A water feature found in the Maya city of Palenque, Mexico, is the earliest known example of engineered water pressure in the new world, according to a collaboration between two Penn State researchers, an archaeologist and a hydrologist.
Cathay Williams was born to an enslaved mother and a free father in Independence, Missouri in 1844. During her adolescence, she worked as a house slave on the Johnson plantation on the outskirts of Jefferson City, Missouri. In 1861, Union forces occupied Jefferson City during the early stages of the Civil War. At this time, captured slaves were officially designated as contraband and were forced to serve in military support roles such as cooks, laundresses, or nurses. Before her voluntary enlistment, at just 17 years old, Williams served as an Army cook and a washerwoman. In this role, she accompanied the infantry all over the country. Williams served under the service of General Philip Sheridan and witnessed the Red River Campaign and the Battle of Pea Ridge.
Franklin Chang-Díaz is a Costa Rican-born American physicist and the first Hispanic astronaut of Chinese descent.
Bridget "Biddy" Mason became one of the first prominent citizens and landowners in Los Angeles in the 1850s and 1860s.
Because they were forbidden from owning land, intermarrying with Whites, owning homes, working in many occupations, getting an education, and living in certain parts of the city or entire cities, the Chinese basically had no other choice but to retreat into their own isolated communities as a matter of survival.
Rita Moreno became the first Hispanic American (and the second person ever) to have won an Oscar, a Grammy, a Tony, and an Emmy. Her career has spanned over 70 years; among her notable acting work are supporting roles in the musical films The King and I and West Side Story.
Toni Cade Bambara was born Miltona Mirkin Cadean. An acclaimed novelist, short story writer, and editor whose work is often seen as emblematic of African American women's literature in the 1960's. She spent her childhood and adolescent years in New York City and Jersey City, New Jersey where she was deeply influenced by the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s,
Born in Honolulu as the son of Japanese immigrants, George Ariyoshi became the first governor of Japanese ancestry in the nation.
Donald Argee Barksdale learned the game of basketball in the parks and recreation centers that dotted the neighborhoods of Oakland, California during the days of his youth. He never played a minute of high school basketball at Berkeley High due to rules that limited the number of black players to one on varsity teams. The social barriers and racial quotas that threatened to derail his career from the very beginning failed to dampen the spirit of optimism in Barksdale.
Ruth Carol Taylor was the first African-American airline flight attendant in America, She made the historic mark back on February 11, 1958.
Entomologist Charles Henry Turner was born in Cincinnati Ohio. His father, Thomas, was a church custodian and mother, Adeline, was a practical nurse. In high school, Turner was class valedictorian. He went on to study science at the University of Cincinnati where he earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees (both in Biology) in 1891 and 1892 respectively. Turner held various teaching positions including being appointed, in 1893, professor and department head at Clark College (now Clark University in Atlanta, Georgia). In 1905, he left Clark for Chicago where in 1907 he earned his Ph.D. in Zoology - becoming the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. in Zoology as well as the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Vijaya Lakshmi Emani was an Indian American social activist known for her work against domestic violence and was a civic leader among the Indian American community in Cleveland, Ohio. Starting with Northeast Ohio Telugu Association, followed by the Federation of Indian Community Associations and with Greater Cleveland Asian Community, she was the president of the Federation of India Community and a board member of the Federation of India Community Associations (FICA).
On October 11, 1906, the San Francisco Board of Education attempted to force the 93 Japanese students who were attending public school in San Francisco to attend the segregated Chinese school. The school board was responding to pressure from the Asiatic Exclusion Leauge in California that had the ultimate goal of ending Japanese immigration to California. Japanese Americans protested, but when they were unable to succeed in their efforts to change the School Board's decision, they alerted the Japanese media and Japanese government officials.
Yung Wing is the first-known Chinese student to graduate from an American university. He graduated from Yale in 1854, where he was a member of the choir, played football, was a member of the boat club and won academic prizes for English competitions.
George Henry White, lawyer, legislator, congressman, and racial spokesman was born near Rosindale in Bladen County North Carolina, the son of Wiley F. and Mary White. It is possible that he was born into slavery, although the evidence on this is contradictory. He did attend public schools in North Carolina and received training under D. P. Allen, president of the Whitten Normal School in Lumberton. In 1876 he was an assistant in charge of the exhibition mounted by the U.S. Coast Survey at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. After graduation from Howard University in 1877, he was principal of the Colored Grade School, the Presbyterian parochial school, and the State Normal School in New Bern. He studied law under Judge William J. Clarke and received a license to practice in North Carolina in 1879.
Bessie Stringfield was the first Jamaican-American woman to ride across the United States solo and was one of the few civilian motorcycle dispatch riders for the United States Army during World War II. Credited with breaking down barriers for both women and African-American motorcyclists, she was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame.
Katherine Sui Fun Cheung was born in Canton, China in 1904 (a year after the Wright brothers’ first flight). When she was 17 she moved with her father to California to study music at the Los Angeles Conservatory. After graduating, she continued her studies at Cal Poly Pomona and the University of Southern California.
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was the most decorated unit of its size in the U.S. Army during World War II, with a roughly 4000-strong unit consisting of Japanese-Americans, mostly from Hawaii and some recruited from the internment camps where Japanese were incarcerated during the war.
Lone Wolf was a Kiowa Indian chief, living in the Indian Territory created by the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867. A provision in the treaty required that three-fourths of the adult males in each of the Kiowa, Apache, and Comanche tribes agree to subsequent changes to the terms of the treaty. In 1892, Congress attempted to alter the reservation lands granted to the tribes.
By 1940, people of Mexican descent in the U.S. were twice as likely to have been born and raised in the States than not. Often the children of immigrants who had entered in previous decades, they strongly identified with the country of their birth. The result was massive Mexican American participation in World War II, the most recent estimate being that some 500,000 Mexican Americans served in the conflict.
Miné Okubo is well known for her representations of daily life and humanity. She is most famous for her drawings depicting Japanese and Japanese American internment during World War II.
Cultural diversity is one of the modern Labor Movement’s greatest strengths. Labor celebrates the richness of multiculturalism and recognizes that the united voice above all else is the fabric that holds this Movement together. But the Labor Movement has not always been a bastion of racial understanding. In 1903 in the beet fields of Oxnard, a battle came to a head, not only between the workers and the employer but between those wishing to create more diversity in Organized Labor and those wishing to protect the interest of the established unions.
The U.S. Life-Saving Service was formed in 1871 to assure the safe passage of Americans and International shipping and to save lives and salvage cargo. Station 17 located on the desolate beaches of Pea Island, North Carolina and manned by a crew of seven, bore the brunt of this dangerous but vital duty.
Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu, often referred to as the “First Lady of Physics” was a renowned physicist who made important contributions to the Manhattan Project and performed groundbreaking experiments in the field of physics that disproved the Law of Conservation of Parity.