Famous Black Firsts: Rebecca Davis Lee

Rebecca Davis Lee was born in 1831 Delaware. She was raised by her aunt in Pennsylvania that took care of sick neighbors during a time where poor sick Blacks were not a concern. After moving to Massachusetts she started nursing by 1852 and by 1860 she was accepted into the New England Female Medical College at a time where this was not happening much at all. When she graduated in 1864 she was the first Black woman in the US to earn a M.D degree and the only Black woman to graduate from the college. 

After the Civil War ended in 1865 she went to Richmond, Virginia and began missionary work for poor Blacks and worked for the Freedmen's Bureau to give medical care to freed slaves. During this time male doctors would ignore her and pharmacists would not fill prescriptions she requested. With her husband Dr. Arthur Crumpler while living in Boston she took in sick patients in her community. In 1883 she published Book Of Medical Discourse which was for women teaching them how to care for their families. There are no pictures of Lee and the ones you see online are of Mary Eliza Mahoney as if no one bothered to check past one page on Google. I found an image of a wax statue made of her.

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Famous Black Firsts: Diahann Caroll

Diahann Caroll was born on July 17th 1935 as Carol Diahann Johnson in the Bronx, New York. As a child her parents enrolled her in dance, modeling, and singing classes. When she was 15 years old she was already 6 feet tall and modeling for Ebony magazine. After high school she went to NYU and majored in sociology. At 18 she appeared on a program called Chance of a Lifetime. She won $1,000 for her performance of “Why Was I Born?” and won for the next four weeks. She soon began performing at nightclubs. 

She debuted in film in the movie Carmen Jones as a supporting role in 1954. In 1958 she made it to Broadway in the musical House of Flowers. She performed in more series and plays and won a Tony Award for best actress for the musical No Strings which was the first for a Black woman. In 1974 she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in the movie Claudine. 

She became known for her role in the 1968 series Julia. This show made her the first Black actress to star in her own television series where she was not portraying a domestic worker. For that she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Series and was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1969.

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Famous Black Firsts: Astronaut Guion Stewart Bluford Jr.

Guion Stewart Bluford Jr. was born November 22nd 1942 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After graduating from Penn State in 1964 studying aerospace engineering he joined the Air Force and served during the Vietnam War. There he flew over 140 combat mission and won medals because that is what you do. 

After the war he went to the Air Force Institute of Technology and got a master's degree in aerospace engineering and got a Ph.D in 1978. 

That same year he was chosen for N.A.S.A. In August of 1983 Buford became the first Black person to travel into space. He was a mission specialist on the Challenger shuttle and participated in the first night launch. Funny. I've never thought about that before. 

He orbited the planet 98 times in 145 hours. That sounds insane. He went on three more space mission, his last two were in 1991 and 1992. He retired in 1993 after spending more than 688 hours in space. I haven't even spent that much time in water! He was inducted into the International Hall of Fame in 1997.

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Famous Black Firsts: Alexander Lucius Twilight

Alexander Lucius Twilight not only has one of the coolest names ever created, he was also the first Black person in the US to get a degree from college. Born on September 23rd 1795 in Corinth, Vermont his parents were both free. His father was mixed race and a Revolutionary War veteran. 

When he was 8 he started working on a nearby farm and until he was 20 read and learned mathematics. From there for the next six years he completed all secondary school courses and the first two of college level courses. When he graduated in 1823 it wasn't even widely known that he was the first Black to get a baccalaureate degree until someone else claimed that they were three years later. He began a career as a teacher in New York while studying theology and ministry. 

After four years of teaching he moved to Vermont to continue teaching during the week and holding church services on the weekend. In 1829 he was hired as a principal and served as a minister. He then raised money and designed a dormitory for out of town students. In 1836 he was elected to the Vermont General Assembly making him the first Black to be elected to state legislature.

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Famous Black Firsts: Lillian Lincoln Lambert

Lillian Lincoln Lambert is known as the first Black woman to graduate from Harvard Business School. Born in Ballsville, Virginia she moved to New York after high school. The only work she could find was as a maid so she moved to Washington, D.C and worked in typing pools for the government and went to teachers college. When she was 22 she went to Howard University. There she met H. Naylor Fitzhugh who was one of the first Blacks to go to HBS and he became her mentor and eventually he convinced her to apply. 

When she arrived at the school she realized that she was the only Black woman there. In her class of 1,600 only 1 of 9 were Black and 35 of them were women. “In hindsight, it was best that I did not know. Had I known, I’m not sure I would have gone. It was a tumultuous time for the country. This was the era of the civil rights and women's rights movements. Martin Luther King would be assassinated the following spring.”They started a African-American Student Union to get the number of Blacks attending to increase. They increased the number within two years. Before she graduated she had not been interviewed for any jobs. She went back to her previous job and eventually became executive vice president of Unified Services. In 1976 she started her own company, Centennial One. What began with 20 part-time employees and an office that was formally her garage became one with 1,200 employees and made $20 million. By 1995 she was the first woman to serve the president of an international association of service contractors.

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Famous Black Firsts: Director Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks was born November 30th 1912 in Fort Scott, Kansas. The school he went to was segregated because the town was so small that they couldn't afford to be non-segregated when he was a teen and while there Black were not allowed to play sports of go to any extracurricular activities. Parks says that once a teacher told him that going to college would be a waste of money. Sounds legit. 

When he was 14 his mother passed away and he moved in with other family members who quickly put him out on the streets. His first job was as a piano player in a brothel. I swear, those places must have been so much more prevalent back in the day. At the age of 25 he became inspired to start a career in photography. In 1940 he was encouraged to move to Chicago and he started a portrait business specializing in photos of rich women. In the 1950's he started working as a consultant on film production. Later on he directed his own documentaries about life as a Black in the ghetto. As well as being a photographer and a writer, he ended up directing his own book The Learning Tree in 1969 making him Hollywood's first Black director. Yeah. It took that long for that to happen. He also composed the music for the movie. His most well known film is Shaft. He's a bad mutha...

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Famous Black Firsts: Performer Ethel Waters

Ethel Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania on October 31st 1896. Some say that she was actually born in 1900. Her mother, Louise Anderson, was around 13 when she gave birth to Ethel after being raped by a man named John Waters that knew the family. Ethel was raised in poor neighborhoods and moved frequently. When talking about her childhood she said “I never was a child. I never was cuddled, or liked, or understood by my family.” She was about 5 foot 9 ½ as a teenager which is worth noting because that is pretty tall for a chick period let alone back then. She got married when she was 13 years old but left her husband after abuse and worked as a maid. At 17 she attended a costume party and after being asked to sing wowed everyone to the point she was offered professional work at the Lincoln Theater located in Baltimore. 

She later toured the vaudeville circuit and despite being this successful at such a young age she fell on hard times and began traveling with a carnival in freight cars. By 1919 she moved to Harlem and became a famous performer during the Harlem Renaissance. In 1949 she was nominated for an Academy Award for the movie Pinky making her the second Black after Hattie McDaniel to do such. In 1950 she starred in the television series Beulah but left the show after disagreeing with the portrayal of Blacks on the series. This show was the very first series to star a Black person. Oddly enough Hattie eventually replaced her.

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Famous Black Firsts: Banker Maggie Lena Walker

Maggie Lena Walker was born on July 15th 1867 in Richmond, Virginia. Her mother was a former slave and assistant cook in a mansion and her father was a butler and a writer. After the death of her father, she says murder the law says suicide, she and her mother moved. Her mother started a laundry business to support themselves. It is said that during this time she saw the huge difference between how Blacks and Whites were treated. Later in her life she taught grade school for a few years but was forced to leave after marrying. It was illegal for teachers to be married at the school. Don't ask me. 

In 1895 she began working with the Order of St. Luke's and quickly became their grand secretary. When she started they were on the verge of bankruptcy and a few years later she made a speech detailing what she had planned to save them and it worked. In 1902 she started the St . Luke Herald newspaper to spread news of what they were doing. In 1903 she opened the St. Luke Penny Saving Bank making her not just the first Black woman to open and run a bank, but the first woman period in the US. Two years later she opened St. Luke Emporium that gave Black women the chance to work and gave Black communities the chance to buy cheaper products.

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Famous Black Firsts: Entrepreneur Madam CJ Walker

Sarah Breedlove better known as Madam C.J . Walker was born on December 23rd 1867 in Delta, Louisiana and is regarded as the first female self-made millionaire. Her parents and siblings were all born into slavery and she was the first born free after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. This is where it gets kinda weird. At the age of 14 she married her brother to escape her step-mom's bad treatment and three years later had a daughter. Hmm. Okay. 

A few years later she moved and began working with her brothers who were all barbers. She worked as a washer barely making a dollar a day. She experienced hair issues because back then taking care of Black hair was a nightmare. In 1904 she began selling products for Annie Turnbo Malone who was a Black hair care entrepreneur. She later began making her own products and married a newspaper advertising salesman named Charles Joseph Walker. She then trained women in the art of selling hair care products. Her business grew and by 1917 she held her first Madam Walker Beauty Culturists convention. This is said to be the first national meeting of women in America brought together to discuss business practices. She let everyone know that getting involved in politics and philanthropy were important. Her business eventually expanded to Cuba, Costa Rica, Panama, Haiti, and Jamaica.

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Famous Black Firsts: Thomas Mundy Peterson

Thomas Mundy Peterson was born on October 6th 1824 in Metuchen, New Jersey. It is not known if his father was a slave but his mother was and by the age of 21 she was freed according to her owners will. Peterson was a school custodian and handyman as well as a Republican. My, how times have changed. The only Black Republicans you hear about now have money. 

Under the new 15th Amendment he was able to vote in an election making him the first Black person to vote on March 31st 1870 stating “I was working for Mr. T. L. Kearny on the morning of the day of election, and did not think of voting until he came out to the stable where I was attending to the horses and advised me to go to the polls and exercise a citizen's privilege.” 

He was also the first Black person to serve on a jury and hold an elected office on the Middlesex County Commission. Peterson was given a gold medal as an award for being the first Black voter. $70 was raised for it which translates to over $1,000 now. Financial problems forced him to pawn it multiple times but it is now housed at the African American Xavier University of Louisiana.

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Famous Black Firsts: Nurse Mary Eliza Mahoney

Mary Eliza Mahoney was born in Boston, Massachusetts on May 7th 1845 to recently freed slaves from North Carolina. When she was 18 years she decided that she wanted to become a nurse. She began studying and by 1878 at the age of 33 she was accepted to the New England Hospital for Women and Children nursing school making her the first Black professional nurse in the US. This was also the first professional nursing program in America as well. By 1950 the hospital was equipped to handle male patients. Out of 42 students that started training she was one of the four that actually graduated. This training required a year working at the hospital's surgical, maternity, and medical wards as well as attend lectures. Oh, and they had to work as private nurses for four months. 

Mahoney was known by the families that she worked for privately for her calmness and professionalism. During this time, you know, the 1800's and all, she was also required to do household tasks as well as nurse. She was like “Pffft!” and didn't eat her meals with the staff. Her reputation grew and she started getting requests to work all around the country. She later became one of the first Black members of the American Nurses Association and when they were taking too long to bring in more Black nurses she supported the creation of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses. For the next ten years she helped recruit nurses and by 1910 the number of Black women nurses was around 2,400. 1911 ran an orphanage in New York. She then fought for the right to vote for women and at the age of 76 was able to vote. She passed away in 1936 of breast cancer and a few years later the number of Black nurses doubled. She was inducted into the A.N.A Hall of Fame in 1976.

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Famous Black Firsts: Recognized Physician James Durham

This one is a good example of why it is not as easy to do these as you'd think. Though James Durham did something great, the dates of his birth and death are different depending on where you look and there are no pictures of him. Anywhere. Lots of folks have written about this guy and they are using a picture of James McCune Smith who was the first formally trained Black doctor. Durham was the first Black to practice medicine without a degree. Get it together, people. 

Born a slave in 1762 and having 10 siblings he was owned by different doctors. By the time he was 11 one of his masters hired him to help out with medical services. At the age of 20 he was making $3,000 a year which sounded real low until I did the conversion and saw that it came out to about $75,870 a year. If I made that much now I'd be happy let alone in the 1700's. 

Working as a nurse at the age of 21 he was able to buy his own freedom and set up his own medical business in New Orleans. It is said that he was popular due to the fact that he was able to speak three languages: English, Spanish, and French. In 1789 he saved more patients than any other physician from yellow fever after previously meeting Benjamin Rush who is known as the father of American medicine. In Philadelphia he learned that climate and disease were related. In 1801 his practice was restricted even though he knew what he was doing and good at his job because he did not have a formal medical degree. It is said that disappeared after 1801 or 1802 and died of a heart attack.

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Famous Black Firsts: Whale Ship Captain Absalom Boston

When I first read this one I thought that the years had to be wrong. I couldn't imagine a Black man, free or not, being allowed to own and run their own whale ship back then. Absalom Boston, born 1785 in Nantucket, Massachusetts, was the first Black man to captain a whale ship with an all Black crew in 1822. Absalom was born to a former slave and Native American mother which was all the rage back then and even fairly recently. Both of my grandmothers were Native Americans that married Black men. His uncle, Prince Boston, was the first Black slave to win his freedom from a jury trial after refusing to give his money to his slave master in 1770. 

By the time he was 20 years old Absalom had enough o buy property and later got a license to open and run an inn. His ship, The Industry, did a six month journey and returned with 70 barrels of whale oil which was used to make oil for lamps, soap, and margarine. This journey is also remarkable for the fact that his entire crew survived. He retired shortly after this and ran for office as well as ran a business and became a leader of the community. He and another captain, Edward Pompey, led the abolitionist movement in Nantucket. In 1845 his daughter, Phebe Ann Boston, was kept from attending a public school. They obviously didn't know this family's history. Absalom fought and won a lawsuit against the municipal government to then integrate the public school system there.

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Famous Black Firsts: Williams Wells Brown

Williams Wells Brown who was born in 1814 was the first Black man to have novel published titled Clotel. In Montgomery, Kentucky he was born a slave to a mother that was also a slave. If you are wondering why his hair is so slick, its because he and his six brothers and sisters were fathered by the cousin of their master. He and his mother were sold to other owners despite his master and cousin making a deal not to. He was sold multiple times before he was 20 years old. He and his mother escaped slavery two times, the second time being successful. At the age of 20 he met his wife and had two daughters. In 1849 he left for England while estranged from his wife who passed away. That same year he was chosen as the representative of the US at the International Peace Congress in Paris. 

After his freedom was bought in 1854 he and his daughters were able to return to the US. A side note: his daughter Josephine Brown is arguably the first Black female to have a book published. While in the US Brown settled in Buffalo, New York. There he helped slaves escape by hiding them on steamboats which he worked on in his youth as a slave. The number the estimate from Brown alone is 69 which sounds kind of low, but not when you think of how many hundreds or thousands of us are alive today or in the past because of him.

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Famous Black Firsts: University Professor Charles Lewis Reason

Charles Lewis Reason was born on July 21st 1818 in New York. Both of his parents were free. He was a mathematician and educator and became the first Black to become a professor at a mostly White college, New York Central College in McGrawville. In 1847 he and Charles Bennett Ray founded the Society for the Promotion of Education for Black children. A few years later he was made professor of belles letters Greek, Latin, and French while also working as a professor of mathematics. Reason later worked in public schools as a reformer, teacher, and administrator. 

In 1873 he helped fight for and got the statute to integrate Black students into public schools. After this he became principal of Grammar School No. 80. New York has such weird names for their school. After suffering two strokes within five years he still continued working. He passed away five months after retiring. Reason also wrote poetry, was an activist, and abolitionist.

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Famous Black Firsts: Academy Award Winner Hattie McDaniel

Hattie McDaniel was born on June 10th, 1895 to former slaves in Wichita, Kansas. She was the youngest of 13 children as well. Yeesh. Growing up she performed with her brothers and sisters who also sang and did shows. At one point even though she was performing on well known and popular radio shows she still had to support herself by being a maid. She is best known for playing the character Mammy in Gone With The Wind but it turns out that she was in over 300 movies but only credited for 80. 

She also performed on stage, television, radio, and did comedy. Besides being the first Black person to win an Academy Award in 1940 (Best Supporting Actress) she was also the first Black woman to sing on the radio. I did not know that. She was also the first Black Academy Award winner to appear on a stamp back in 2006 and has two stars on the Walk of Fame. One for movies and the other for radio. When she was given the award she was criticized by some for the roles that she accepted. They wanted her to make a statement. She just wanted to act and make a living. “Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn't, I'd be making $7 a week being one.” 

Famous Black Firsts: Grammy Award Winner Ella Fitzgerald

Born on April 25th, 1917 Ella Fitzgerald was the first Black female to win a Grammy Award, two of them the first year it was even a thing to win. Within the 60 years that she spent recording music she won a total of 13 Grammy's and sold 40 million copies of over 70 albums. She was born in Newport News, Virginia to unmarried parents that separated within a year of her being born. Her mother got with another guy and they moved to New York as part of the Great Migration. At the age of 6 Ella began attending school. As a child she loved dancing and would perform for her family and students in school. After the death of her mother while Ella was still a teen, her grades dropped in school and she began ditching. 

After leaving home due to her abusive stepfather she worked as a look out at a brothel. After police found her she was placed in an orphanage and then a reformatory for girls. He eventually escaped and began singing at the age of 17, making her debut at the Apollo Theater. She was going to dance during Amateur Night but decided to sing after being intimated by a local dancing duo. She won the first prize of a whopping $25. That was a lot back then. She was discovered singing for pennies by someone in the industry and his manager was reluctant to bring in a homeless teen singer until he heard her sing. Ella performed with Benny Goodman and his orchestra even after his death as well as having her own side projects. In 1942 she debuted in a Abbott & Costello movie Ride 'Em Cowboy. Due to her undeniable talent, by the 1950's and 60's she was dubbed The First Lady Of Song. I had heard of Ella growing up from various sources and when listening to some of her songs I totally recognized her voice and even imitations of it from old cartoons I watched growing up. She passed away in 1996 after a series of debilitating illnesses at home.

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Famous Black Firsts: Boston Police Horatio Julius Homer

There isn't a lot of information about today's FBF, Horatio Julius Homer. He grew up on a farm in Farmington, Connecticut. In 1873 he worked in a shoe factory and then a steamship in Boston. By 1878 he was assigned as a patrolman. Now, I have never been to Boston. Have no desire to go to Boston. But what I do know about Boston is that I do not like their accents and that there is a lot of racism there. So the fact that Homer became the first Black police officer in Boston that long ago is pretty damned incredible. By 1895 he was made a sergeant. 

Over a 40 year career he worked for about a dozen commissioners. It is said that he like Greek literature, was a Republican, and memorized a poem each day. The main reason any of this information about him is even known is because in 2010 Margaret Sullivan, a Boston police archivist, and Bob Anthony an officer in East Boston did the homework. After that, his unmarked grave was finally treated with proper respect.

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Famous Black Firsts: First Published Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley is someone that I have heard of when in school as far as being told that she was a poet. She was also the first Black woman to have a book published. Can't recall having to read anything that she wrote. Just knew that she was Black, a woman, and wrote. She was born in 1753 but that is a guesstimate. There are so many things about her life before she was bought as a slave. They think she was 7 years old when she was purchased by the Wheatley family which is where she got her name. Yes, that is how Black people got their names back in the day. Named after who owned us. USA! USA! USA! 

Anyhoot, she was given the name Phillis because, I'm not kidding, that was what the ship that she was brought from Africa was called. She was thankfully taught to read and write by the daughter and son of the family that owned her. By the age of 12 Phillis was reading Greek and Latin. She was so good that they let all the other slaves do the household work. She was taken to London where she began to spread her work and by the age of 25 she was freed from being a slave as according to the will of her now dead master. This sounds like a story. Three months later she married and had two children that died as infants. She continued to write even though she could not afford to have her work published. After the imprisonment of her husband she had to now do the work she was able to avoid while growing up. She died at the age of 31 and hours later so did her child. Wow. I think I know why I never heard the full story of her life in school. This is depressing.

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Famous Black Firsts: First Black Comic Book Artist Matt Baker

Clarence Matthew Baker also known as Matt Baker was born on December 10th, 1921 in Forsyth County, North Caroline. As a child his family moved to Pittsburgh. After high school he was drafted during World War 2 but a heart condition prevented him from being in it. He began studying art in New York City and became an outsourced comic book artist. What that means is that he was commissioned to do at from one particular person, kinda like an agent, and sent his work in. 

The first of his work that is actually confirmed is from a “Sheena Queen of the Jungle” story in 1944. He drew for many different comic book companies using the name Matt Bakerino before settling with Atlas Comics which eventually became Marvel Comics. He became the first Black comic book artist. With his art he drew Westerns, science fiction, and romance comics. He passed away from a heart attack at the age of 37. In 2009 he was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. As someone that draws till this day and started when I was about 4 years old it would've been cool to know about this guy during Black History Month growing up.

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