Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Patricia Era Bath (born November 4, 1942, Harlem, New York) is an American ophthalmologist, inventor and academic. She has broken ground for women and African Americans in a number of areas. Prior to Bath, no woman had served on the staff of the Jules Stein Eye Institute, headed a post-graduate training program in ophthalmology or been elected to the honorary staff of the UCLA Medical Center (an honor bestowed on her after her retirement). Before Bath, no black person had served as a resident in ophthalmology at New York University and no black woman had ever served on staff as a surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center. Bath is the first African American woman doctor to receive a patent for a medical purpose. Her Laserphaco Probe is used around the world to treat cataracts. The holder of four patents, she is also the founder of the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in Washington D.C.
(con't.)
Born in New York City on November 4, 1942, Bath was the daughter of Rupert and Gladys Bath. Her father, an immigrant from Trinidad, was a newspaper columnist, a merchant seaman and the first black man to work for the New York City Subway as a motorman. Raised in Harlem, Bath was encouraged academically by her parents.
Inspired by Albert Schweizer, Bath applied for and won a National Science Foundation Scholarship while attending Charles Evans Hughes High School; this led her to a research project at Yeshiva University and Harlem Hospital Center on cancer that piqued her interest in medicine. In 1960, still a teenager, Bath won the "Merit Award" of Mademoiselle magazine for her contribution to the project.
After graduating high school early, Bath received her Bachelor of Arts in chemistry from New York's Hunter College in 1964. She relocated to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University College of Medicine, from which she received her doctoral degree in 1968. During her time at Howard, she was president of the Student National Medical Association and received fellowships from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health.
Bath interned at Harlem Hospital Center, subsequently serving as a fellow at Columbia University. During this period, from 1968 to 1970, Bath became aware that the practice of eye care was uneven among racial minorities and poor populations, with much higher incidence of blindness amongst her black and poor patients. She determined that, as a physician, she would help address this issue. She persuaded her professors from Columbia to operate on blind patients at Harlem Hospital Center, which had not previously offered eye surgery, at no cost. Bath pioneered the worldwide discipline of "community ophthalmology", a volunteer-based outreach to bring necessary eye care to underserved populations.....Read More
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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They pound the pavement 11 miles south to send a message to the '1 percent' New York Daily News: Latino and black protesters march from Washington Heights to Occupy Wall Street
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Hundreds of Latinos and blacks staged their own city marathon Monday, marching down the length of Manhattan to show solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protest.
The day after the real city marathon was contested, the ranks marched to the beat of drums and horns, from Washington Heights to the Downtown base of “the 99 percent.”
The 11-mile trek to Zuccotti Park was meant to show a need to inject greater diversity into the huddled masses clamoring for social change and accountability on Wall Street.
“I’m a person of color,” said Columbia doctoral student Anita Gundanna, 35, of Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, who held a sign reading: “Si! Si! Si! From the Heights to Wall Street.”
“There should be more people of color represented in the protest,” she added.
Organizers named the march the “End to End for 99 Percent," since it snaked from one end of Manhattan to the other.
David Handschuh/New York Daily News
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Cumberland County prosecutors want a judge to bow out of a case involving a Fayetteville man seeking to get off death row under the new N.C. Racial Justice Act. Fayetteville Observer: Cumberland prosecutors want Judge Weeks off Racial Justice Act case
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The prosecutors want to postpone the proceedings so they can have more time to prepare their effort to keep killer Marcus Reymond Robinson on death row.
Robinson is attempting to use the Racial Justice Act to overturn his conviction on the premise that the Cumberland County court system is more prone to sentence people to death for killing a white person than a person of another race.
The prosecutors have subpoenaed Weeks to testify at a hearing next week. Weeks is fighting the effort. A hearing on the subpoena is scheduled for Thursday morning in Nash County Superior Court. Weeks asked for a judge outside of Cumberland County to handle the hearing.
Robinson's is one of the first cases to go forward under the Racial Justice Act, which provides condemned inmates a means to get off death row, though not out of prison, if they can prove racial bias led to their death sentences.
In letters dated Sept. 14 and Sept. 21, Assistant District Attorneys Cal Colyer and Rob Thompson told Weeks that he presided over murder cases that were included in a study of race and the death penalty in North Carolina. The statewide study found that in Cumberland County, anyone who murders a white person is more likely to be sentenced to death than someone who kills a non-white person. The study is a key piece of evidence that Robinson's lawyers are using to show a pattern of racial bias in Cumberland County courts.
The prosecutors say several other judges have been removed from trials involving the Racial Justice Act because they presided over cases that were included in the study and could have been called as witnesses.
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In Double Victory, a companion to the upcoming Red Tails film, Tuskegee Airmen tell their story. The Root: George Lucas Doc Pays Homage to Black Fliers
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The story of the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II has an odd place in history. The achievements of the first-ever group of African-American aviators in the United States military have been well-documented in books and in various World War II films. But as much that has been told about the members of the 332nd Fighter Group and the 447th Bombardment Group, their story has always been put on the peripheral. When it has been taken center stage, such as in the 1995 HBO movie, The Tuskegee Airmen, the acclaim was relatively quiet.
Expect this to change soon with not one but two proper treatments of the Tuskegee Airmen's incredible story. The first and better-known version is the highly anticipated feature film, Red Tails. Directed and produced by George Lucas, the film will hit theaters in January 2012. But while Red Tails is billed as "based on true events," Lucas, ever the consummate storyteller, has paired the Hollywood feature -- starring Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. -- with an excellent and touching documentary entitled Double Victory. Though it will soon come to television, the doc is currently on a tour of special screenings throughout the country. Monday night, Double Victory was shown at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, N.Y.
Narrated by Gooding, Double Victory does what no Hollywood movie can do and a good documentary should do: It lets the people who lived to tell the tale do so. Interspersed with the words of living Tuskegee Airmen, the documentary also shows original wartime footage and photos of deceased leaders. But most important, Double Victory, as implied in the title, tells the tale of the men's efforts to not only end fascism in Europe but also end the racism they endured in the United States.
With so much ground to cover, from the soldiers' own anecdotes to those passed down throughout history, Double Victory finds a way to deliver facts without the burden of fitting them into a narrative, though there is an arc to make the information easily digestible for those who want to see a good story. Nuggets like the fact that admission into the cadet-training program required at least two years of college, at a time when less than 1 percent of African Americans had a college degree, add an extra level of gravitas to the Tuskegee Airmen's story.
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Heavy D, who died Tuesday at the age of 44, kept fans dancing -- and also kept it clean. The Root: The Rapper You Could Bring Home to Mama
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Hip-hop music legend Heavy D passed away today, and his fans are surely mourning the beloved artist's untimely death. According to TMZ, the rapper collapsed in his Beverly Hills, Calif., home this morning after returning from a shopping trip. He was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and pronounced dead at 1 p.m.
Born Dwight Errington Myers, the Mount Vernon, N.Y., native came to rap prominence in the late 1980s and flourished in the early '90s thanks to a cadre of dance-floor-motivating and radio-friendly hits from his group, Heavy D & the Boyz. Known for being an agile dancer despite his size, he also became a hip-hop sex symbol and was affectionately dubbed the Overweight Lover.
Heavy D & the Boyz' hits relied more on wit and having a good time than gangster posturing and machismo. The group's breakthrough album was 1989's platinum-selling Big Tyme, which spawned a number of hits, including "Somebody for Me," featuring Al B. Sure; "We Got Out Own Thang"; and the reggae-flavored "Gyrlz, They Love Me."
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#occupyAtlanta The Grio: Census: Atlanta has widest income gap between rich and poor
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It is a case of the have and the have not. Of all major American cities, Atlanta now has the widest income gap between rich and poor. U.S census numbers have given the city a new label that's nothing to be proud of, but puts into perspective how many Georgians are struggling to make ends meet.
"I've been out of work almost two years," says Marcia Tolbert. "Most places tell me I'm over qualified. Others say I've been out of work for too long. It's like they keep kicking you when you are down."
Tolbert is a name and a face to a trend that is unfolding all over the county. The recession that began in 2007 took a steep toll, with only a few places spared from a rise in jobless rates and a decline in incomes. Nearly one-in-six Americans live in poverty.
Those sobering numbers cross ever state and ethic line, leaving a debilitating mark on the nation's children. Sixteen million of them are growing up in poverty, that's 40 percent of all African-American children and 37 percent of Hispanic children, according to the U.S. Census.
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President Barack Obama acknowledged on Wednesday that black Americans have faced “enormous challenges” with unemployment under his watch, and appealed for their support in pursuing solutions that he can implement without help from Congress. Washington Post: Obama seeks support, ideas on black unemployment, housing, education
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Appearing at a daylong White House summit of black business, community and political leaders, Obama said the current 15.1 percent unemployment rate among blacks is “way too high,” and that various other problems that plagued black communities before he took office, such as housing and education, have worsened.
“We know tough times,” the president said. “And what we also know, though, is that if we are persistent, if we are unified, and we remain hopeful, then we’ll get through these tough times and better days lie ahead.”
Noting that his proposed American Jobs Act is still pending in Congress, Obama made a plea for ideas “where we don’t have to wait for Congress,” and initiatives “that we can take right now administratively that would make a difference in the communities that all of you represent.”
Obama has endured some tough criticism within the black community because joblessness among African Americans runs chronically higher than the overall unemployment rate, which is 9 percent. Some of his toughest critics have been within the Congressional Black Caucus. Some caucus members have said he was not targeting the problems faced by blacks.
The Obama administration disputes that argument. However, Wednesday’s session was a noticeable departure from its past mode of studiously de-emphasizing race when it comes to its policies.
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Julius Malema has been suspended from the ANC for five years and, if his appeal fails, must vacate his position as the youth league's president, the ruling party's national disciplinary committee has ruled. Mail and Guardian: Guilty: Julius Malema suspended from ANC
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The youth league leader was found guilty of undermining party leadership and sowing division in party ranks for his criticism of ANC (and South Africa) president Jacob Zuma, as well as bringing the party into disrepute by recklessly denouncing the Botswanan government, in conflict with ANC policies.
He was found not guilty on separate charges of inciting hatred and racism.
Editor's note: Mr Malema has been known for performing the song "Kill the Boer" at youth rallies, a song most now consider to be racially inflammatory.
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RIP Dwight "Heavy D" Errington Myers