CuriPow on 08/14/2020
Humble Genius
Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner was an African-American inventor most noted for her development of the sanitary belt (now known as the Maxi-Pad) that changed women's feminine care forever.
CuriPow on 08/13/2020
Ahead of Her Time
Yuri Kochiyama was a tireless political activist who dedicated her life to contributing to social change through her participation in social justice and human rights movements.
CuriPow on 08/12/2020
Third World Liberation Front
In 1969, The Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), was a coalition formed with the Black Student Union, the Mexican American Student Committee, and the Native American Indian Association at UC Berkely. The TWLF lead a five-month strike on campus to demand a shift in admissions practices that mostly excluded nonwhite students and in the curriculum regarded as irrelevant to the lives of students of color.
CuriPow on 08/11/2020
Breaking Barriers
Jerimiah Haralson was born a slave near Columbus, Georgia, he was taken to Alabama and kept in bondage until 1865. After attaining his freedom, Haralson taught himself how to read and write. According to records he then became a farmer and a clergyman, a powerful orator and, debater. In 1870 he ran for Congress as an independent and defeated the Republican candidate.
CuriPow on 08/10/2020
Leading The Way
Anandi Gopal Joshi was a pioneer who graduated from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in the class of 1886.
CuriPow on 08/09/2020
The Last Warrior
Geronimo (Goyathle - his native name means "one who yawns") was the last warrior fighting for the Chiricahua Apache. Geronimo was his Spanish given name that he used in public.
CuriPow on 08/08/2020
Keeping Things Cool
David Nelson Crosthwaite Jr. studied mechanical engineering at Purdue University before taking a job with the C.A. Dunham Company (now Dunham-Bush, Inc.). At Dunham, Crosthwait conducted innovative research and designed the heating system for Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall. He held 119 patents—39 in the U.S. and 80 internationally—all in relation to heating, cooling, and temperature regulating technology.
CuriPow on 08/07/2020
First Lady To The Stars
Kalpana Chawla made history as the first Indian-American /India born woman to go to space on the Space Shuttle Columbia STS-87 in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator.
CuriPow on 08/06/2020
Anti-Discrimination Warrior
In 1945, Elizabeth (Wanamaker) Peratrovich (Tlingit Nation) a civil rights activist was instrumental in gaining passage of America’s first anti-discrimination law. Her husband Roy (also Tlingit Nation) was mayor of their small Alaskan town for several years, but they moved to Juneau, Alaska for greater opportunities for their children.
CuriPow on 08/05/2020
Inventor, Engineer and The Edison Truth
Lewis Howard Latimer learned mechanical drawing while working for a Boston patent attorney. He later invented an electric lamp and a carbon filament for light bulbs (patented 1881, 1882). Latimer was the only African-American member of Thomas Edison's engineering laboratory.
CuriPow on 08/04/2020
Turtle Island
North America (the United States and Canada) was originally known as Turtle Island. The name comes from the Aboriginal Creation story of the Anishinaabek and was renamed to the Americas after the Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci.
CuriPow on 08/03/2020
Shining Star
As the first Chinese-American movie star, Anna May Wong used her fame to challenge racism and stereotypes in Hollywood. Born in 1905 in Los Angeles, California to second-generation immigrants.
CuriPow on 08/02/2020
Raising The Flag
Ira Hamilton Hayes was a Pima Native American and a United States Marine who was one of the six flag raisers immortalized in the iconic photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima during World War II at the Battle of Iwo Jima.
CuriPow on 08/01/2020
Shaping A Community
Jesus Urquides was an already successful businessman upon arriving in Boise Idaho in the 1860's. He built a community better known as the "Spanish Village" or "Urquides Village," Urquides often referred to it as his "little world." Other Mexican Americans and mule packers settled into his community which consisted of 30 cabins, stables, and corrals.
CuriPow on 07/31/2020
Buffalo Calf Road Woman
Though the exact circumstances surrounding Custer’s death have long been the subject of debate, a new and intriguing account of his final moments surfaced in June 2005 when members of the Northern Cheyenne broke more than a century of silence to recount their tribe’s oral history of the battle. According to their account, it was a female fighter named Buffalo Calf Road Woman (alternately called Buffalo Calf Trail Woman) who knocked Custer off his horse that day, leaving him vulnerable, and who may have killed him.
CuriPow on 07/30/2020
Lone Survivor
Osborne Perry Anderson was one of the five African American men to accompany John Brown in the raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in October 1859. Anderson was a free-born black abolitionist, born in West Fallow Field, Pennsylvania on July 27, 1830. Along with John Anthony Copeland Jr., another member of the Brown raiding party, Anderson attended Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. He later moved to Chatham, Canada, where he worked as a printer for Mary Ann Shadd‘s newspaper, the Provincial Freeman. In 1858 Anderson met John Brown and eventually became persuaded to join his band of men determined to attack Harpers Ferry.
CuriPow on 07/29/2020
The King of Ragtime
In 1911 Scott Joplin's opera Treemonisha was the first black folk opera written by a black composer. His first major success was "Maple Leaf Rag" which earned him the title "King of Ragtime".
CuriPow on 07/28/2020
Making His Voice Heard
Girindra Mukerji was an Indian anti-British revolutionary, organizer, and agriculturist. His article "The Hindu in America" has been widely cited as an early document describing early Indian immigration to the United States. Mukerji was born in India, and according to the San Francisco Chronicle, the son of a "Judge of one of the higher courts."
CuriPow on 07/27/2020
Broad Appeal
Dolores Del Río was a Mexican star actress who is considered a pioneer and an iconic figure for bringing about the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. She is the first major Mexican actress to feature in Hollywood productions, thus, giving her that international appeal. She is one of the most famous women of the twentieth century and also one of the most beautiful faces to ever grace the silver screen.
CuriPow on 07/26/2020
The 99th Pursuit Squadron
On January 16, 1941, the War Department announced the formation of the 99th Pursuit Squadron, an African-American unit, and of the Tuskegee Institute training program. On March 7, 1942, the first graduating class of the Air Corps Advanced Flying School at Tuskegee Field included Col. (later Gen.) Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., who became the commanding officer of the 99th Fighter Squadron and later the 332d Fighter Group.
CuriPow on 07/25/2020
Heart Mountain
The Heart Mountain War and Relocation Center opened in 1942. The first Japanese Americans arrived by train and the camp would hold a total of 13,997 Japanese Americans over the next three years, with a peak population of 10,767 during WWII.
CuriPow on 07/24/2020
Social Scientist For Civil Rights
Mamie Phipps Clark was born in Hot Springs, Ark., and Kenneth Clark was born and raised in Harlem, N.Y. Both obtained their bachelor's and master's degrees from Howard University. Influenced by her work with children in an all-black nursery school, Mamie decided to conduct her master’s thesis, "The Development of Consciousness of Self in Negro Pre-School Children". Not long after, she met her soon-to-be husband, Kenneth Clark, who partnered with her to extend her thesis research on self-identification in black children. This work was later developed into the famous doll experiments that exposed internalized racism and the negative effects of segregation for African-American children.
CuriPow on 07/23/2020
Chicana Feminist
Norma Alarcon is a feminist literary scholar. Alarcon has dedicated most of her work to the representation of Latina women in all aspects of life. She is perhaps one of the most widely recognized Chicana feminist activist scholars in the world.
CuriPow on 07/22/2020
First HBCU
Cheyney State College sometimes referred to as the oldest black college in the U.S., had its beginning in 1837. Richard Humphreys, a Philadelphia Quaker, willed $10,000 to a board of trustees to establish a school for blacks. The school became known as the Institute for Colored Youth in 1852. Since 1932 Chenney State College (now Cheyney University of Pennsylvania) has been a degree-granting institution.