Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
By Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Darnell Diggs and his twin sister are the youngest of 15 children who grew up in the small Alabama town of Brundidge to parents who did not finish high school. Their parents did value education. "Our parents inspired us to work hard at school, and if you didn't, you got disciplined. That was encouragement enough," Diggs recalls.
Thirty-four-year-old Darnell is now Dr. Diggs, a physicist working at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Most of his siblings have at least undergraduate degrees in areas as diverse as chemistry, math, physics, business, and education.
Diggs was a 2004 Black Engineer of the Year Award winner in the "Promising Scientist in Government" category. He was also named one of the 50 Most Important Blacks in Research Science in 2004 by Science Spectrum magazine.
During his high school days Diggs was first-chair trumpet player in the school band and was in the ROTC. He preferred biology to the physical sciences and planned to become a physician. Yet when he went off to Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University, a historically black school near Huntsville in Normal, Alabama, he took a cousin's advice and began to study business, hoping to prepare for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) on the side.
That all changed during the final semester of his sophomore year, when he took a required physical sciences class for nonscience majors. The instructor of that class told Diggs he was in the wrong field and that he ought to be majoring in physics. He even offered to help Diggs obtain a scholarship if he tried studying physics. Having paid for his schooling on grants and loans up to that point, the offer of a scholarship was enticing. Diggs enjoyed the physical science course, so he decided to take the instructor up on his offer.
But Diggs found inspiration in a book entitled Gifted Hands by Ben Carson, an African-American who grew up in inner-city Detroit and at age 33 became the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. Diggs identified with Carson, who had to struggle to overcome many of the same hurdles Diggs did, and drew motivation from Carson's story.
With Carson's book in mind, Diggs dug in for the comprehensive final and came through with a grade high enough to pass the course. That academic near-death experience gave him the resolve to struggle on, although it was not an easy path.
As graduation approached, Diggs thought about what he was going to do for the rest of his life. During that period of introspection, he attended a seminar at the National Conference of Black Physics Students that discussed the low numbers of black graduate students in physics. The attendees were encouraged to go to graduate school if they were able, and Diggs decided to give it a shot. He was admitted to the master's program in physics, also at Alabama A&M, on the condition that he do well academically. The focus of his master's studies was fiber optics. He enjoyed graduate school and his grades continued to improve. By the time he received his master's degree in physics, his grade point average was 3.5, a considerable increase from the 2.7 at the beginning of his graduate career.......Read More
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The last time country music produced the most popular song in America was 2005, when American Idol catapulted Carrie Underwood’s “Inside Your Heaven” to the peak of the Hot 100. Nashville’s drought at pop’s top will continue this week, technically, even though Ariana Grande’s reigning No. 1 was overtaken by a banjo-laden song about horses, cowboys, and porches.
That song, Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” has profited from the very question of whether it is, in fact, country. In mid-March, the track by the then-19-year-old Atlantan appeared at No. 19 on the Billboard country charts, prompting certain Nashville pundits to protest; this was rap, not country, they argued. Billboard was convinced and kicked the song off the country charts. Publicity over that episode, the continued simmering of a social-media meme related to the song, and last week’s release of a remix featuring Billy Ray Cyrus has helped the song surge 14 spots on the Hot 100. Also contributing: “Old Town Road” has a nutty-sweet catchiness, and it represents the latest amazing performance of one of pop’s most reliable magic tricks.
Lil Nas X is both meme-maker and rapper, and the “Old Town Road” phenomenon drew on both skills. Over a loop of plucked banjo (sampled from a Nine Inch Nails instrumental), grounded with electronic claps and bass rumbles, and in a rolling, folksy cadence, he brags of his Buffalo Bill swag: “Cowboy hat from Gucci / Wrangler on my booty.” The music video, such as it is, is all clips of the Wild West–set video game Red Dead Redemption 2. On the app TikTok, teens have played the song over edited footage of themselves transforming from street wear to denim, plaid, and cowboy hats. Watch a compilation and the wacky routine takes on a dreamy rhythm. Poof—you’re George Strait, you’re Dolly Parton, you’re Paris Hilton in The Simple Life.
It’s a perfectly straightforward meme given what “Old Town Road” has come to represent: genre as plaything. The 2019 mixtape on which this song originally appeared is a collection of feisty, internet-steeped rap. “Old Town Road” is a digression, but only mildly so. In a familiar hip-hop ritual of announcing one’s greatness by listing stuff—cars, clothes, substances—Lil Nas X simply swapped in the sort of items you’d find at a Santa Fe boutique. He pushed his thin, hoarse voice into a strained evocation of outlaw singers, sampled some plucking worthy of an old Wells Fargo commercial, and sang about horses—but all on the way to a Kanye West refrain about invincibility: “Can’t nobody tell me nothin’.”
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Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s new four-part documentary series, “Reconstruction: America After the Civil War,” delves into the years following the Civil War, during which the nation struggled with recovery from conflict and loss, rebuilding ruined cities and the unprecedented social transformation brought about by the end of slavery.
Per an announcement from PBS, the documentary looks at how African Americans grappled with the implications of their hard-won freedom. The documentary begins with the exuberant hope that accompanied the end of the war and the Emancipation Proclamationin 1865 and ends in 1915, by which time Jim Crow and segregation were hardened facts of life. The series also explores the flowering of Black art, music, literature and culture as tools of resistance and the surge of political activism that launched the NAACP and other groups.
To coincide with the documentary, Gates also has a new book, “Stony the Road,” a history of the time between Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow.
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The number of black farmers in America has gone up, but to look at that number in isolation would be to mask the vast disparities that fall along racial lines.
There were 45,508 black farmers in 2017, up about 2 percent from five years earlier, the Department of Agriculture said Thursday in its first new U.S. agricultural census since 2012. About 3.2 million farmers are white, or 95 percent of the total.
More striking, ownership rates are declining faster for black farmers, down about 3 percent since 2012, compared with 0.3 percent for white farmers.
Incomes are also disparate, with 2,349 black farmers with operations that brought in $50,000 a year or more in 2017, compared with more than 492,000 for white farmers. For decades, black farmers have claimed unfair treatment by the U.S. government, saying bias against them in lending contributed to the small numbers in agriculture.
The disparities are “awful,” John Boyd Jr., founder of the National Black Farmers Association, said by phone Thursday. “It’s almost disheartening.”
Even in terms of Internet access, increasingly vital as margins favor operators with real-time information, black farmers lag. About 61 percent of black farms have Internet connectivity, compared with 76 percent for white farms, the data show.
The USDA defines farmers, or producers, as a person who is involved in making decisions for the operation.
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Inspired by his late father, Christopher Wallace—aka—Notorious B.I.G., CJ Wallace created Think BIG as a movement to challenge the world to re-think cannabis. Wallace’s company creates curated cannabis products rooted in three core pillars: creativity, curiosity, and collaboration.
“Cannabis has been a huge tool for my family for as long as I can remember,” CJ Wallace, Think BIG founder, told Black Enterprise in a statement. “Both of my parents used cannabis to access their creativity and to deal with the stresses that they went through.”
Think BIG advocates for the safe use of cannabis through the development of new products, stories, research, and charitable projects. The venture aims to honor and embrace cannabis’ ability to aid in personal expression, health, and wellness. The brand also strives to be a champion of criminal justice reform—advocating for the decriminalization of the plant.
“Many people don’t know my dad was arrested for a cannabis conviction before he died,” said Wallace. “So had he lived, he would have been dealing with the criminal justice system like so many other black men.”
Paradoxically, there is a boom in the cannabis industry while many sit behind bars serving time for marijuana drug offenses. Think BIG’s mission is to provide a new voice for cannabis. The company is partnering with organizations and researchers to spread its ethos and vision—inspiring the world to unlock cannabis’ use for good.
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For 24 years, Donald Campbell has been playing go-go music from his Metro PCS storefront in Shaw, at the corner of 7th Street and Florida NW. Until now.
Campbell says that T-Mobile, which acquired Metro PCS, reached out to him about a month ago: “They said, ‘get rid of the music.’ It came from up top that we had to get rid of it,” he says.
According to Campbell, T-Mobile told him that a nearby resident threatened the company with a lawsuit over the sounds that have blared from the speakers since 1995. He says that he had to turn off the music two weeks ago, and since then, “Every day all day, people think we’re closed. People have been complaining, asking what’s going on.”
He’s still been playing the music inside the store, but “the vibe is totally different,” he says. (Some people have said they’ve heard the go-go more recently than that, which Campbell attributes to the speakers inside. “If you walk by, you can hear it a little bit,” he says.)
“Generations of Howard students, generations of people know that I play music every single day,” says Campbell. The shop houses smaller businesses that offer repairs, and sells phones and go-go CDs. “We started selling [go-go] tapes, now we’re selling CDs,” he says. As a former club owner, he says, “I always liked the go-go bands, I always tried to keep the music alive.”
The identity of Campbell’s store, incorporated under the name “Central Communications,” is so closely intertwined with the music known to play out front that three of the four Yelp reviews mention it, and one is solely about the go-go. “I cannot speak on the phone services. I try not to drop my phone,” says one reviewer. “My two visits were to buy music that I’ve heard playing … For $10.00 you can get a nice Cd to play for a weekend trip, a cookout or to kick it old school with family and friends.”
Campbell is speaking with T-Mobile higher-ups again on Monday evening, he says, and hopes to reach a resolution that will allow him to turn up his speakers again. T-Mobile did not respond to DCist’s request for comment.
According to Campbell, the complaint came from a resident in The Shay, a nearby luxury mixed-use development. “We can’t confirm or deny that,” says the person who answered the phone at The Shay’s office, and declined to provide their name. “There have been complaints about the music being extremely loud, but it’s not just The Shay. It’s people who live all over or are visiting the area. It’s not The Shay that has the issue.”
The building, which was developed by JBG Smith, said in a public statement following the publication of this story that it is “not involved in any action regarding the Metro PCS store. The opinion of a purported resident is theirs alone and does not represent The Shay, or the entirety of its residents or management.” While the statement doesn’t specifically take a stand on the music’s volume, it goes on to say that “We respect the importance of Go-Go music to the local and indeed regional culture. We believe we can all enjoy Shaw when we respect one another.”
The question of the go-go music from the store hasn’t come up in the area’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission, according to Robb Hudson, an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in 1B, which includes Metro PCS. “In my five years on the ANC, we have never once discussed the music from the Metro PCS store … I’ve never had a conversation about it. And it has never once been mentioned, in my recollection, at any of the open meetings the ANC has had (that I’ve attended),” he tells DCist via Twitter direct message.
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Police arrested the 21-year-old son of a sheriff's deputy in connection to fires at three historically black churches in one Louisiana Parish in just 10 days. The fires were devastating to the St. Landry Parish community.
Investigators arrested suspect Holden Matthews Wednesday evening. He was charged Thursday morning with three counts of simple arson of a religious building.The maximum penalty for each counts is 15 years in prison.
Matthews' social media shows he had an interest in black metal music and is the lead singer for a band called Vodka Vultures. Records show Matthews lives in Saint Landry Parish, where the churches burned just a few miles apart. Police have not yet revealed a motive.
The churches were empty at the time of each fire and no one was hurt.
Earlier this week, the NAACP said the church burnings were "domestic terrorism," targeting people because of their skin color and faith.
Attacks on black churches have long been used as a way to intimidate the black community, most notably during the civil rights era. Though police in Saint Landry Parish have heightened security at nearby churches, parishioners have not stopped their Sunday worship and all the pastors say they will rebuild.
The fires began on March 26 at St. Mary Baptist Church in Port Barre followed by Greater Union Baptist on April 2 and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church on April 4.
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The Sudanese military has ousted president Omar al-Bashir in an apparent coup, following months of intense anti-government protests against the long-serving dictator.
Gen. Awad Ibn Auf, Sudan’s defense minister and former vice president, announced al-Bashir’s overthrow on Thursday, telling the country al-Bashir had been arrested and that his regime had been toppled.
Ibn Auf also declared that the constitution would be suspended and the military would take control during a two-year transition period. He announced a three-month national emergency (though al-Bashir had already instituted year-long national emergency in February) and imposed a 10 pm curfew.
The removal of al-Bashir is a stunning development. The authoritarian leader took over in a coup in 1989, and has maintained his grip on power for 30 years despite international pressure over Sudan’s support of terrorism and perpetration of genocide in the Darfur region. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes and other atrocities.
Al-Bashir also oversaw a long-running civil war between north and south Sudan, which ended in a peace agreement in 2005 and eventually led to the break-up of his country with the independence of South Sudan, in 2011.
But the military’s announcement that it plans to retain control has dampened the historic end of al-Bashir’s rule, as protesters fear this is a continuation of the regime, rather than a move toward democracy and a civilian-led government that they have been demanding for months.
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