10 Black Women Innovators and the Awesome Things They Brought Us

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow
Mammy Statue JC Museum Ferris
Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow
Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.
Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters
Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.
An Iconic Lynching in the North
Lynching Quilt
Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two
Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali
Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity
Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie
Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage
Slaveship Stowage Plan
What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829
Arno Michaels
Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

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By Lindsey Weedston, YES Magazine

From a better hairbrush to modern 3D technology, ten things that might never have existed without the invention or innovation of black women.

[In honor of Black History Month,} …here are ten awesome things that might never have existed without the invention or innovation of black women: 

Photo of Valerie L. Thomas by NASA. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

1. Everything good about your phone — Dr. Shirley Jackson…

2. The heater — Alice H. Parker…

3. Space-saving furniture — Sarah Goode…

4. Home security — Marie Van Brittan Brown…

5. Rock and roll — Sister Rosetta Tharpe…

6. A good hairbrush — Lyda D. Newman

7. Downtown Los Angeles — Bridget “Biddy” Mason…

8. A better menstrual pad — Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner…

9. 3D movies — Valerie L. Thomas…

10. Better eyesight — Dr. Patricia Bath.

Read the full article and learn about each woman and her inventions here.

More Breaking News here.

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