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Local elected official: John Mercer Langston, 1855, town clerk of Brownhelm Township , Ohio

Mayor of major city: Carl Stokes, Cleveland, Ohio, 1967–1971. The first black woman to serve as a mayor of a major U.S. city was Sharon Pratt Dixon Kelly , Washington , DC, 1991–1995.

U.S. Senator: Hiram Revels became Senator from Mississippi from Feb. 25, 1870 , to March 4, 1871 , during Reconstruction. Edward Brooke became the first African-American Senator since Reconstruction, 1966–1979. Carol Mosely Braun became the first black woman Senator serving from 1992–1998 for the state of Illinois . (There have only been a total of five black senators in U.S. history: the remaining two are Blanche K. Bruce [1875–1881] and Barack Obama (2005–2008).

Law

Editor, Harvard Law Review: Charles Hamilton Houston , 1919. Barack Obama became the first President of the Harvard Law Review.

Federal Judge: William Henry Hastie, 1946; Constance Baker Motley became the first black woman federal judge, 1966.

Science and Medicine

First patent holder: Thomas L. Jennings, 1821, for a dry-cleaning process. Sarah E. Goode, 1885, became the first African-American woman to receive a patent, for a bed that folded up into a cabinet.

M.D. degree: James McCune Smith, 1837, University of Glasgow ; Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first black woman to receive an M.D. degree. She graduated from the New England Female Medical College in 1864.

Inventor of the blood bank: Dr. Charles Drew, 1940.

Heart surgery pioneer: Daniel Hale Williams, 1893.

First astronaut: Robert H. Lawrence, Jr., 1967, was the first black astronaut, but he died in a plane crash during a training flight and never made it into space. Guion Bluford, 1983, became the first black astronaut to travel in space; Mae Jemison, 1992, became the first black female astronaut. Frederick D. Gregory, 1998, was the first African-American shuttle commander.

Scholarship

College graduate (B.A.): Alexander Lucius Twilight, 1823, Middlebury College ; first black woman to receive a B.A. degree: Mary Jane Patterson, 1862, Oberlin College .

Ph.D.: Edward A. Bouchet, 1876, received a Ph.D. from Yale University . In 1921, three individuals became the first U.S. black women to earn Ph.D.s: Georgiana Simpson, University of Chicago ; Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, University of Pennsylvania ; and Eva Beatrice Dykes, Radcliffe College .

Literature

Pulitzer Prize winner: Gwendolyn Brooks, 1950, won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry.

Pulitzer Prize winner in Drama: Charles Gordone, 1970, for his play No Place To Be Somebody.

Nobel Prize for Literature winner: Toni Morrison, 1993.

Other African American Firsts

Millionaire: Madame C. J. Walker, early 1900’s.

Billionaire: Robert Johnson, 2001, owner of Black Entertainment Television; Oprah Winfrey, 2003.

Explorer, North Pole: Matthew A. Henson, 1909, accompanied Robert E. Peary on the first successful U.S. expedition to the North Pole.

Explorer, South Pole: George Gibbs, 1939–1941 accompanied Richard Byrd.

Flight around the world: Barrington Irving, 2007, from Miami Gardens , Florida , flew a Columbia 400 plane named Inspiration around the world in 96 days, 150 hours (March 23-June 27).

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Copyright © 2010 UAW Local 5960

Home

Send mail to Editor@UAW5960.org with questions or comments about this web site. Copyright © 2010 UAW Local 5960

Send mail to Editor@UAW5960.org with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2010 UAW Local 5960