention truly worked. When a mining tunnel blew up, the tunnel as filled with toxic gasses, many were either passes out or they had died. Morgan got a call from the police officers at the scene at 3 O’clock in the morning, explaining what had happened. Morgan grabbed as many gas masks as possible and flew down to the scene. Once he got there, 3 volunteers, volunteer to put on the gas masks, including Garrett. After 15 minutes the volunteers went down, they came up the

African American Studies is a very complex subject. To confuse African American studies with black history is a common occurrence. African American studies is much deeper and more profound than just Black history alone. There are many unanswered and unasked questions among the Black American culture which causes confusion and misunderstanding in modern day society. In unit one there were many themes, concepts, and significant issues in the discipline of Africana studies. Both W.E.B Du Bois and Vivian V. Gordan touched on many concerns.

Whether we know it or not, black inventors have impacted our lives drastically. From the time we wake up, until we go back to sleep at night, we use at least one thing that has been made by an African- American inventor. Whether it is something as big as a traffic light or as little as a hair brush, black inventors have made major contributions to our everyday lives. Many people know about the big inventions, but both small and big inventions have impacted America. (Lund 2008)

African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated; that is 60% of 30% of the African American population. African Americas are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. “Between 6.6% and 7.5% of all black males ages 25 to 39 were imprisoned in 2011, which were the highest imprisonment rates among the measured sex, race, Hispanic origin, and age groups." (Carson, E. Ann, and Sabol, William J. 2011.) Stated on Americanprogram.org “ The Sentencing Project reports that African Americans are 21 percent more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than white defendants and are 20 percent more likely to be sentenced to prison.” Hispanics and African Americans make up 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population. (Henderson 2000). Slightly 15% of the inmate population is made up of 283,000 Hispanic prisoners.

Over the course of this semester, I was introduced to many people, ideas, writings, and discussions that sparked my interest and enlightened me on African American history. However, I feel like this was just the beginning of my journey of learning the history of my people, as there is still so much out there to be brought to the surface. Prior to taking this course, I was always ignorant on the topic of African American history and simply made the connection to slavery. Additionally, I was unaware of other black activist, movements, and struggles that I had the chance to witness for the first time in this class. I came to a realization of how deprived of this information I was, because other historic events have been deemed more important. A quote that stuck with me throughout the course that was made by Arthur Schomburg was, “... African history and negro history, are the missing pages of world history”.

African Americans have endured many trials and tribulations over the centuries. Our people have suffered from war, violence, and anguish simply because of the color of our skin. Our history has been so blatantly missing from textbooks and the K-12th grade educational atmosphere. Our educational system continues to neglect the history of our African American ancestors and fail to provide them with the educational resources to inform them of our past and allow them to learn about the true origins of our culture. We have made many significant contributions to the world but those have also been highly ignored as well.

During my early years of school, I remember being taught white accomplishments and wondering if blacks and other people of color had made any significant contributions to today's world. I noticed that television consist of all white people. Throughout my research paper I hope to cover certain aspects of African American heritage. Aspects such as blacks making up the largest minority group in the United States, although Mexican-Americans are rapidly changing that. The contributions blacks have provided to our country are immeasurable. Unfortunately though rather than recognizing these contributions, white America would rather focus on oppressing and degrading these people. As a consequence American

Scholars have dedicated their time and attention to furthering the discipline of African American Studies and can define the field with many different definitions. Through looking at the origins and development in the study we can see how it became a legitimate academic field. As we study the writings of the African American intellect, it will fully explain the importance of the discipline. Their work will justify the study of cultural and historical experiences of Africans living in Africa or the African Diaspora. When examining the scholar’s arguments we can develop our own intellectually informed rationalization of the field of African American Studies.

James Watt is the mind behind this important invention, which changed the way we live. The invention was that of Steam Engine. Steam is a powerful fuel for the locomotive. This idea first came in the mind of James Watt, who started putting in most of his time thinking about getting a practical use of Steam into daily life, when finally he ended up in the discovery of Steam Engine, which remained a method of inexpensive transportation for hundreds of

Another man that is mistakenly given a lot of credit for the invention of the steam engine is Edward Somerset, Marquis of Worcester.  The Marquis has been hailed as the originator of the machine that was used to raise water by the force of fire.  However, the Marquis never actually built such a machine.  The only machine