Commentary: Black Scientists, Explorers, and Inventors
By dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
The Sanitary Pad was developed by a black woman named Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner of Monroe, NC (May 17, 1912 – January 13, 2006). However due to racial discrimination her patent for the sanitary belt was prevented for thirty years, and then stolen. Kenner eventually received five patents, which includes a carrier attachment for invalid walker and the bathroom tissue holder.
Kenner came from a family of inventors. The young Kenner had an active, inventive mind that would often keep her up at night. Her father, whom she credited for her initial interest in discovery, patented a clothing press which would fit in suitcases, though he ultimately made no money on the invention. Her father also patented a window washer for trains and invented a stretcher with wheels for ambulances. Her grandfather invented a light signal for trains, though this invention was stolen from him by a white man. Her sister, invented and commercially sold board games.
Kenner graduated from high school in 1931. She attended Howard University, although she was unable to finish due to financial difficulties. Women at the time were kept out of scientific establishments or academic institutions, but this did not prevent women from continued to put their efforts toward their accomplishments. Kenner and her family moved to Washington D.C. when she was young and here is where she stayed to keep updating on her opportunities to have her ideas patented at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Until sanitary pads were created, women used all kinds of reusable fabrics to absorb menstrual flows. In 1956, she was finally able to save up enough money to get her first patent on it. However, the company that first showed interest in her invention, the Sonn-Nap-Pack Company, rejected it after they discovered that she was African American. Kenner never made any money off of the sanitary belt, because her patent expired and became public domain, allowing it to be manufactured freely.
Marry Kenner is quoted as saying, "one day I was contacted by a company that expressed an interest in marketing my idea. I was jubilant," she said in an interview. "I saw houses, cars, and everything about to come to my way." A representative made their way to Washington to speak with Kenner and she continues to explain that they had rejected her by saying, "Sorry to say, when they found out I was black, their interest dropped. The representative went back to New York and informed me the company was no longer interested.
Between 1956 and 1987 she received five total patents for her household and personal item creations. She shared the patent on the toilet tissue holder with her sister, Mildred Davidson.
Read more here -→
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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR
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For a long time, the face of the climate movement was white. But with growing public awareness of climate change came the recognition that its impacts are disproportionately experienced by Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color.
The problem, according to many Black climate advocates, is that awareness is not enough.
Tamara Toles O’Laughlin is one of the best-known advocates for what she calls the “Black climate agenda”: a movement that seeks to correct the failures of the climate movement to include Black people and that wants to see racial justice at the center of climate policy conversations.
A lifelong environmental activist, Toles O’Laughlin is the former director of the North American region of 350.org, an international environmental organization founded in 2007 that uses a grassroots approach to build support for ending fossil fuels.
The Black climate agenda is about more than just representation. It’s about equity and righting the wrongs that have been done in the past to make a just future possible. In her vision, the agenda should include policies like climate reparations that address the disproportionate impact climate change has had on Black communities, as well as Indigenous people and other communities of color.
There are some initial signs that the righting of wrongs is already starting to happen, at least in the US.
Through the American Rescue Plan, the Biden-Harris administration allocated $5 billion to help Black farmers who have long suffered from racially discriminatory agricultural policies. Biden’s American Jobs Plan, meanwhile, aims to address “longstanding and persistent racial injustice,” including by allocating 40 percent of the benefits from investments in climate and clean energy infrastructure to “disadvantaged communities.”
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Newly released video from a Los Angeles police officer’s body camera shows two officers grappling with and arresting a Black man outside his Hollywood home as they responded to reports of a domestic violence incident in which the suspect was the white boyfriend of a neighbor.
A federal magistrate ordered the public disclosure of the video Friday as part of a lawsuit alleging racial profiling and civil rights violations brought by music producer Antone Austin, known as Tone Stackz, who was arrested in May 2019 despite not being the suspect in a domestic violence call. Austin and his girlfriend Michelle Michlewicz were taken into custody for resisting arrest.
The Los Angeles city attorney’s office had said in a court filing that it did not want the Los Angeles Police Department video released publicly because it would “be contrary to LAPD policy and may have a chilling effect on future LAPD investigations.” However, U.S. Magistrate Jacqueline Chooljian agreed with an attorney for the producer and his girlfriend that the 11-minute video should be released.
The video footage shows the two being physically detained by officers as they proclaim Austin’s innocence. But it begins with an unusual admission that the officers weren’t sure Austin was the man cited in the domestic violence call.
As their patrol car makes a U-turn after passing Austin, one officer asks the other, “This dude?”
“Probably,” says the partner on the May 24, 2019, recording. The officers were responding to a 911 call made by Austin’s neighbor about her ex-boyfriend, who was white; no description of the suspect is given in the call.
The officers see Austin as he was taking out the trash in front of his Fountain Avenue apartment; he smiles at the officers as they approach. The officers tell him to turn around. He asks why, and the officer snaps back, “Because I told you to.” Austin informs the officer he lives there, and the officer says, “OK, man, I don’t know who I am looking for.”
The officer asks Austin, “What is your problem?” As Austin attempts to turn back toward them, they become physical, grappling with him and placing his arms behind his back. Austin begins to yell “Help” repeatedly.
“You’re looking for the people upstairs,” Austin protests as the officers attempt to handcuff him behind his back.
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My emotions teeter between exasperation and outrage each day I read the trial recap of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is charged with killing George Floyd.
I’m not naïve. I know how these killer cop trials go. The defense drags the deceased victim’s reputation through the mud — “he was a big Black man prone to violence” or “he was under the influence of a drug” — to create a smoke screen, to generate empathy for the cop. From Michael Brown to Philando Castile, too many judges and juries have fallen victim to this tired ploy — the “drug-crazed Negro” script —when a white police officer kills a Black person.
True to form, Mr. Chauvin’s lawyers have tried to deflect blame from his brutal act onto the drugs found in Mr. Floyd’s body at the time of his death. “The evidence will show that Mr. Floyd died of a cardiac arrhythmia that occurred as a result of hypertension, his coronary disease, ingestion of methamphetamine and fentanyl, and the adrenaline flowing through his body,” defense attorney Eric Nelson told the jury. In other words, Mr. Floyd might still be alive today had he not taken drugs. Shame on us if we buy this bogus defense this time.
I’m a neuropsychopharmacologist who researches drug addiction. My work has focused on the unjust and unscientific stigmas surrounding drug use and the criminalization of drugs around the globe. The defense’s attempt to paint Mr. Floyd as a crazed drug addict relies on retrograde myths about the impact of drugs on our bodies and minds.
While it’s true Mr. Floyd had small amounts of methamphetamine and THC, the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, in his blood — 19 and 2.9 nanograms per milliliter, respectively — those numbers strongly suggest he hadn’t used them in at least several hours, maybe a day.
Also, Mr. Floyd’s methamphetamine levels were far below those I have found, in my laboratory research on dozens of participants, necessary to induce significantly elevated cardiovascular activity: greater than 25 nanograms per milliliter. The amount of methamphetamine (and THC) found in Mr. Floyd’s blood was too low for it to have had any meaningful effect on him.
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For nearly a month, men from the militias of at least two of Somalia’s five federal member states have been stationed inside Mogadishu’s high-security international airport compound as their leaders attend a circuit of meetings to end the electoral impasse.
The huge complex bristles with barbed wire and armed men in and out of uniforms. In the car park of one of the compound’s hotels, a four-wheel pickup truck mounted with a large gun idles. A handful of young men have built a makeshift camp around the car.
While a Somali national army exists, presidents from some of the federal member states (FMS) do not trust it will protect them, nor do they entirely trust the African Union troops who have secured the airport complex for over a decade.
Last weekend, for the first time in more than a month, all five state presidents, the president of the federal government, and the governor of Benadir, the capital metropolis, agreed to meet.
The aim was to set an agenda for talks about the national election. The politicians were talking about what they would talk about later.
Even after a venue was agreed, the meeting was fraught. Various international actors are said to back different factions, so no one feels safe in the same place. Some politicians think they are at risk of having their food poisoned.
On Wednesday, talks collapsed.
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When Patrice Talon, the “king of cotton,” was elected president of Benin in 2016, few predicted that the country’s democracy would be on the verge of collapse just five years later. Benin had been considered one of West Africa’s strongest democracies, and Talon had run on a pledge to serve just one term. Yet on April 11, not only will Talon be on the ballot for a second stint in office, but his only opponents will be two weak candidates essentially handpicked by his coalition.
Whether Talon ever intended to respect his one-term promise is unclear, but there is little doubt that over the course of his presidency he has rapidly concentrated power. One political rival after another has faced prosecution, while a carefully executed series of procedural reforms has shut opposition parties out of the vote. Although some aspects of the April 11 election remain uncertain—including the turnout rate, the risk of violence, and whether the government will shut down the internet—the result is not. Talon is all but certain to win, punctuating Benin’s slide into autocracy and bringing three decades of democratic success to an end.
The country transitioned to democracy in 1991, helping spark a wave of democratization across the African continent. Although its political system was far from perfect when Talon—who is among the richest people in Francophone Africa today—took office in 2016, the country was rightfully seen as a regional leader. “Beninese people took legitimate pride in it,” Theodule Nouatchi, a law professor at the University of Abomey-Calavi, told me. “That perception does not seem to be there today.”
Benin’s autocratic turn is an alarming example of a broader trend of democratic backsliding in West Africa, where leaders in Guinea and Ivory Coast recently changed their constitutions to enable a third term and Senegal’s president has become increasingly repressive. But the country is also a test case for how the international community treats superficially democratic elections.
On the surface, Talon has an ambitious vision for Benin. He has had some economic successes and has sought to market himself as a fiscally responsible businessman modernizing a corrupt and inefficient state.
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